#395 | It Never Made Much Sense

33:12Dustin Furman:But I'll just go back to, you know, not to be on my soapbox, but I just, it's just so hard for me to believe that, or not believe, I believe it, because I've been in, I'm American, but to understand, And I would understand if you went to the doctor and like you cut yourself and you had to get a few stitches and they're like, all right, well, your insurance doesn't, it's not really like what your insurance is for or whatever. It's kind of like this minor thing. It's like when you get a ding on your car, do you really want to deal with the insurance or do you want to just, you know, this seems to be like what it exists for.

33:45Dustin Furman:Like part, like the whole kit and caboodle of all of it and everything that goes into it. Like that's the point. I don't know. That to me, I don't even understand how it's legal and allowed. and that as much as I hold in, in, I don't hold businesses in the highest regard as everyone knows to begin with, but like the healthcare segment segment is just fucked. Yeah. I just, it's just so, I don't know. It's just so strange and weird, but then again, it's not, it's not, it's not that weird when you think about it because it's, everything is based on the dollar only. And yeah, anyway, so Gene we are wishing you the best thank you all for supporting him and showing him that love and you really do I think often in life get back what you put out and I think this is a good sign for that alright Austin Clements wrote in and said hey CDC writing in with a sort of different question Colin what's the plan for Richmond's big snowstorm I'm seeing possibly 23 inches of snow hitting your area.

34:52Dustin Furman:I'm not getting as much in my area in North Texas, but people are going crazy already and Ted Cruz has already set sail. Hope everything goes well and as always love the content and keep up the great work. I do love that. We brought up earlier what it is or was maybe on the stream we brought up. Very funny. Very funny. That like that was maybe the biggest PR nightmare he had ever encountered and you know from a media point of view and you would think like that would be imprinted in you. Well, yeah, not Not to not to don't do that again. That he that he did it again is funny. One thing to be fair, he does learn because he never again liked.

35:30Porn on Twitter on 9-11. That is that is something that he never did again. Indeed. So so he can learn. Indeed. But that's fucking crazy. 23 inches of snow is insane.

35:44Dustin Furman:I'm seeing so I should be clear. We're I'm south of Richmond, like 40 minutes or so. So not quite in Richmond. Right. But and that's relevant because there's going to be like a line of like where it snows and then it sleets and then frozen rain, freezing rain, which is the worst because that fucks your power up bad. So like what everyone's watching right now is like where the line of delineation is and it's creeping north, which is bad for us because like a couple of days ago we were well in the snow zone and it was like, who gives a shit if it snows? It's not a big deal at all. I lived in New England for many years, New York for many years.

36:17Dustin Furman:We got we clobbered with snow. it really doesn't matter you know like you get snowed in but it doesn't affect the power really or anything like that but if you get freezing rain that's a whole nother it gets fucked bad and um i was watching something actually interesting about how they were talking about the math about the accreting ice on like as it rains and a tree like it gets like an inch of thickness of like water around it it gains like this exponential level of weight and that's obviously the problem is like how everything starts falling and then the wires now my neighborhood's new and we have everything underground which is good but obviously the things connecting to us are above ground so we'll have to see what happens it could be a pretty hairy situation i'm always of the mind though that and i don't want to jinx myself one way or the other but like i feel like you know you never really know until it happens because they're wrong so much too and then they don't say something's going to happen like we've had like catastrophic thunderstorms here where it's like no one even said this was happening what is going on right and then it's just fucking pouring and so you just gotta so we're really just on you know waiting to see what happens yeah no no one says it's happening but like there's there's always a guy on the on like some street corner with like one tooth shouting about shouting about it's like there's gonna be a thunderstorm in three days and you're like yeah sure and then it happens you're like sure thing buddy

37:43Dustin Furman:um so yeah we're waiting to see um you're gonna get cold we you won't even be there but you're

37:49Colin Moriarty:gonna get bad bad snow up in pittsburgh i'm a little sad about it yeah like it's kind of like a good snowstorm it's gonna be i'm seeing eight to twelve inches potentially here in the pittsburgh

38:00Dustin Furman:region you'll probably get eight to twelve you'll probably get eight to twelve inches though out in

38:03Colin Moriarty:Irvine too I knew that was coming next yep um oh you think very highly of Brad yeah he's seen something I haven't he's back in heat um but yeah I'm sad I'm not going to be here because it's kind of fun you know see all the snow and you're you know inside cozy but uh a little break from the current weather it was like it's not hasn't been its coldest yet but it was with wind chill and the negatives a few days ago so it's gonna be i love going to california in the middle of winter here because it's like oh i can it's like i can enjoy a little spring yeah for a few days so yeah it's it's good there'll be more snow yeah yeah i love a good snowstorm though man i love i love how it sounds like right after a fresh like if there's like this uh the sound dampening effect that happens yeah like when it's like just there's a lot of snow on the ground and everything's quiet

38:57Dustin Furman:it it's fucking cool i love it yeah it's one of the things i miss yeah i dig the snow too i wish we got more of it down here we do get a decent this has been a fairly snowy year comparable to others there have been years where we've gotten no snow um and that's unheard of when i was in boston it was like fucking craziness but um and just got like i don't i don't have it in me anymore we've talked about this on the show in the past like i've lost my ability to really be in the cold like i used to it was so cold up there and you just get used to it and you have to go to class and you have to go to work and you have to like go shopping and shit it's like literally zero degrees you know i remember waiting i would i would do i remember waiting for the school bus in like minus one sometimes and you're like this is fucking not okay for like how could they be doing this to children it's insane in retrospect it feels mega scary yeah it's great it's it's fucking cold i'd like so now i'm like uh if it's like 30 i'm like oh my god i'm fucking dying out a year so we'll see what happens uh we are on the we are on the the there's like a thin line between this just being a bad snowstorm in which we're just buried in snow which is who gives a shit and us getting like ice storms that are going to knock the power out for days at a time so

40:05Colin Moriarty:we'll see so potential for a columnless sacred show but maybe i there's one thing like so

40:15Dustin Furman:my mom lives like 45 minutes away and she has a generac for people that don't know what that is that's like a gas power generator that kicks on automatically connected to like the municipal gas lines so that you just have power continuously so like we do have that option but we would have to get there and then i think that i would rather just be in the cold in my own dim dark house not worrying about it because i think if i was there i'd be like oh man what if something happened what if like a pipe burst or something like you know like whatever it might be right right so i'm I'd rather just be in the misery and be in my own house.

40:50But we'll see what happens.

40:51Dustin Furman:So yeah, potentially, potentially so. I'll be ready. It's your turn. And I think this is probably true in a lot of places in the world. But in the United States, we have such bad weather and it's so different everywhere. And just like forces of nature, tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, like all this horrible shit. And every once in a while, it's your turn. And I've been thinking about that the last few days. like I've actually kind of not dealt with anything for a long time yeah I have not been without power for days at a time since I was in middle school that's not true actually they remember remember the blackout Chris in the northeast for like a few days 2003 yeah that was like around that I don't know but that was fun like I was a friend I was a freshman in college I was home and I was like this is awesome it was really cool it was really good because didn't that last like a couple yeah it was like it was the days I feel like yeah I remember Dagan was stuck in New York City and had to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge or whatever.

41:47Dustin Furman:Dude, I was stepping out. I remember that vividly because I was stepping out of an elevator when it happened. I was stepping out of the elevator in like onto my floor where me and my parents lived in Yonkers. And so like one, like a couple seconds and I would have been stuck in that elevator and like everybody would have lost power. It would have been a fucking nightmare. I think about that a lot. It's really narrowly escaped. But that was a fun. I like a blackout. I don't know. There's something like it's like a like a surprise camp out you know you get the the candles out the flashlights feels like a little adventure things are unusually quiet because there's there's not that ambient hum of electricity that you don't even notice until it's not there it's good stuff it's interesting yeah it's a vibe two things i remember about that one was it was right after 9 11 so everyone thought at first it was a terrorist attack the second and then everyone's like it's not it literally is just like the power plants are all fucked up and uh the second thing is is that i always just when I think back on it is like it was a very unique time where I had no responsibilities and nothing to worry about I I remember that that those days very distinctly that summer very distinctly because it was like one of the last times I never really I was still kind of a kid um yeah and so but I'm sure if you had responsibility the other thing about that time was that we didn't have smartphones yet people had cell phones and I don't as I remember I don't know if the towers might not have worked either I think I think you're right but it was the first it was one of the last times I remember being like you were you truly were disconnected like there was you truly had no no idea what was going on and you had radios and shit but yeah that's that's not really going to be if that happens these days it's like that would be unusual I think you don't you also know about it on Twitter immediately right you know Austin thank you for writing in and thank you for your concern the Super Mario Galaxy movie hits theaters on April 1st, and it's easily going to be one of the biggest film events of the year.

43:41This time, the stakes are cosmic, as Mario and his friends travel across entire galaxies to stop Bowser Jr. from destroying the universe as we know it. You've got all your favorites, Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Bowser, plus Yoshi and Rosalina joining the adventure in a way that fans of all ages are going to love.

43:59Dustin Furman:It's funny, it's epic, and it really leans into the wild, imaginative energy that has made Mario a pop culture icon for the last 40 years. Whether you grew up playing the games or you're just looking for a great time at the movies, this is one you'll want to see on the big screen. Experience the Super Mario Galaxy movie only in theaters April 1st. The galaxy is waiting. Why have we asked our contractor we found on Angie.com to be our kid's legal guardian? Because he took such good care when redoing our basement that we knew we could trust him to care for our kids, all eight of them, should something happen to us.

44:35Are you my dad now?

44:38Dustin Furman:Uh, no, sorry, I do basements. Connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home projects at Angie.com. Bobby T. wrote in and said, all right, lads, we need to sharpen up a little here. Last week, Colin read out an inquiry from Isla Vainal. Neither of you two court jesters either side of you picked up on this. You even referred to the person who wrote in with the pronoun she. What are the most tavern is fucking going on here? Stay gorgeous. That I definitely didn't realize that. But you guys did. Yeah. And then let it go.

45:13Dustin Furman:And I don't know. Kind of like you left me out to dry a little bit. But I mean, it's we wouldn't have edited it out. We don't really edit the shows, but it would have been. You know, I need to be saved for myself once in a while. So here's the thing about it. this name was was read on a sacred stream that we did we did a stream where somebody used that exact name so i kind of felt like i'm shot i don't know i felt like you you kind of walked into it i don't i don't know if i don't know if it warranted like if that was the first time i think i would have said something sure but it was kind of like a shame on you kind of thing the thing the thing is is that it takes good advantage it kind of gets into my process in selecting inquiries and that i have a bias towards names i don't really recognize you know i there's names all over the show every week that you do recognize people write in good inquiries all the time and there are some people that write in great all the time and you just can't use them all the time but when i see a name that i don't know i always try to use those inquiries if i can if it makes sense sometimes it just doesn't make sense so it's fairly easy to get one by the goalie.

46:22Dustin Furman:The other one that we said last week that I take a little more umbrage with, though, is Drew Peacock. Right. I get it. Drew Peacock. I get it. But there are two things. Well, there's actually three things about this. This name has been bandied around in this community for I feel like this guy's been around for years. The second thing is, is it emphasize if it is a ploy name to make you say Drew Peacock, it's kind of emphasizing the wrong syllable. It doesn't really work very well. The third thing is that I'm not positive it is because as I said, I think on Sacred Streaming, I know someone with the last name Peacock.

46:57Dustin Furman:That's why I never thought twice about it. You know? So

47:05Dustin Furman:what's to be said about that? I don't know. I just want to acknowledge that it happened. I'm the fucking idiot, okay? I'm the dummy. I'm the dummy. Should we have jumped in, Dustin? I don't know.

47:18Colin Moriarty:I I'm trying to remember it completely because I think when Colin read the name initially, I didn't pick up on it either. But I think it was either from seeing you react, Chris, or I think maybe someone said like, I was like, so Isla. And then I looked and I was like, oh, one of those two things happened. I honestly don't remember. But at that point, I thought for the for the entertainment of the show.

47:42Dustin Furman:I understand that. I appreciate that. You're a showman. At the end of the day, I mean, right. i also don't know we're all showmen sometimes i feel like sometimes i don't know like i feel like i've noticed this for years but like colin has this this thing where it's like we almost have like completely opposite like colin will draw attention to things that i i would think to not even mention for the sake of the show like he'll be like oh i see you've got i see you've got something in the back there that you're reaching out of out of frame for and for me i'm thinking like oh i was i was just gonna do that and not draw attention to it because i was worried that it would like derail i'm sorry no no i think it's funny it works but like i think about that so i'm like should i should i interrupt him and save him and i was like i don't know if i don't know if that derails you know he's on a he's on a roll here he's reading the name he's

48:31Colin Moriarty:yeah sure sure the question yeah i've been on the receiving end of uh derailing colin before

48:41i'm just saying i've been there and uh i think it works it works for the team because it's funny because i gotta think of it i'm always taking off like because sometimes i'll type in the i'll do this thing i'll type in the chat i'm like oh i gotta go i gotta go to the door real quick and i i'll type it specifically so like there's no derailing and then and they'd call me like oh

48:58Colin Moriarty:chris is left chris is left it's like trump with that note a few weeks ago the marco rubio note that he like he's like oh marco wants me marco wants me to acknowledge yeah he's like just reading

49:10Dustin Furman:it out loud yeah i didn't even see that yeah oh yeah that would be a good one for your repertoire um see that one yeah yeah well i always i remember i was talking about this in the past is that i always when you leave the note you go someone's at the door delivering something or you got a call or something like that i always feel like you're telling me so that i know and then i try to think about it through the audience's perspective on video where am i letting them know why you're just leaving you know kind of what i'm where i'm getting where i'm getting no that's that's fair i think about it from an audio perspective sure yes that makes sense too we are a podcast more people listen to the show than watch it so it's probably it's probably useful to be more same thing for us same thing for us on the snark tank it's way more and when people are watching it they're not really watching it i don't think i think most people are not sitting there watching it no it'd be

50:01Dustin Furman:that's it that's all i have yeah one more brohemian grove wrote in and said this is for colin and his technique for eating burritos during last week's episode you mentioned your chipotle burrito order and it brought to mind the time you yelled at a traveling sony executive for unwrapping the wrapper for a burrito during his first experience i've been eating burritos for 44 years and never once had to use the wrapper to keep it together colin how are you eating your burritos that they are falling apart every time you eat them and forcing this doctrine onto others. The burrito enthusiasts in these audience would like to know.

50:34Dustin Furman:Come on, man. This is deep lore. It is deep lore because it's not a Sony executive. It was Ega.

50:41Colin Moriarty:Right.

50:42Dustin Furman:Oh, my God.

50:46Dustin Furman:That's way crazier. Ego is at my kit, literally in my apartment at my kitchen table eating a burrito and was taking all the aluminum off. And as I've told the story, I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, but he, Iga is not like in a Fune or Kojima where he understands English. He really doesn't speak it. And so he was like kind of embarrassed and didn't know and thought I was like yelling at him or something like that. And I was trying to stop him from being like, you're going to destroy your burrito, you know? And then it was translated and he laughed or whatever he understood um i don't know i feel like it's psychotic to take the foil off of your burrito i don't never knew anyone that ever did that i lived in california for a long time that's the home of the burrito it's where the burrito was invented um i don't know i feel like i have some claim to understand burrito culture i've eaten how many burritos have i realistically eaten in my life a thousand more than that that's a i mean chris you know and in san francisco it's the same thing it's like this is a part of your real option is getting mexican food of course yeah so i i ate burritos we were obsessed with them at ign because especially because they were kind of cheap um i don't know if they're so cheap anymore but they were you get it like when i moved to when I was there 20 years ago, it was like, you know, five, six bucks for a burrito.

52:14Dustin Furman:So I take umbrage with this. I don't think it's weird. I think it's weird that you're taking it. And I can't believe and I don't believe I don't believe that you've never had a you've taken the burritos out of the foil and they've not fallen apart. What kind of bullshit burritos are you getting? These should be chonky boys that are busting at the seams.

52:35Colin Moriarty:Oh, yeah. Yeah, it doesn't seem right. uh it so look i don't know i've i remember because i never really ate burritos until i moved out here you know like it wasn't really like mexican food's not really big in in new york it's not it's not something that's like a like a staple that you would reliably choose over other things so like it was pretty new to me when i came out here and i remember it's kind of

53:03it's not that consistent like sometimes i'll get a burrito and i'll take it i'll take it out of the foil and it'll be fine it'll hold together well but oftentimes it's not the case and i don't mean it necessarily like splits at the top sometimes at the bottom it'll come out like or like it'll it'll start dripping you know it's it's a messy food you want to keep it contained so i don't know that's it's it's it's crazy to me that he's never had how many burritos have you had yeah i mean he's been eating this whole life but have you only had 10 I could see that being probable. Maybe it's possible that you had 10 burritos in your entire life and none of them bursted open.

53:40I think that's possible. It's unlikely. But it's, you know, it's within the realm of happenable things.

53:49Dustin Furman:But I don't I don't buy it. I'm looking it up here. Burritos are a traditional food. There's this whole history of like the Mayans with all this. And like the, you know, the early settlers and everyone. But yeah. It's a traditional food of, how do you say this? Ciudad Juarez? Ciudad Juarez? Ciudad Juarez. Bordering on El Paso, Texas in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. How do you spell Ciudad? Where people buy them at restaurants and roadside stands. Let's see.

54:19Colin Moriarty:Right. I'm trying to find the etymology, not the etymology, but where it comes from.

54:25Dustin Furman:But it's, God, this is such a big fucking Wikipedia article. It's like, who cares about any of this? Because I thought, I don't know. I was always under the assumption or I learned that it was created by Mexican immigrants in the fields of California throwing different ingredients together that they had access to in a tortilla.

54:46Colin Moriarty:I don't like a talk. Well, yeah. Yeah. The Mexican burrito often has like the the sauce on. Oh, it's not something you I think the California burrito is the handheld operation that was born there. Yeah, we don't want the sauce. I mean, I don't want any of that. Yeah, I'm not really. Who knows? Honestly, like every time I hear it, it's like, oh, this food was invented here. It's like, how could you possibly know that? How could I like I'm sure like you have an inkling, you know, but I never know when Graham Hancock's going to come out of the woodwork. And we found a fossil of a fucking burrito from from from 200 ,000 years ago, you know, from Atlanta.

55:32Another water burrito. It's all soggy and gross. It's good stuff.

55:38Dustin Furman:Oh, man. I love Graham Hancock. He's so interesting. yeah I miss the and it's in both northern and southern California but more more in southern California I miss the street food like the Mexican ladies with the burritos and the tacos and the like I just I loved that so much and the hot dogs the bacon wrapped hot dogs sausages there's a lady that does that right outside my building and it's like it's always it's always mega tempting to just go over and just not cook you know yeah i've never gotten sick from any of them either they used to post up outside of e3 do you guys remember any yeah yeah yeah um and i would i couldn't even the thing is i was so into it and i couldn't even put it as part of my per diem because i couldn't get a receipt or anything like that and i would still just do it i've never gotten sick from a food truck either which feels impossible it definitely does and yet although that that although that that pizza from uh what is it where were we oh was that in houston yeah that that looked like it probably could have that looked like it probably could have done me in

56:49Colin Moriarty:yeah i mean i don't really have i mean i ate it and was fine but i also ate chick-fil-a and it took me out yesterday so who knows look at the draw look at the draw man food poisoning can really come from anywhere even your own home it's like a psa yeah that's true

57:08Dustin Furman:this is so interesting the um all the different styles of burritos that i never even thought about like the different variations of them because yeah like the mission burrito is what i

57:17Colin Moriarty:really know um oh yeah in the on wikipedia there's a gallery section a wet burrito i don't know about calling almost any food wet yeah i don't want i don't want yeah i would eat that but i don't i don't know if i like calling it a wet burrito my friend jameson really like we call them whiskey and he would always order wet burritos. And I'm like, that looks, it looks, I understand that it's delicious, but I'm not a fan of this nomenclature, really. Bohemian Grove, thank you for writing in.

57:50Dustin Furman:All right, my friends. The big news of the week is Ubisoft restructuring itself, or at least finally announcing what its restructuring plans are. There's a lot to go over here, and I had spent a lot of time last night writing notes too to just be sure we touch on everything important to catch everyone up ubisoft has new external investment from tencent this is necessarily going to require them to reorganize internally we already know some of these plans including the creation of the so-called vantage studios which is going to incorporate assassin's creed far cry and rainbow six siege the biggest things most triple a and most prominent things that they currently do at ubisoft and move forward with them, but we didn't really know what the plans were for the rest of the studios, the rest of the IP, the games in development, and all of the rest.

58:41Dustin Furman:And what we've basically learned here is that they are going to be uprooting the entire structure of what they do. And I wrote in my notes here, the way I would describe it is a somewhat, for lack of a better term, a federal system of studios and publishing entities that I don't think we've ever really seen the likes of. I ultimately want to do a deep dive on Sacred Symbols Plus in the coming weeks, maybe with Hoag and some other people that are interested to really go into what this all means, because I don't know that anything like this quite exists, or maybe they're explaining it in ways that are overplaying it, but we'll get into all of that.

59:17Dustin Furman:But the major thing is that this leads to the creation of new studio entities, the cancellation of some games, the reinvestment in other games, as we'll learn. And there will be major impacts to studios, to headcounts or whatever. In fact, they're looking to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in annual spend. So this is going to cost a lot in terms of human capital, and we'll get into all of that as well. But I guess the best way to get into this is to just read through the press release. And it's multiple pages long. We won't read it all, but we'll read quite a bit of it. And we'll let everyone know what it says.

59:54Dustin Furman:straight from the horse's mouth instead of me interpreting it so you can understand better what's going on. We have a bunch of inquiries from the audience that we can use. After that, we can talk about it. So that makes sense, I guess. And we'll move forward from there. They write from Paris, quote, today Ubisoft announces a major organizational, operational and portfolio reset designed to reclaim its creative leadership, regain agility and drive a sharp rebound, renewing the group's trajectory towards sustainable growth and robust cash generation. This will be delivered through three main pillars, a new operating model, a refocused portfolio with a meaningfully revised three-year roadmap, and the right sizing of the organization.

1:00:31Dustin Furman:Ubisoft's strategic decision to undertake this major reset is driven by the continued shift towards a persistently more selective AAA market and an increasingly competitive shooter landscape, combined with the growing challenge for publishers to create brands in a context of higher costs. Nevertheless, when successful, exceptional AAA content has more financial potential than ever. While last year's progress with its production processes translated it into improved levels of quality for Ubisoft games in 2025, today's market environment requires that the group step changes into how it organizes and operates with a view to delivering exceptional games quality at more competitive costs.

1:01:06Dustin Furman:Against this backdrop, today's announcement introduces a radically new value creation model, a more gamer-centric organization structured around creative genres, relying on integrated business units with faster, decentralized decision-making and a greater ability to quickly adapt to players' expectations. This transformation will be supported by a right-sized and more agile organization delivering improved structural efficiencies over time. The new operating model will further empower the execution of the group's strategy, centered on open-world adventures and games as a service native experiences supported by targeted investments, deeper specialization and cutting edge technology, including accelerated investments behind player facing generative AI.

1:01:47Dustin Furman:All right, so we'll stop there. Is there anything? Should we delve deeper before we start pulling it apart? Because we haven't really gotten, I guess, into the studio structure stuff and what the executives say. I will say this at the top, though, and I was reading a little bit about this earlier is that the stock market's not responding well to this. Ubisoft stocks in the gutter anyway, but it's down another 30 % or so since this announcement. I will say, and we haven't gotten into the details yet, that I feel like I understand what they're doing and why they need to do it. And so I guess we'll jump right into it.

1:02:18Dustin Furman:The big thing is this, a new operating model to support Ubisoft's strategic focus. Ubisoft's new operating model will be structured around five creative houses. These will be supported by a creative network providing development resources, shared core services, and a reshaped HQ. This new organization will start operating early April. So they show a graphic here and I'll explain it to everyone. Ubisoft HQ is like the executives and all their people. Below them are the creative houses, each aligned in a horizontal structure. Vantage Studios is one of those creative houses. The other four creative houses haven't been named yet, but they are known as number now, number two, number three, number four, number five, and those will be important in a minute.

1:02:58Dustin Furman:below them and operating will be a bunch of creative services so it seems like and this is where it says creative houses so um or working with the creative houses rather in an in a best in class internal capacity so dealing with i guess assets that would be shared by project between these different studios if you need artists or you need whatever and then the core services below that which is a lot of production services so they are going to have combined between all these creative services stuff like QA analysis and whatever but what's interesting about these organizations is that they will be publishing their own games and responsible for their own silos of money and this is where um I was saying it feels a little bit federal like a bunch of loosely organized city states basically in orbit around this central body that is somewhat weak um the creative houses are organized like this creative house one is vantage studios focused on scaling and extending Ubisoft's largest and established franchises to turn them into annual billionaire brands.

1:04:01Dustin Furman:The brands are Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six. And then I was saying earlier that 2, 3, 4, and 5 are unnamed, but they are important because the numbers are like this. Creative House 2, dedicated to competitive and cooperative shooter experiences. Brands including The Division, Ghost Recon, and Splinter Cell. creative house 3 designed to operate a roster of select sharp live experiences brands including for honor the crew riders republic brawlhalla skull and bones creative house 4 dedicated to immersive fantasy worlds and narrative driven universes brands include ano might and magic rayman prince of persia and beyond good and evil and finally creative house 5 focusing on reclaiming position in casual and family friendly games this includes just dance idol minor ty Tycoon, Ketchup, Hungry Shark, and some of their Hasbro stuff as well.

1:04:52Dustin Furman:Their licensed stuff like Uno and so on and so forth. I think they do Monopoly as well. Well, I guess I'll read this now and then we'll get into it. In addition, there are four new IP currently in development, including March of Giants. We had announced a few weeks ago, I guess at this point, that they acquired March of Giants, which was an Amazon game. And we were kind of curious about that. And so where that's going to fit and all the rest. Ubisoft will communicate on their respective creative homes at a later date. So we don't even know where this new IP fits into the structure. Dustin, let's stop here.

1:05:23Dustin Furman:What are your thoughts so far?

1:05:26Colin Moriarty:Yeah, it's interesting. It made me think of Nintendo with their team names are very unglamorous, I guess. I'm trying to remember what some of them are. I was looking. Is it like EDP1 or something?

1:05:46Dustin Furman:do you know i'm talking about for well they they usually have like um territorial names right

1:05:55Colin Moriarty:right i'm just trying to remember it's it's lost on me but anyway the fact that they don't have like this is creative studio two creative studio three maybe they'll get names later but it just feels so uh utilitarian feels very creative uh creative business unit or right yeah yeah i mean obviously it's not necessarily bad because this is what nintendo does um but i find some of these groupings uh to be a little interesting um like ano is a you know a like top down strategy game and it's also lumped in with a rayman and prince of persia and then also like Splinter Cell is listed in this and it's like oh clearly it's a an IP that's still important to them to some degree to list it but they haven't been able to do anything with it's also grouped in with highly multiplayer centric games with the division and Ghost Recon and heading on that is competitive and cooperative shooter experiences that's not what Splinter Cell is but okay so that's a good point it's an interesting point yeah so i'm a little curious about some of these groupings and um the utilitarian nature of it is a little odd i guess but uh i don't know that's that's about all the thoughts i have for now chris anything you want to go off of before we continue yeah i mean i'm i'm not gonna be i'm not gonna pretend to like understand the nitty-gritty business aspects of this i kind of don't like i don't know what separates this this structure from like what is so like i understand that they're like splitting these things off but ultimately what is the difference between this and um i don't know just a normal publisher having like let's say like xbox right and they have like playground doing this and play playground doing fable and and um forza and anything else like i don't know necessarily the nitty-gritty that makes this any different from anything outside of the fact that if this is a new structure like i don't i don't see what's well we'll get that's

1:08:16Dustin Furman:a fair question and i think that is that is a fair question based on what i've said so far i think uh well you'll see more about about the differences but i think that the way we would understand this comparable to other publishing and developer families is that like there's a subgroup now of there's like an overarching mothership in which these five entities are deployed and underneath each of these like for instance massive is no doubt going to be in creative house too what we don't really know is if the studios are going to remain like independent they obviously have all this real estate they're they're going to need to work at different places or if they're just going to all assume this one branding or so that's where again for lack of a better analogy that's where my whole federal thing comes in where it's like these little nesting dolls entities that give them much more individualized control i personally but i do agree i haven't gotten everything that i think will differentiate them but i also think it's i also think it's an it's designed to give everyone enough rope to hang themselves which might be by design right yeah maybe uh the one thing i will say is that like dustin already said said it a little bit but splinter cell being in this category with the division of ghost recon is interesting just because i don't know if it's not necessarily misplaced because splinter cell has had a long history of multiplayer and like it like i i get it but it's weird for that to be the the focus of it because I think of Splinter Cell as like almost I think of Splinter Cell as a single player thing first and then a multiplayer thing separate but I almost think of them as like somewhat equivalent in that sense it almost is like a like a Gears of War thing to me where it's like yeah there is a pretty strong multiplayer component and a pretty strong single player component they're pretty equally strong so it seems interesting to me that they seem to be taking a stance here on what the prime focus of Splinter Cell will be going forward which is that multiplayer element of it which i don't think is i don't think that's necessarily bad news the spies versus mercs modes if they choose to go in that direction which i hope they do like that style of multiplayer is really cool and really sets splinter cell apart and is i think would stand out now um but it they seem to be making a statement there by the grouping where yeah you we know splinter cell is a single player story but this is where the money is and if you're going to see splinter cell ever again this is kind of going to have to be where the where the majority of the focus is going to lie i would still hope to god that there's some room for a single player splinter cell um i don't know how likely that is but i would like that to be true but they seem to be making a statement with this they seem to be making a clear statement in with that grouping if you take them at their word too they're just saying they're making two types of games that's it so if it's not an open world game it's a game as a service yeah and splinter cell is an open world game makes no sense so it must no it would have to be it must be a game i guess i mean the division is a game as a service as well and that has like a single you know what i mean like you can play that single so i i hope that they just lean into that aspect of like yeah this is a game that can be played single player or i don't know i i don't even understand how a division like Splinter Cell game could work with like multiple Sam Fishers running around or not Sam Fisher, but like, you know, like I just, that's a confusing thing to me, but I'm happy to see it at the very least listed because it says to me that it's not an afterthought or it's not something that they're pushing to like a separate creative house that seems to be focused on stuff that isn't really prime focus.

1:12:03Like I'm happy it's in two and not four, you know? or like something somewhere else or three even oh i'm sorry i thought you really yeah go ahead

1:12:14Colin Moriarty:i have two other well two i want to update one thing and then another thought for the nintendo stuff i was thinking about how they call their studios uh epd oh i understand three and four i thought those i was thinking edp zero and i was like no no that's uh we don't want EDP anywhere near What is that?

1:12:36Dustin Furman:Do I want to know what that is?

1:12:37Colin Moriarty:There was a YouTuber That went by Well he maybe still does I don't know if he's still active EDP 445 man He was He got He was looking for cupcakes where he shouldn't have been looking for cupcakes And he got caught by one of your crews Colin One of your pedophile hunters

1:12:55Dustin Furman:I probably know him at some point then I didn't want to drop a

1:13:01Colin Moriarty:EDP instead of EPD The other thing that I was thinking on a serious note was in this part where they talk about Vantage Studios focused on scaling and extending Ubisoft's largest and established franchises to turn them into annual billionaire brands. and this is a little interesting particularly in talking about assassin's creed because assassin's creed was once an annualized franchise and kind of has been up and down now recently i think they learned that through the annualization that it was getting stale and repetitive and they had more success when there was given a little time and they could actually re you know reframe the games and make them into something new and so now they're taking a step back and be like oh no we actually want to go back to assassin's creed being annualized unless they mean it says turn them into annual billionaire brands does that mean that assassin's creed far cry rainbow six could

1:14:04Dustin Furman:alternate each year that's the way i read it too because they can't be fucking stupid enough to believe that there's a demand for a yearly far cry or a yearly assassin's creed at this point yeah that would make more sense so if you got an assassin's creed game every three years which i think is still excessive but much more appropriate than a far cry game every three years which i personally would be fine with i i just think doing anything more than that is trying to harken back to an industry standard that does not exist anymore and it's not even because of call of duty's kind of relative failure comparable to the way it usually does this year in fact i think its performance is the worst been reported as the worst since world at war um at least in certain markets so which is eons ago and that was the last time people i people hated that game i actually i actually really liked world of war personally but um but i'm not a huge people loving world people hated world of war yeah world of war was very kind that was when treyarch that's when everyone hated treyarch that's why it's so funny that treyarch ended up kind of becoming the darling studio um because they were not the darling studio um yeah and crazy yeah so i just think you can make great Assassin's Creed games, for instance, on an annualized basis, if you were willing to put in the production and money into doing that.

1:15:20Dustin Furman:The question you have to ask yourself is like, what is the diminishing return on even doing that? Isn't it more powerful and more steward like with your resources to say like, let's make it an event every three to five years, a fucking sick Assassin's Creed game comes out that we put all of our might behind. And then maybe we support it with some multiplayer stuff and some expansions and we let it ride. and then we make the next one and that's kind of the and then in the gaps it's like now Far Cry creeps up and then that goes away and then I think that's the smarter thing to do. I think you're demanding too much from a time diminished group of people.

1:15:57Dustin Furman:Assassin's Creed's already what 100 hours at these days or whatever it's like. Yeah it's ridiculous. It's like so you're gonna that might be like a person's whole game gaming thing for their entire year. It's just like who are we making the shit for at some point. I agree devil's advocate though and I know it's like a completely different medium and it's a completely different it might seem like a completely you know irrelevant thing to point out but you look at how long it took this season of stranger things to happen right and by the time it comes around and nobody gives a shit you know and it's not really people kind of don't care and like I wonder if there's like a worry that like if we go too long people will just not care you know i'm not saying that's true uh i don't even think that's holistically true i think people will always care if something's cool and it demands the attention but i wonder if that's something that they consider where it's just like maybe we can't be gone for too long because people will forget us we got to keep momentum you know we got to keep uh got to keep pumping these out i'll tell you right now if they keep pumping these things out they're gone so they better they better throttle it if they know what's good for them now Chris you asked an important question earlier which was or I had a wonder of well what is really the differentiation I think it's this quote each creative house will have end-to-end responsibility for its portfolio overseeing the full creative and brand scope from development to publishing brand marketing and sales go-to market strategy they will also be financially accountable both in terms of P &L and cash generation this structure will sharpen strategic focus, reinforce executed discipline, and ensure that investment decisions will be taken closer to where the value is created, end quote.

1:17:42Dustin Furman:So this to me is a major differentiator. Although you could argue there are some studios within families that probably have this level of power, I would assume. A Naughty Dog probably does have end-to-end full creative and brand scope for its games, but they still work with a lot of external factors at Sony that produce the game that, you know, they're like we have the rumor recently that they're crunching to create a deliverable for Sony. So they don't have that much control right over the end product. They still have to play by the rules. And that won't be any different here with Ubisoft. But I think that that combined.

1:18:19Dustin Furman:So that being true for everyone, even the teams or the IP that necessarily haven't earned that goodwill, plus the idea of them being financially accountable. Now, it could, again, easily be argued that every studio has to be financially accountable, but not in this way. Sometimes if they're responsible literally for P &L, that's profit and loss, and cash generation, that's pretty serious. And this is where I was saying earlier, this is like enough rope to hang yourself with. You can create an awesome game and make an enormous amount of money or invest your money really badly in one of these creative houses goes away.

1:18:53Dustin Furman:and that's where I feel like they're trying to limit the destruction of these various entities by giving them enough leeway this in my opinion is much more flexible than what I was assuming was going to happen I guess what I was assuming was going to happen was like we're laying a lot of people off and we're going to retain a certain amount of IP and then we're selling off everything else or just putting it away so I guess that answers a little bit of your question in that yeah it's a much more again i think this word federal has some power and meaning like they'll just all rise and fall on their own and again they'll share services with executives and leadership at the top and then them sharing kind of end game resources of qa and and now you know analysts and all the different telemetry and all the things they need plus the people that are going to take care of the businesses and get them paid and all the rest they're sharing all that so i find this structure to be quite tantalizing i'm interested in where the new ip they say that there are four new ip in development where these ip go and who they are and and perhaps those ip end up representing some of these creative houses and it's like well who cares about what happens with might and magic or whatever if you have this new fantasy ip that's really important so right i will say that they seem to be developing or putting more money and more resources into saving things as they are than I would have expected.

1:20:22Dustin Furman:I'm not an expert in this at all. I just had kind of looked at looked at the things and been like, you guys employ a lot of people, man. Remember, we were saying at one point, like 20 ,000 people. It's like, what? That doesn't even count, like all of your partners and external resources and anyone you're farming shit out to. It's just it's just internal Ubisoft people. It's a lot. and so I'm pleased for the human capital that is still some people are going to lose their jobs but it doesn't seem like it's going to be as bad at least as immediately as I thought it was which is good now again I should reiterate as I said to you earlier boys the market doesn't like this I am not really looking at it from someone who's invested financially in this situation I don't really give a shit from that perspective I do look at it as like an aggressive play to write what once was a great brand.

1:21:15Dustin Furman:And I think Ubisoft's got the juice. They just got to, let's say they got the oil under the ground. It's in the shale. They just need to figure out a way to extract it. Will they be able to extract it? They have, they're sitting on all sorts of shit. Assassin's Creed is huge. The only reason it's not on the Serkana charts is because Ubisoft withdrew from Serkana for some reason. And I don't know if they're going to go back to that or not. Tom Clancy stuff. In the era of games as a service, I would argue that those franchises, that whole overarching franchise has more potential than ever to make you money.

1:21:51Dustin Furman:And I'll remind people that Siege was, you know, by way of how we understand games as a service now, 10 years later, Siege is like one of the early harbingers of things to come. And they were there on the front line. So they have some cause to be confident, I think, with some restructuring. A few of the other things I wanted to tell you guys about was this, because there's going to be consequences, of course. So they say, introducing a refocused portfolio with a meaningly revised roadmap. Quote, in the context of a persistently more selective market as illustrated by the last quarter and as part of the finalization of the group's new operating model, Ubisoft has conducted a thorough review of its content pipeline over December and January.

1:22:39Dustin Furman:This has led to the strategic decision to refocus its portfolio, reallocate resources, and comprehensively revise its roadmap over the next three years. This will support the objective to return to exceptional levels of quality on the open-world adventure segment and step-change the group's position in the games-as-a-service native experiences segment, as illustrated by the recently acquired Project March of Giants. The reshaped portfolio has designed to best position the creative houses for success. As a consequence, the measures taken are Ubisoft has discontinued six games that do not meet the new enhanced quality, as well as more selective portfolio prioritization criteria at group level.

1:23:13Dustin Furman:These include Prince of Persia, The Sands of Time Remake, as well as four unannounced titles, including three new IP and a mobile title. In parallel, and this is where I think things get a little more interesting, the group will allocate additional development time to seven games in order to ensure enhanced quality benchmarks are fully met and maximize long-term value creation. this includes the unannounced title of initially planned for fiscal year 26 that has been delayed the fiscal year 27 end quote so consequences this is just the beginning of the consequences by the way but the consequences are some of the games are discontinued now chris some people are wondering is it splinter cell one of these games i don't think so i don't think so because they mentioned it earlier they mentioned it earlier and then they say four unannounced titles including three new ips splinter cell is not a new ip and a mobile title and i doubt that splinter cell would have been a mobile title right right precisely prince of persia is interesting sands of time remake because this has been bubbling around for so long what is wrong with this thing and i'm surprised that they've spent about all the money they're going to spend on it they don't even want to put it out yeah that that to me is surprising they they feel like they'll make more money writing it down than releasing it and that is bad news for whatever the fuck was going on with the teams working on that game wasn't an indian team working on that game for a while and well yeah go ahead

1:24:32Colin Moriarty:that was the weird thing is that they had i think an indian team and i think it had a didn't it have

1:24:38Dustin Furman:a release date yeah and it was i was gonna say the the game that i was looking for it the trophies of the original release have were published that's how close here it is that's how close it was this was and people have the trophies so like this thing this was the original sands of time remake from from a while ago and it just it was just published a very strange situation but the game never came in fact it it it says on psm profiles in in parentheses unreleased because this game just never never came out so that's how close they were to releasing at a one point and then it was supposed to come out the rumors were that it was supposed to come out this month and it seems like that would and then they were just like nah i want to see it like what is is Is it really that bad?

1:25:26Dustin Furman:It's hard to believe. That it could be that bad. Right. I'd love to know more about that.

1:25:33Colin Moriarty:How embarrassing is it, too, that they were incapable of remaking their own game? I saw someone say that on Twitter, and I was like, that is a fantastic point.

1:25:42Dustin Furman:It's because they just went to like they own so many teams at the I'm sorry, but like when you own that many teams and have that many employees, there are going to be bottom of the barrel entities. Not everyone's going to be hitting fucking home runs. and you're and so you're handing it off to these teams that don't know what the fuck they're doing obviously which is a good sign of why they're too bloated yeah it's interesting it is you're right though it is super interesting i don't know what that's all about why have i asked my

1:26:08Colin Moriarty:electrician i found on angie.com to bury my pet hamster nibbles in our yard for me because i was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires i knew i could trust him to bury my sweet

1:26:18Dustin Furman:nibbles after his untimely end huh nibbles gone too soon may he scurry in peace hey sorry about your pet but i just wire stuff nibbles would have loved you like a brother connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years angie the one you trust to find the ones you trust find pros for all your home projects at angie.com all right i promised you guys there will be more consequences and this is where things are gonna get a little tougher people that are working at Ubisoft and why I think it's perfectly reasonable to be nervous, depending on what studio you work in and what game you're working on, I guess.

1:26:53Dustin Furman:Acceleration of cost reduction initiatives to right size the organization and improve structural efficiency. This is a way of saying we're going to be pressing the gas on saving more money and right sizing, of course, as they say. Quote, Ubisoft is accelerating its cost reduction initiatives as part of the transformation of its operating model with the objective of improving structural efficiency, restoring a much higher level of organizational agility and better aligning its cost base with its strategic and creative priorities. This includes right sizing the organization and focusing resources on core value creating activities.

1:27:26Dustin Furman:Notably, let's do some core value creating activities, guys. Notably, through further restructuring and strict hiring discipline across all functions, the group also continues to consider potential asset divestitures. That's interesting. And something that we should. So things are for sale. I wonder what they would part with. They basically listed earlier and we went through it all their IP. I wonder what could be gotten from that. It says here as part of this effort to streamline operations and adapt to evolving market conditions, the group has already taken decisive actions to adjust its studio footprint.

1:28:01Dustin Furman:This includes the closure of the Halifax mobile studio earlier this month and the Stockholm studio, as well as restructurings at Abu Dhabi, Red Links and Massive. The current cost reduction program of at least 100 million euros in fixed cost savings versus fiscal year 2024-2025 is now expected to be fully achieved by March 2026, one year ahead of the initial target, which was next fiscal year. Building on this momentum, the group is defining a third and final phase of its program by setting a new objective, and this is where things are going to get dicey, to reduce its fixed cost base by an additional 200 million euro over the next two years.

1:28:34Dustin Furman:This brings the total reduction in fixed costs since fiscal year 2022 to 2023 to around 500 million euros. This new objective is expected to bring fixed total costs to approximately 1.25 billion euros on a run rate basis by March 2028 compared to 1.75 billion euros in fiscal year 2022 and 2023. What they're basically saying is that they have these fixed costs, which is your employee base, your real estate, the bills that you have to pay all the rest, that they've cut$100 million or 100 million euro from that. They're going to cut 200 million euros more. And this will bring fixed costs down below what it was five years before.

1:29:12So that goes to show you how insanely bloated the company became.

1:29:16Dustin Furman:And I think that they realize that. so um they're doing the work necessary to make themselves viable and again just to be clear the market is not feeling it otherwise they say that their bookings are no longer when we talk sometimes about their financial bookings and like their predictions they no longer hold they had a new conference call and all that we won't get into all that kind of finer detail because it's not really that interesting but they are expecting losses so they say net bookings of around 1.5 billion euros translating into approximately a minus negative 330 million euro gross margin reduction and uh they have a free cash flow of negative 400 to negative 500 million euros right now so we'll see what ends up happening we have questions from the audience but any before we get into all that any reflections more on what we have to say or what we've said here what we've gone over i've done my best to to structure it i don't know if it makes sense to people out there And again, we'll do a deeper Sacred Symbols Plus on all of this in the weeks to come.

1:30:17Dustin Furman:But anything else to say?

1:30:18Colin Moriarty:I'm looking to see if anyone in these questions mentioned this. I don't think they did. There is one game in particular that has survived once again.

1:30:30Dustin Furman:Oh, Beyond Good and Evil.

1:30:31Colin Moriarty:Beyond Good and Evil 2. What is it about that game? I don't know. I don't know. is it a sequel to a fan beloved ps2 generation game but i don't think anyone thinks it's like

1:30:48Dustin Furman:i don't i don't get it masterpiece yeah i'm sure some people do but to be funding this project

1:30:55Colin Moriarty:probably to various amounts over the last decade and it's still holding on they must see something in it or they're past the point where they're like, we have spent so much money on this. We have to make it. I don't know. It's very weird. We'll see. We shall see indeed. The only thing I'll say about it is they made a point to mention player-facing generative AI in this. Which is, you know, that's not something people like to hear. I think we're approaching a point in time where we're going to have to seriously start considering like I don't know what the solution really like ultimately generative AI is going to, that's a genie out of the bottle type situation.

1:31:38You can't really put that back. I wonder if there will be a move in some way or a push regulatory or otherwise to almost, almost in the same way that the ESRB has that sticker at the, on the front of the box where it says like, you know, rated E, rated M. I wonder if there will be like something on the box. Going into the next several years where it's like AI. Yeah, I would like that. Or organic or something. Because at the very least, if this is something that's going to be everywhere, including in games that have already won game of the year prior, like Baldur's Gate and, you know, Claire Obscure.

1:32:26If this is something that we're going to have to contend with and we're not going to have much choice. at the very least it would be it would be good to know like front facing not buried in the credits not buried in options menu not like the very last screen of the very last second of of the game's credits like on the box um i wonder if that will happen i don't think it will i hope so i think i hope it does happen overall don't care you might be right and it's but i i don't know like i i'm hoping i'm hoping for at least some kind of delineation i could see teams using it

1:33:02Colin Moriarty:as a marketing point to be like hey we did not use it but i and i think that will be appealing to certain people um but i think unfortunately the the very anti-ai crowd in terms of art stuff is much smaller than it may seem sure but it's it's one of those things where like we also didn't care as a as a general community whether or not kids were playing rated rated m games you know what i mean like that was like an outside concern that was raised and then heightened to a level of attention that eventually became uh worthy of outside scrutiny and that that ended up in the the srb as we know it and so like i wonder if that will be something you know in in some way shape or form uh not necessarily that a lot of people would care but maybe the right people the right people care and the right people would bring it up um i don't know that's that's the only way that i can be kind of comfortable moving forward honestly is if it's just clear um and so we can take that shit into account when we're playing shit you know i don't know to me i i i

1:34:18Dustin Furman:don't know man like I uh I look at this whole situation and I just wonder what else they were really supposed to do yeah like that you could have a fire sale which is what I expected they said divestitures are still in the making so maybe we'll see some of that but overall I feel pretty I don't want to say confident I don't feel confident about anything in the industry but I I feel good about the direction. I, again, I do feel like they're still bloated and there's going to, obviously they're going to be more layoffs and there's going to need to be more that that needs to be done. And then in this new federalized system, they will need to figure out if they, if they, any of these games and any of these things can actually float or not.

1:34:59Dustin Furman:So ultimately it's in the mid to longterm that we'll see this, the outcome one way or the other. We have a few inquiries though, that will allow us to explore a few other things. Matt Curry says, Hey gents, Upon the news of Ubisoft's major studio closures and game cancellations, RIP Prince of Persia Remake, Ubisoft says they're planning to double down on open-world and live-service games. But aside from their bloated headcount, aren't open-world and live-service games the reason they're in this situation in the first place? Overwhelmingly, the sentiment among gamers is that Ubi makes generic, bloated, and risk-averse games.

1:35:31Dustin Furman:Surely some more creative ventures, smaller titles, and new IP could rehabilitate the brand, but the ROI on those games may be too small to sustain the company. I can't help but wonder if Ubisoft is in a spiral they can't get out of. What say you if you were in charge of Ubisoft, how would you write the ship? Again, I would be more aggressive with cutting, but I actually think that and I wonder what you guys think, like focusing, knowing what you're focused on, I think is good. It does hem you in. They're not going to make like some random thing that you that's unexpected. And it's as Dustin was saying before, too.

1:36:02Dustin Furman:It's like, how does some of this stuff even fit in any way into like what you're trying to do? what's a Rayman game that's not that's is open world Rayman, I guess, which is fine or something like that. But I actually don't really mind them saying like we actually kind of do this thing. These are the things we do best. And when you really look back at Ubisoft games, it's not really unlike they've been acting for many years. I mean, at least a decade. We always opine about the Ubi art games from the PS3 era that was in the early PS4 era that was so fun. Not only the Rayman stuff on Vita that was great and on the consoles but stuff like Child of Light Valiant Hearts on Valiant Hearts but and those games are cool and make those games if you want but there is no money in it and that's not what that's unfortunately little swings and small ball is as it were and getting on base and trying to send people on second there's not enough time like you got they have to take big swings and know what they do well and when you really look at what has put Ubisoft on the map as a mega publisher, it actually is, or I should say, are games from those two genres.

1:37:12Dustin Furman:So I don't hate it. And it doesn't mean that they have to be tied to those things only, but as a ethos at the publisher to say like, this is really what we do and this is what we do best. And by the way, if you make those games work, then there is a lot of money to be made. Games as a service are made to make money over time. And open world bloated, the games that we think are bloated and huge, like people do love those and they're willing to spend once or twice a year on those kinds of games and it's about courting those particular players and i'll just reiterate one more time because i just feel like it's lost on people assassin's green shadows is a pretty you know big game it's not like some failure it did really well i mean yeah it's they have their audience you know and a lot of people are not in that like a lot of people who might watch this show or like listen to this show aren't in that audience and so like it's easy to look at something it's like oh it's kind of a failure because i don't care about and i don't dude i played 30 hours of assassin's grief shadow and i just did not i did not care for it right but i'm not the mark for that game um and there's millions of there's a lot of people who fucking are um and so yeah i mean it it the idea that they are where they are because they make open world games and not because they just they're simply too bloated and they're just not designing right and they're not focused in the right areas of that design.

1:38:31Like, I don't think that's... I think that's a little miscalculated. I think they would be fine to focus on... I think they would be fine to continue doing open world games. They just gotta, like, narrow a little bit. They gotta focus up on, like, what people are going to care about. Get it right. Agreed. but smash jt intro gave me autism wrote in and said hey ss crew news broke today that ubisoft

1:38:58Dustin Furman:has canceled six games currently in development and delayed seven others in an effort to ensure quality there was a time when it felt like they were on top of the world but these days it seems like that level of greatness is far behind them i'm curious to hear your thoughts on this take care thanks for the great content the reason i wanted to read this one was because i don't feel like Ubisoft can't regain its footing. It's just going to take time. The unfortunate reality of games today is that iterating is so much more expensive and so much more time consuming that turning the ship, it's like turning a galleon instead of a fucking raft.

1:39:29Dustin Furman:Like it's just you got to it's it's going to take time. And Ubisoft made a lot of bad decisions. I'm not inoculating Ubisoft from from criticism of all the shitty games they've made and all the bad decisions they made. I just think that there's enough goodwill and good game within that system with IP that they contain and talent that they have. Also, where they are headquartered in certain places like Quebec and France and able to kind of draw on talent at a rate that a lot of other publishers are not able to tap. Again, one of the reasons why, though it seems to be going a little pear shaped, we gave Sony compliments for going to Haven in Quebec was because they never had a presence there.

1:40:09Dustin Furman:and people make good games up there. So I just want to say like their level of the level of greatness that they achieved a decade ago and really probably I would say the late 20 teens was the last like that. They were on kind of the top of the world at that point. They had a lot of good things going. That was when bloat Assassin's Creed wasn't really annoying people yet. And they were selling 15 million copies of this and 10 million copies of that. Far Cry was killing and all the rest. siege siege right um and even things like that were mentioned during the uh the creative house breakdown of of games that kind of were pretty big for a while like for honor and like they had a bunch of stuff and and so there's no reason they can't do it again i just think it's going to take time and what what they're looking for is that big hit it's it's not unlike what sony's doing with games as a service it's like the hunting for that big hit and sinking money into something that will just net you an enormous amount of revenue after the fact.

1:41:09Dustin Furman:As an example, and they're never going to have something like this, no entity probably will, but a game like Fortnite, though they spend an enormous amount of money developing it, we learned this about Genshin Impact, actually, how they spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year in making content for the game. It's like you're making billions of dollars. Like the return on investment is so much higher once the game's out. That's why they want these games to exist forever, not get that one hit and then it slowly tapers off into nothing. but rather get that one hit make all your money back and then just have this thing that prints money it's uh it shouldn't be have to be explained really but that's that's what they're going for and then the open world stuff i really think that that strategy is good for them just because it's high investment high reward people still talk about the witcher 3 like it's the greatest thing ever and for a lot of people it is and that's a 10 year old open world game it'll be 11 actually in a few months fallout 3 right these like big swings that every once in a while are these meteoric permanent skyrim these forever things no surprise what i'm a little afraid of is what they're doing with far cry and the rumors around that about and i hope that they just kind of release a far cry game why argue with a game that sells 10 or 15 million copies what are they doing remember we were talking about far cry six sales and we were like what i got i gotta look it up again uh was it great was it crazy like was it exceptionally high yeah it was like really it was like a really far cry franchise is at 60 million when you consider far cry one and two and primal and all these other games probably sold not very well three three was the big one Yeah, three was probably after that.

1:42:58That's.

1:43:00Dustin Furman:Yeah, it was the 11th best selling game in 2021 Far Cry 6. I might be thinking about Far Cry 5, maybe one of these games where we were like, what? What? And I love those games. I'm a total stand. So it's like, I'm not I'm not opposed to it. I just didn't think that that many people like it. Right. Steve Carley wrote in and said, hey, Kings, well, I was originally going to write in about whether we should be concerned about the Division three with franchise owner Julian and Garrity leaving for Battlefield. Today's Ubisoft also outlined its complete overhaul of the company makeup. And now I have my answer.

1:43:30Dustin Furman:Yes. As the resident division enjoyer on the pod, are you concerned about the division and massive as a whole? Also, I'm predicting Fable is Game of the Year nominee at the Game Awards in December. Random, but it's just in stone right now. All right, Steve, take it easy.

1:43:47Dustin Furman:Yeah. I think we're getting like mixed signals about the division. I don't know what to make of it. on one hand you have these weird ads going up about the division definitive edition and them in reinvesting in these these updates of older ps4 online games that require infrastructure that costs money and all the rest and some belief in it the division 2 still getting content as of recently so there's that one level of messaging and then there's like the cancellation of the division heartland layoffs at massive one of the more peculiar studios to have layoffs considering they're one of the few studios that seem to be making anything for Ubisoft, which is like the Pandora, you know, Avatar game and the expansions for that, which I don't think sold well, but people liked.

1:44:33Dustin Furman:And then, of course, the Division content. The Division 3 Ubisoft acknowledged recently, and that's appreciated, and I'm excited about that as well. But they did lose their director, who I think is going to work on Battlefield, as was noted here in the letter. So I don't know. I just... One of the who knows what they're telegraphing through their press releases, but I think it's important that in Creative House to the division is listed first. Before Ghost Recon. So and before Splinter Cell. So, yeah, I think out of the non siege or the non Rainbow Six, Tom Clancy stuff, the division is the most important thing they have.

1:45:13Dustin Furman:And I think that they know that. And. It is my hope they treat it with care, but no, it is never a good sign to lose your director. but if you're being courted by electronic, if, I mean, think about it, dude. If you're him, regardless of the state of the game, internally, if you're him and you work at Ubisoft and EA comes to you in a much steadier state with Battlefield 6 outselling Call of Duty for the first time in many, many, many years, then you're like, that's a much better place for me to be. They're probably also offering more money. In other words, I'm not sure it's really a sign of the game's development or the IP's future hope as much as maybe a person just watching out for himself, reasonably so, considering Ubisoft is laying people off.

1:46:01Dustin Furman:Ubisoft just laid people off on his team and at his studio, and they just canceled another Division game. So I don't know that you should read so much into his choice-making as much as maybe it helps seal him off from future consequences. I feel like the Division 3 is going to be great. I think, why wouldn't it be?

1:46:19Colin Moriarty:i feel like it has the most potential yeah for them in this landscape where destiny is kind of out and um extraction shooters are in and they were kind of one of the early players in that space uh and there's so much you can read into so many games like destiny like what went wrong there what did we do better what did what should they what should they have done um and them not really being as big of a player in the space it seems like division three is like could be at least in my opinion they're perfect goldilocks like this can be our live service game that does it all so but i don't know maybe they don't see it that way yeah i don't know who knows how much

1:47:09Dustin Furman:we can really trust their taste either but right we'll see i i am perplexed by that random division ad in Japan that what was like I know was that like some shooter thing but like they just put that up and then never said anything about it what like what is the definitive edition of the division what are you saying yeah again 10th anniversary in March seems to all line up maybe it was just to get people talking someone noticed someone take a picture put it online I don't know about that it seems like it was a mistake maybe or that they pulled out from talking about it because it wasn't ready or they didn't want you know all the stuff's going on behind the scenes that might have been a deal that was inked a long time ago that thing just kind of appears everyone lost track of it the person the person who was responsible for japanese advertising got fired in the last layoff or whatever like who do you even the fuck knows yeah you know maybe they wrote it down and maybe they were just like let's just read maybe they looked at it in the in this restructure they're like do we the division definitive edition would be cool but like do we really want to reinvest in like a wouldn't it be smarter to just make a new wouldn't it be smarter to just do the division three right focus everything there like i can see also i i too think i think the division has a pretty high potential i think both division games are very very good i think the the only real issue with the division is that it just didn't catch fire people didn't care about it as much as other things in the space but it was not it was not for lack of quality the division is the division two in particular like plays really good like it feels good as fuck to play it's a high high compliment there's some there were nitpicks i had about like you know certain design decisions and certain ui things but like it's a solid game and i think um they would be wise to triple down on that and um really really invest in it i think it's got the highest potential out of anything yeah i guess aside from like maybe outside of like maybe siege i guess um because siege is pretty popular as far as i don't know if it's still as popular as it used to be but it was pretty pretty big juggernaut and they could probably do that again.

1:49:10But as far as new stuff, I think their head's in the right space.

1:49:15Dustin Furman:Yes. Steam DB, Rainbow Six Siege. Let's see. It's an old game, you know. I wouldn't be surprised if it's waned. But. It has 56 ,900 players right now. Yeah. Its all-time peak was 1.8 years ago. Yeah, that sounds about right. So it's a game that's just growing. this is what I was saying like you got to give them a little credit right for all the foibles and fuck ups that's a pretty powerful game that that siege far predates fortnight apex legends or any of those you know online shooters that ended up taking what was it 2015 I want to say it was like fall 2015 it was like years before those a lot of that shit came out so

1:50:05Dustin Furman:yeah I don't know yeah I don't know Yeah, man. And frankly, I don't care. Let's move on to the next topic. This is a quick one, but I just wanted to acknowledge it because Sony released a press release about this and we did get some people writing in about it as well. The press release from Sony writes, reads, Sony and TCL signed memorandum of understanding for strategic partnership in home entertainment field. Well, what does this mean? Well, I'll explain. It says, quote, Sony and TCL electronics holding limited TCL. Today announced that the two companies have agreed to move forward with discussions and consideration for a strategic partnership in the home entertainment field.

1:50:42Dustin Furman:Specifically, the two companies have signed a memorandum of understanding to confirm their intentions to establish a joint venture that will assume Sony's home entertainment business, with TCL holding 51 % and Sony holding 49 % of its shares. The joint venture will operate globally, handling the full process from product development and design to manufacturing, sales, logistics, and customer service for products including television and home audio equipment. Sony and TCL will proceed with discussions towards executing definitive binding agreements by the end of March 2026. Subject to execution of the definitive agreements and relevant regulatory approvals and other conditions, the new company is expected to commence its operations in April 2027.

1:51:21Dustin Furman:The new company plans to advance its business by leveraging Sony's high-quality picture and audio technology cultivated over the years, brand value and operational expertise, including supply chain management, while utilizing TCL's advanced display technology, global scale advantages, industrial footprint, end-to-end cost efficiency and vertical supply chain strength. Strength is the key. The new company's products are expected to carry the globally recognized Sony name and Bravia name, aiming to create new customer value through these branded products such as TVs and home audio equipment. So not really relevant to our show, but relevant to Sony deeply because they are an electronics company.

1:52:02Dustin Furman:And once this memorandum becomes reality, they will be less of an electronics company than they probably ever have been. how do we feel about this i don't know if you have anything you want to add dustin do you have any experience with this tcl company i was researching them a lot

1:52:17Colin Moriarty:they're fairly big yeah to my understanding they are a chinese company if i remember correctly that kind of was able to really get a foothold by selling really decent quality budget or tvs And over the last few years have really stepped into higher end TVs. I know that they recently, I saw a Linus tech tip videos about, they have like a giant hundred plus inch 4k TV or something like that. So they really blown up in the market over the last few years. At the same time, the TV market now is so, at least in the high end is so dominated by LG specifically. and a little bit of Samsung too, that it would make sense that for specifically high end, this kind of partnership could work in order to try to make a dent into that market.

1:53:18Colin Moriarty:Because while Sony TVs have been very good, very high end, very expensive, they just haven't been anywhere near as popular, at least from what I can tell compared to LG. And in some cases too, what i remember this a few years ago that they were branding some of these tvs as like oh this is the tv built with ps5 in mind uh but in a lot of cases it's like well there's still better tvs for your playstation 5 than sony's own tv so clearly their uh aspirations of what they want to be as a company has shifted quite a bit with the advent of playstation and doing movies and tv and things like that so um joining up with tcl does make some sense to me do you have anything you want to add chris uh i don't know like i i have some experience with it uh what is it tcl um i remember when we moved uh when me and my friends moved the first time from our glendale place like they got they got really cheap 4k tvs and i was like how'd you how'd you get a 4k tv he was like oh it was like 200 bucks or something some like stupid now that now they're all like that but like back then that was kind of crazy um and so yeah i mean it's a little weird just because i like you said like it makes them somewhat less of a of an electronics company than they have been in the past so that's that's kind of bizarre um but i mean they got to do something because they are really just not nobody really looks at sony for tvs anymore i think justin kind of nailed it with samsung and lg like those are the those are the only tvs that i've been getting um reliably like as far as like high-end tvs go like those are the only ones that i even remotely consider um and so they gotta do something let them do it i'm looking here

1:55:16Dustin Furman:it's funny they have like a whole gamut of tvs from like a 1080p google smart tv for like 140 bucks to these 4k led tvs that are thousands of dollars so yeah they they are covering the whole the whole spectrum of pricing and technologies uh i was reading a little bit about them because i i really not encountered them too much but they apparently have 120 000 employees around the world and are like massively growing and also uh the chinese state owns a major piece of them it's not a golden chair like situation where it's like tacit it's apparently like much more overt than that they in certain markets they make cell phones that was like their big thing originally um they made dvd players they make air conditioners appliances i don't think we encounter a lot of that consumer grade stuff here i think that's probably mostly in asia but I was reading too a little bit about them that they've done outsourcing kind of license deals like this in the past apparently they did this with Samsung like 15 or 20 years ago with a lot of TVs and stuff so they have some experience doing this as well I also learned that they own Palm so my old beloved Palm yeah TCL?

1:56:31Dustin Furman:Yeah that they bought them in 2014 they bought them from HP HP that's right hewlett-packard well i haven't thought about hp in a fucking long time that was my first laptop was an hp is yeah i had an age but it was also at one point it was also a windows vista oh yeah i had a windows i had a what was it uh windows vista toshiba laptop that was a windows machine rough days so what else anything here um in my notes otherwise interesting not really i guess uh they they are highly profitable they made 600 million dollars in profit last year so that's good and it's important to note i mean as far as we know from sony we'll learn more about this in sony's next financial statement too because i'm sure they'll have to talk about this because they're going to own this entity or 49 of it and it's going to change everything about their bookings but um i feel like it says here and you kind of read into it that sony is still going to remain a boutique experimental research electronics company, I think.

1:57:33And their technologies will be leveraged by this new entity and they'll take the risk of actually

1:57:39Dustin Furman:making the shit and selling it. And then Sony will get a piece of it, but Sony has no real say because they own a minority of the company. So I think that's kind of the way you would read it. In other words, they're still going to make cool shit. I just, I think they don't want to, shutting vio is like the first sign of that really where it's like they don't really want to make this stuff anymore i don't think and it's so unthinkable because especially and you guys definitely remember and i remember like sony tvs were almost like the rich person's tv when i was young like i remember getting i saved up so i've said it before a million times i bought my own sony tv in high school a small 24 inch or something whatever it was for my room and it was like twice as expensive as everything else but everyone was like you know consumer reports and all the rest everyone was recommending it and it was the same thing with vio and vio came out it was expensive but they were really top tier like top of the line computers and i guess there's just no money in doing that i i don't i don't know or just didn't work out for them i don't really know i think other people other people come into the space with just stuff that is just more appealing like lg is shocking to me because like i i thought i remember them being like a washing machine company you know like i remember my parents had an lg washing machine and so like when they started making tvs i was like really but like now they're like they're really like my main team like if i'm looking for a new tv i i look at lgs first like at least if i'm if i'm trying to buy like a serious tv like i have one in my bedroom that's kind of like a 140 i don't even know what brand it is because it's unserious and it's for netflix but they really they really reinvented themselves like imagine getting a kenmore television right yeah it's a good point fucking it's it's it's it's kind of crazy and unthinkable but i had it did it when i was a kid my mom bought me like a 13 inch daewoo tv and it worked fine yeah but i was like that's an interesting we had a we had a sanyo sanyo yeah which i remember as a kid assuming we had a sony but like that's my brand sanyo i don't i don't think so i think what the fuck was sanyo um they're a weird they're a japanese company i know that um sanyo was a japanese electronics manufacturer it was defunct as of april 2012 it was acquired by panasonic oh there you go but yeah oh there's like all these cool pictures in the gallery like a sanyo calculator

2:00:08Colin Moriarty:anyway god yeah i was gonna say i again i may be speaking out of my ass here just because i'm i'm not the closest follower of the tv market but i think what this may boil down to is just that tcl is known for making budget tvs they're very good and now wants to break into the high end but they've kind of become associated with budget TVs. Sony no longer wants to make TVs, but they are associated with the high end. And so that's where this corporate synergy can happen, where TCL can finally make their high end TVs under a new branding where people won't immediately be like, oh, well, it's a TCL though.

2:00:50Colin Moriarty:So it's not really high end because they make budget TV.

2:00:54Dustin Furman:That's well said. But as the memorandum says, they're going to have access to Sony's tech for the first time. And so maybe they really will be making high-end things. I like what you said. Yeah, it's like them saying, like, we want to do this. We can all win together. It will take the financial risk of making this shit. And I also wonder, TCL sells in America, so I don't think it's a problem, but it might be a little bit of brand washing. You know? Like, what are the big, they're really not big. There are entire Chinese brands that are not even allowed to do business in the United States. This is why it's a big deal that Canada is going to import Chinese electric vehicles because they'll theoretically have access to American roads at that point or whatever.

2:01:33Dustin Furman:You're not even allowed to sell those here. It's the same thing with Huawei, the telecom, which is a massive company where they're not allowed here at all. And so maybe there's just a way of guarding yourself against this inevitable.

2:01:53Dustin Furman:Geopolitical conflict that could create trade barriers or whatever. Who knows? Who knows what they're trying to figure out? But I don't really give a shit. I know some people are still into Sony tech. I just it's just it's funny how things have changed. I guess is what I'm saying. Like Sony was the standard. I remember my dad was so excited because he built it over years, like his stack, you know, of like audio equipment over the years and his speakers. And it was all Sony. And it was like of the highest quality. and I remember when I got my Sony bio I was like this is fucking sick like and going to my friend's houses and using their computers and I'm like Mike like just in my mind be like my computer is so much better than this I think uh but it's not like that anymore I think I have a Sony sound system I think do they make sound system I feel like yeah they definitely do um I think I did and by the way this memorandum covers that that that Sony branding is going to be used on LTCL audio okerman 2 oh all right sony sound system yeah yeah they still make good stuff all right i will we got more out of that than i thought we were going to yeah um i just wanted to i felt we are not not mentioning it so r.i.p and peace sony tvs although you'll still see them as sony tvs on your shelf in your Costco.

2:03:15Dustin Furman:Yeah. All right. News about Marathon has a release date. We were wondering why, you know, so we last learned, what was it before the holidays, right? They were saying March and then, but with no specific date and it seems so close and it's like why wouldn't you date it? And it seemed like they wanted room, so I was a little surprised by this release date, which is March 5th, so very much in the beginning of the month. Don't know why you didn't just say that, but they're obviously feeling pretty bullish. So the game comes to PlayStation 5 as well as PC and Xbox Series X and S on March 5th from Sony owned Bungie finally arriving.

2:03:50Dustin Furman:And there's some new footage, I think, some new gameplay. There's also a new DualSense controller if you want to go check that out. There's a headset as well. These things will be available for pre-order, I believe, starting January 29th in the US and certain European places as well via PlayStation Direct. You can pre-order Marathon. There's a standard edition and a deluxe edition. Pre-orders are there's I looked on PSN, no early access, I guess, for this. So everyone's going to go at the same time. Well, yeah, yeah, it doesn't. They're having, I guess, an open weekend before the launch. I don't know if it's the I don't know if it's the weekend before the launch.

2:04:33So like a couple of days or the previous weekend. But like, I think they said something about like, there will be a public open, not beta, but I guess like trial period for anybody who wants to try it out. I think cool.

2:04:44Dustin Furman:That's awesome. Smart idea. So yeah. So Chris, I'm sure a lot of people are eager to hear what you have to say about Marathon's release date. Yeah. I was also surprised at how early it was just on the assumption that like they were being coy about the date because I figured it would be later. I figured it would be like the 28th or, you know, the last week. But it's essentially in February if presuming that the, you know, the free period in which you get to play it is actually the weekend before. So that's kind of interesting. They seem to have pulled out a lot of stops here. They've got the collector's edition, too, which comes with like a nice statue, a nice crazy box.

2:05:28I think it looks good, man. they they've got they did a viadoc that kind of showcased uh the rest of the classes in there they unveiled the cast which i think was a very first of all stacked cast very confusing like i understand that it's going to be you know audio diary heavy and in a la bioshock i get that like that's what i remember from the alpha was that there was like a sliver of that surprised at how many actors are in this thing uh just a shocking list um but also i think something that they intentionally showcased because i think it it's it's one of the few things that they can point to specifically over arc raiders which had this specific ai generated voice kerfuffle that wasn't really as big of a deal as uh it wasn't really that big of a deal but it was something that people took note of and so like showcasing a real human cast is I think intentional um but I think it looks great man I've been a believer in marathon for a while uh to be fair I've also played it so I just kind of know that it's good but I don't think so here's what I'll say I think it's cool I think what they've managed to do with the messaging around this game is actually fairly impressive considering what they were dealing with not that many months ago um There's still negativity around Marathon, of course, like there's always going to be that.

2:06:50But the overall tide of opinion has changed pretty significantly as far as I've been able to read in comments and just on Twitter. It seems like they've managed to do something pretty difficult. And I think a lot of that is luck. I think a lot of that comes from Ark Raiders introducing a lot of people to this type of game and having them open to it. I think a lot of it comes from them starting from, you know, an initial reveal that was underwhelming that allowed them some room to improve in an obvious way that allowed them to showcase that, Oh, this is distinctly different from what you saw before.

2:07:26A lot of things kind of fell into place for this. And I think they're in a, a very good spot. And I think they have arc raiders to thank for it. Quite frankly. I don't know if, I don't know if there's a reality where even with the delay, Marathon comes out without Ark Raiders preceding it and it and it does nearly this well as far as attention and curiosity goes so I think it looks I think it looks great well you best believe I did I didn't I did cop that statue I was like I don't know why not I barely do this

2:08:02Colin Moriarty:what do you think Dustin yeah I think Chris is right that I was thinking about this because clearly even i can agree that from the initial reveal that there were things that could be improved specifically for me while the aesthetics of the game are incredible the art direction there was definitely some things they could do to make it look better and it's obvious that they did that but i think there is some degree of just i don't even know how to say this elegantly just like everyone hates everything and yeah the reveal of this game like i said maybe there were some improvements that i can agree needed to be made but it was just enough that people were like uh oh yeah sony they put out concord this is also gonna be shit it's it got it's like hour of hate and now people are bored of hating marathon and so they've moved on to something else which is now high guard which maybe it's deserved maybe it isn't maybe it's the same with this game too that it will come out and people hate it i don't know it just the like the obsession of hating things before they even really materialize it's just getting so old yeah for me um so i i think that it looks awesome i really hope it is great everything i've seen so far even like i said before they made the changes i thought looked really promising and so i'm excited to check out this game i don't need the controller i don't need the headset though the headset is interesting that they have a branded uh playstation headset for this game it's the which one is this this is the is it not the pulse is it the pulse elite wireless headset so it's like the nicer one but both of them look cool i don't need them but i will be there day one but not on PlayStation.

2:10:01Colin Moriarty:Sorry, fam. I'm on PC for this. Oh, damn. Sorry. I ain't playing with no controller. But I'll be there. Why? Why'd you say that? On the PlayStation podcast. Why'd you say that?

2:10:19Dustin Furman:Obviously not a game for me. I think it looks cool. I'm hoping for the best for it. I'm very curious to see how it ends up doing. I mean, it's total unknown. um again march 5th you can pre-order now on console i assume they'll do a physical version as well january 29th for the controller and the headset if you want to pre-order those who knows what the run will be on those we have a few letters from the audience here about this king ryan james wrote in and said hey guys marathon has some of the highest pre-order numbers in steam history apparently did we see this coming is this game actually coming at the perfect time after the market has warmed up to several other extraction shooters and is it going to be teed up for a home run hit for sony and bungie i want to check this because i don't know that that's really true that it's the most pre-orders of all time that can't be that can't be true i think what people are conflating is that it was at the top it was like one of the best-selling games on steam when it went up for pre-order yeah that's not a huge surprise but like with all of these algorithmic mathematical kind of charts that we deal with like the psn charts and stuff we don't really know how any of them truly work and how they operate in terms of updates and whatever and by the time it started updating it started falling down the chart it's not to say that people aren't excited about it but I wouldn't read too too much into that other games that people ended up hating like Dragon Age I remember was the top selling game on Steam so don't read too much into that we don't know what that means yet but I think that what it does show comparable to other games that kind of come and go is that there is a little bit more belief in this and Bungie is going to earn a little bit more goodwill through I think releasing this game than others would probably receive because of who they are and their history and their ability to release great games.

2:12:02And I also say that they've put the game

2:12:04Dustin Furman:out there. It's not an unknown. Well, that's what you're saying, Chris. It's like it's not an unknown quantity. We know what it is at this point so that you can gauge some level of financial or commercial excitement, people pre-ordering it, getting excited. It's also doing really well on PSN. That's a good sign. It's not something that we saw with Concord. No, that's the only thing that this kind of solidifies is that anybody who was under the insane completely you know out of touch assumption that this was going to be even remotely close to another concord it's like well no that's clearly that clearly was never going to be the case but this is just like solidifies that it's just like no this studio has a uh i wouldn't say a built-in audience but a built-in curiosity that was always going to get a level of you know uh attention that was going to ensure that this game with this game i saw people being like oh i give it six months and it's like you're out of your mind you just you're just not connected at all like you have to understand the people who hate the people who hate destiny have been playing it for a decade okay like this is going to people are going to be playing this and extraction games are you know they're very word of mouth oriented too like i would imagine that um once that free period comes out where people get a chance to actually sink their teeth into it and decide you're probably going to see a boost to the preset pre pre-orders again it's the nature of the beast but like i wouldn't read into it as far as like oh is this are they fortnight now no but they're gonna they have an audience and i think

2:13:37Colin Moriarty:the game's gonna be well taken care of for a while yeah the people they yearn for concord they don't think they do but they want another concord experience because it was so fun and i get it Like we were we were dunking on Concord as well. But yeah, I feel like I mean, High Guard is getting a lot of that right now. But I just it's it's missed to say like, oh, give it three months. Yeah, it's insane. Or we'll talk about High Guard later.

2:14:06Dustin Furman:I promise.

2:14:06Colin Moriarty:Yeah, that's true.

2:14:10Dustin Furman:But I agree with what both of you are saying. It's like that this game was never going to be a flop. The question was, is like how you want those numbers early. You want there to be churn. so that you want a spread shot effect so that you touch as many players as possible. And so raising that tide is good for the game, but even having a lower tide wouldn't have necessarily meant it was going to fail. Right. I just think games like this maybe come and go, but again, I'll just reiterate that I think Bungie gets a little bit of a, not a pass, but a curiosity from people. I think they lost their pass as it were with the support of destiny to over time.

2:14:54Dustin Furman:And from my perspective, and I'm an outsider, but I look at this and say like, yeah, people are reengaged because they've been touching people's lives since the nineties. And if you're a halo fan since 2001, destiny was a big thing. People are going to come and check this thing out. Plus arc Raiders and Tarkov to a lesser extent. And it's a good time for them to release. March is kind of open. Right. we'll see i mean hell divers was in a very specific time frame so and i think you kind of benefit from that what what will happen long term and will people stick around i don't know but it's clear that it's not any sort of failure and it's not going to be any sort of failure it's just a matter of if it's going to take off and i totally agree with what you're saying too dustin it's just this bitterness for whatever reason around every release like wanting it to fail and i'm like i don't really i guess a game occasionally comes along if there's something very specific I don't like about the developer or the people made it or whatever maybe I want it to not do well but I generally want everything to do well I think it's good so yeah even seeing games and being like yeah this has no chance or it just shows a lack of forethought again what we were saying earlier Chris about seeing things through some other lens that things are for someone else when I walk into a Barnes and Noble and I and it's covered in fiction like erotic fiction for women you know in the front there's like a whole section of it i'm like well not for me i'm not like well it sucks and it's garbage and it's not for it's like it's for someone you know obviously what's funny here it is what's funny about it is like look i i i understand from previous trailers for marathon where like there was there was stuff to be improved upon like like the visual fidelity of like the outside environments for instance like that was like a pretty a pretty key thing that i thought like even when i liked the the demo or liked the alpha i remember being like you could touch that up a little bit because it looks a little uh the indoor and outdoor environments feel like completely different games indoors look great and then outdoors look like a there's just like a lack of fidelity there that should be looked into but fundamentally speaking it's very funny to watch like the tide turn on this on this game from from a gameplay perspective because fundamentally it looks like the game they showed like a year ago like fundamentally speaking like nothing's changed outside of the fact that arc raiders has come out and introduced people to it and now they kind of get why they i think before you saw somebody like digging through a backpack in an empty room putting something in a in their inventory and then running around and dying and you were like why is that interesting and now you know because you have firsthand experience with it and that's the only that's outside of like the obvious changes that they've made and the obvious improvements that they made which i'm not saying that they're not nothing but it's it's a little funny looking at it because you could just tell like well if you were ever in the in the mindset of just like oh this thing is fucked i'm like i don't i don't i don't know if you really get it all right we just streamed about this so we know most of our audience wasn't there for the stream it might not know xbox held its developer direct 2026 where they reveal or talked about four games and revealed one of them all of the games are coming to PlayStation 5.

2:18:08Dustin Furman:We can talk about these games and however little or as much as we want. The big one for most people is going to be Forza Horizon 6. This is coming to Xbox Series X and S and PC on May 19th, but was confirmed during the presentation to be coming to PlayStation 5 later in 2026. We knew it was coming later, but we didn't know if it was going to meet this release date. This May 19th date, I think, was leaked a while ago, but we have confirmation about that. It's an open world, obviously, Forza Horizon game, very similar to the others. This one in Japan. Any interest in this one, guys? Forza Horizon 5, huge on PS5.

2:18:46Dustin Furman:I was wondering, is there an urgency? Part of me is like, yeah, there's an urgency to get this out as soon as possible. Look how hungry people are. The other thing is, well, maybe not that much urgency. You don't want to overlap too much, but it seems like they're feeling pretty confident. They'll be separated by a little more than a year. So I'll be very interested to see how this does on PlayStation 5. Dustin Forza Horizon 6 does it do it for you

2:19:08Colin Moriarty:probably not just because I'm not really into these types of games but I am interested in maybe checking it out when I have at some point over the next year I'll have game pass and I can pop in because I want to I want to see the Japan locations and see how they did it because even just from watching the direct there were certain parts I was like oh that looks very familiar earlier and so it might be cool to see how they render out whether it's Tokyo or some of the Japanese countryside things like that the bamboo forest looks pretty cool looks I mean the dude the game looks beautiful that's undeniable yeah does it do it for as a Japanese person does it do it for you oh yeah very respectful to my culture good good good good Chris will you be racing around

2:19:57Dustin Furman:the Japanese home islands? Maybe through Game Pass. These aren't my types of games, really. Like Dustin said pretty much everything that I would have said, too. I mean, visually, I think it looks fucking incredible. Like there were some little snippets of gameplay there where I was like, this looks fucking... Looks really good, but also like every game now looks really good. Like every game now looks good enough to me where a game looking better than the median isn't really enough to sell me on an entire$80 purchase. But I think it looks really great. I think people who are into Forza Horizon are going to be really, really into it.

2:20:38I think it's going to do really, really well. I just, I don't know. I'm more interested in other things.

2:20:44Dustin Furman:All right, this next one that I wanted to talk about, I just found this so interesting. Look at this quickly and tell me if there's anything. Do you see anything interesting about this? where it says Beast of Reincarnation launching summer 2026. Read below and tell me if you see anything interesting here. Handheld optimized. Keep going. Day one game pass ultimate. You don't see it. Xbox Series X and S Xbox on PC Xbox Cloud Xbox Play Anywhere handheld optimized or play it day one with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate in parentheses. See developer website for other platforms. What the fuck is that? that's strange it's weird i wonder what that's all about because the other three games that we're and we already talked about one of them but the other two are all on playstation 5 and it says it yeah what the hell is that that is that's not strange to anyone else it is i don't know like did they forget to edit that or something it looks like kind of placeholder doesn't it

2:21:46Colin Moriarty:i don't know what that's all about they mentioned playstation 5 during the stream yeah i don't know what that what that's all about isn't that weird yeah anyway yeah i don't know this is a game from

2:21:56Dustin Furman:game freak um a second party game i guess it's technically third it's a time it was a timed exclusive third party game i guess in some way because it's being developed or published by what was private division remember private division was doing this uh that's probably what it is is it's not one of their games and they have no they have no obligation to say what other platforms it's on but it seems just kind of strange because remember that must be what it is but remember they were saying at one time that they want everyone to know where the games are coming from regardless and like because people were asking why they kept putting the PS5 logo on their splash screens so a little bit contradictory I'm sorry I know I'm so hung up on the stupidest shit but I'm so fascinated by that the new game division or the game the new publisher that was private division is now known as fictions this game was originally signed under that remember they signed game freak a long time ago to do a game this is that game so I guess it is more of a natural third party game it will be on game pass however I think this game looks pretty cool it's from game freak we know game freak best from Pokemon of course they do other stuff too but not really what's the last game that they made of any consequence that wasn't a Pokemon game I don't even know.

2:23:16Dustin Furman:Giga Wrecker? I don't know what that is. Tembo the Badass Elephant. You brought that up. I like that game. Oh, yeah. Harmonite. I forgot about that game. The 3DS game. That was like this cute rhythm game. But this is something a little different for them. An action RPG, third person. With a dog. Very exciting. Chris, you were saying it's reminded you a little bit of Scarlet Nexus, which I can totally see. Yeah. Well, yeah, not fundamentally, but like there's like the design philosophy. around like the uh the plant-based um enemies or the plant-infused wildlife and things like that i i don't know this doesn't i i don't know if i'm just uh glazed over to this or or what but like it i i i see so many run around and hit hit things hit thing with stick games at this point and it all kind of looks the same i'm sure there are things about this that are like specific and unique and i'm sure the handling of it like just the experience of play is different but this didn't really strike me um the woke dog that's somebody in general yeah i don't know it doesn't look necessarily for me there's still a bunch of games that are in this vein that i am interested in that i haven't gotten around to like really putting my weight by like things like like something like Eliza P or something you know what I mean where like I'm still curious about that game and I want to I want to go through and like finish it but I still haven't and so like the idea of like having another one ahead of this I don't know it didn't really speak to me but I think it looked impressive and you know the enemy designs are really cool I just I also just don't genuinely speaking I don't have a great experience with game freak so like I don't really know what to expect out of this yeah I I mean, I wouldn't necessarily be mega excited about anything they were doing at this point either, but we were trying to be fair to them that like, yeah, that Tempo game was fun.

2:25:14Dustin Furman:I guess they're doing the best with what they can. But yeah, Pokemon, I mean, Pokemon's huge. It's not like, yeah, it's just not a very quality product. I don't know what I don't know. Is that controversial to even say? No, it's obvious, right? Yeah. That it's just kind of like clear being pooped out at this point. And that like they've refused to put any money or time into anything Pokemon related. like it felt like and I was much more engaged Nintendo fan at the time but even during the N64 and into the GameCube era like they were still experienced not that say that things were always high budget but they were trying to do different things with Pokemon now it's just like farting this shit out but I'm kind of speaking out of turn because I haven't played Pokemon in a long time Dustin you have anything you want to say about this beast of reincarnations Japanese so do you know anyone that made this worked on this game man it's

2:26:01Colin Moriarty:it's really your one thing yeah I know I don't have anything else I'm sorry it's lazy

2:26:05Dustin Furman:yeah you're right you can do you're absolutely right i'm saying that because i know you can do better you're right i believe in you you're right will i do better well but i can do better i can do

2:26:15Colin Moriarty:better therein lies the question i guess this game the trailer today reminded me it had a lot of near automata qualities specifically in the music and it says the setting her off on a journey through japan circa 4026 ad so like a far assuming some kind of post post apocalypse there's some robots in there as well i this also leads into the fatigue of these semi souls adjacent i don't necessarily want to call it a souls like because i just don't know um and it it doesn't feel wholly unique but i think it looks interesting looks like it could have something to it uh but i just won't know until it actually comes out the one unique thing that they did do in the trailer that i thought was pretty cool and they mentioned it here in the write-up is that uh the dog has an ability that slows down time for you to do certain uh combat mechanics that kind of adds a turn-based feel to an action rpg and it looked kind of cool and i think the game visually uh looks awesome surprisingly coming from game freak which the pokemon games just look like ass the last few years so i i'm curious i am interested in it but i can't say i'm like super hyped for it honestly like seeing a game like this and phantom blade zero in the same year obviously very different but they kind of sit in the same place in my mind.

2:27:53Dustin Furman:Yeah. Next up is, and I'll check that game out, by the way. I think it looks cool. But maybe we'll learn more about it and I won't like it, but I thought it looked fun. That was definitely the most interesting game that they showed for me. Next up was the surprise game that they had here, Kiln. This is coming to PlayStation 5 this spring. This comes from Double Fine, another Xbox studio, San Francisco located, as we were saying on the stream. This is an online multiplayer pottery party brawler. And it says, quote, Double Finds New 4A and the Fun asks this question. What would it look like for a game to combine the beautiful expression of creation with all of the chaotic fun of destruction?

2:28:32Dustin Furman:Turns out it's a team-based arena battle game, which asks you to craft ceramic battle armor on a realistic pottery wheel and where your abilities are determined by the kind of pot you make, end quote. It's 4v4. It'll be obviously on Game Pass, so it'll probably do pretty well there. I do wonder what the Microsoft seems to have some of the smaller multiplayer stuff going, I guess, for Game Pass primarily. But it reminds me a little bit of what they were doing with Grounded has gotten a little bit bigger, I think, than they probably even expected. But what was that? We were talking about Bleeding Edge.

2:29:04Dustin Furman:Right. Yeah. And I look at a game like this and I actually think it's very again, this is not for me at all. So like I can't really judge it as a player of games because it just would not be interesting to me at all. but I think it looks kind of cool. And yet I see the reaction to people and it does seem like this is one of those games where I'm like, does anyone really want to play this at all? I do appreciate Microsoft giving double fine, a lot of room to do cool stuff or maybe it won't be cool, but different stuff and interesting stuff. They haven't really ruined double fine the way I think I was expecting.

2:29:35Dustin Furman:And a lot of others were expecting. They're still doing a lot of that, that quirky shit. They just released a game that kind of came and went. So maybe this will be a keeper. So maybe this will be another one of those games. I don't know. Are either of you interested in checking this out?

2:29:47Colin Moriarty:I like a good, fun party game here and there. Doesn't need to turn, you know, the world on fire, turn the world upside down. It just needs to be fun. And I think you're right about this being like a perfect game pass type game that maybe you decide to check out with a few friends. You have a good time and you move on. the thing we were saying on the stream is just i'm like this is a really unique idea where you get to make a pot and depending on how you make the pot is how it operates in battle i thought it looked cute looked kind of fun i would love to do a sacred stream of this game uh where we could play together and check it out uh when it comes out but um i i like it i'm not hyped for it or like this is going to be amazing but i can appreciate a good creative unique idea in this in this landscape in this market what do you think chris yeah i mean dude i like weird stuff i i like double finds output generally like i haven't played keeper yet but i have it and you know like i like uh you know brutal legend and costume quest we brought up um on the stream and i think it even came up in the or they flashed on screen during the developer direct and it's just like i like double find it i think they make weird and interesting things and i'm like you i'm kind of glad that they were able to avoid um they were able to avoid the rare you know the rarefication of them uh by early xbox although rare has you know since kind of gotten back to a creative kind of spirit although everwild is kind of still everwild's gone right like they yeah that's done um but you know i look at this and i'm like as an appreciator of the medium and as like somebody who's like really really into the nitty-gritty of this stuff like i think it looks cool and i think it's interesting and i think it's cool that they were given the the runway to do something like this but also i i wonder like from like a player perspective it's like even if i thought this would look cool or even if i thought that this was something that i would like to play i would have to convince other people to buy it also and that's kind of the the inherent problem with multiplayer games but not even just multiplayer games but adding to the not just multiplayer but niche multiplayer is that's a tricky place to be if if this is a couch co-op game or like a cat like is that did they even say if that was something i don't know if i paid that much attention to like let me see the nitty gritty if that's possible i could see that being kind of cool right and i could see that being an easy way to get people involved and be like hey come over and like while people over like we'll pop this thing in uh but convincing other people to jump on is is really the issue and i guess that's what game pass is for like the the barrier of entry is kind of gone and if you're playing multiplayer on xbox at all you have game pass because you need it i think to even participate so i i i don't know really how i feel about this because i appreciate it but i also kind of i don't know how realistic think it's going to be for other people to get other people in that's kind of where i sit with

2:33:00Dustin Furman:it yeah i'm looking they on xbox why are they i'm i'm scanning they have a preview i did a control f for local nothing came up but they have an extensive preview there called creation and destruction how double finds kill and combines pottery with brawling so yeah no we're kind of hot off we're kind of hot off the stream we haven't um i haven't like re-watched any of yeah we haven't absorbed it i i intend to uh do that with certainly with fable but um maybe that's in here maybe it's not but i like this and i would like to do a sacred stream of it i think that would be cool yeah that'd be cool um but yeah i just i worry about it because it's it's a niche it's a niche game and on top of that it's a multiplayer project which it's all limiting factors and when you're doing something that is creative and unorthodox it's you know it's it's it's very very risky in comparison to just playing it safe with a single player thing which I guess is commendable in some way like they want to do something weird and they want to cater to an audience that they don't normally cater to and I think that's I think that's also cool I just worry about the viability of it alright the final game they showed was Fable we knew that this was going to be there well we didn't know although I thought so because I picked it on my when we did our Metacritic betting this year was Fable is set to launch on PlayStation 5 confirmed autumn 2026.

2:34:25Dustin Furman:As we were saying on the stream, there are some reasonable expectations that this is simply going to get pushed. It's not a great time to release the game, even if it was ready. It didn't seem like it was running great from what they were showing. And you have to assume they were showing things that were fully vetted and the things that they were confident in showing. So it's not a great sign. It's certainly going to be a 30 frames game on console, I would assume. Maybe PlayStation 5 Pro gets a better cut at it. I don't know. But this comes from Playground Games, the same studio best known for Forza Horizon.

2:34:57Dustin Furman:It's on Forza Tech. So they're building this open world role playing game on racing technology. So not unprecedented. Of course, we've talked many times about the malleability of a lot of engines, but that might have something to do with it. I think the game looks really cool. I'm not a Fable veteran, so I really can't talk Talk about it from what it's showing, comparable to the old Fable games, specifically the Fable trilogy that everyone loves so much. The first two especially, I think, are the ones that everyone really loves. But it is PlayStation 5 bound this autumn, and I thought it looked fun.

2:35:27Dustin Furman:I'll maybe be interested in checking it out. If it really is coming out in the autumn, it's going to be pretty busy at that point, so I don't know that I would really get to it. What are our thoughts here on Fable, finally, after all these years coming out? Dustin, you can go first, sorry.

2:35:43Colin Moriarty:Sure. I played the first Fable when it came out a long time ago, and it's been so long that I remember it, but not very well. And then I didn't play Fable two or three. But I think the most promising thing about this trailer to me that I appreciate is they were saying that there is no just good morality and evil morality. Whereas that was like very much the case in the first Fable. It's like you do good things. People like you. You do bad things. You start to grow horns. and have smoke and flies around you it was like very cut and dry and they were saying in the in the in the showcase about how certain actions certain people are going to like and certain actions other people are going to like or some people are going to dislike and there was a whole thing in the trailer about like buying up businesses being a landlord kicking people out uh and so i i like this more morally gray system i feel like that opens up a lot of different opportunities where I think about a game like Mass Effect where it's like well I feel like for the sake of the story it makes sense that Shepard's a good guy so I'm just going to be a good guy and maybe you do another playthrough where you're like well I'm just going to be an asshole because it's fun but there were a couple instances in Mass Effect where I was like I'm going to punch this guy because this is what he fucking deserves and it's evil but to me it feels like a good thing to do but the game registers it as a renegade decision and so i love this idea and i don't think they're the first game to do it but to see it on this scale i do agree the trailer some of the frame rate and animation looked a little weird but it's still early so i'm not necessarily going to say uh that that's locked in i'm sure they have time to improve and optimize but Colin I do think you're right being how simulation based this is in terms of they're saying that each villager has their own routine their own life their own thoughts and opinions about you you can talk to every one of them sounds like a pretty CPU heavy game which is going to hold back on the frame rate so I'm imagining this is going to be a 30 FPS yeah yeah

2:37:57Dustin Furman:I mean it seems that way for sure for sure yeah I would agree Chris anything you want to add I mean, no, I don't know. I think I have the same criticisms, I think, as everybody. I think the frame rate looked a little shoddy, but it looked a little bit to me like the 007 early footage that we got where it just looked like them being a little bit more transparent. And yeah, I mean, games famously don't run super well until in a lot of cases like the 11th hour, unless you're really focused on optimization, like um like marathon even seems like to to be targeting a really really low spec grade which was also something that was that came out of that information and that that's cool but like that's not every game's priority the there is there does seem to be a cpu intensivity to this or a cpu intensiveness to this kind of game which makes sense i wouldn't have expected any anything else i look man i'm a big i'm a big fable fan like i loved i loved fable 2 i think fable 2 is um an underappreciated game.

2:38:58I think it's just, it's really, really fun and really atmospheric. I worry about the transition into a fully open world, you know, structure for a game like this. And I say that only because I felt that the zones, I think I just prefer open zones. I prefer there to be like distinct delineations between spaces. I think it's one of the reasons why Borderlands 4 didn't work as well for me as the previous Borderlands. I liked the separation and feeling like I entered a distinct new place. So I'm a little bit worried about that. It was nice to see Bowerstone again. It was nice to see these old cities kind of touched up and livened up.

2:39:42I love the morality system there with evictions and stuff. I think it's cute and interesting. and it was one of my favorite things about Fable 2 was kind of just engaging in weird shit and just like, oh, I'm going to get married and then neglect the shit out of my wife and then just go adventuring. It's like the fact that you could do that is hysterical. It's an interesting game in that way. One thing I was actually quite happy to see and I think it might be actually controversial for some people if they're not used to how Fable plays, but I was happy to see the combat it's a third person action game that doesn't look like it plays like a souls game um not that a lot of games play like souls games distinctively but like there's like a there's a there's a type of camera there's a type of lock on it and you kind of get used to it after a while and I've lamented on the show and on stream and elsewhere that like I really feel like we used to get third person action games that felt more distinct like like Like Max Payne doesn't play like Lost Planet, doesn't play like Resident Evil, doesn't play like Gears of War.

2:40:50You know, like I felt like there was there was a lot more flexibility. Doesn't play like Prototype, doesn't play like Infamous. There was a lot more distinctiveness, in my opinion, in early 3D and adolescent 3D than there is now with a lot of games running on the same kinds of third party engines. And I was happy to see that it looked like just a more flashy version of the same style of combat that we had in the original Fables. Not that that type of combat is particularly groundbreaking or incredible, but it's distinct. And it feels like Fable, which is, you know, I want a game to feel like itself.

2:41:28I don't want to be playing a game and feel like, oh, this reminds me of 13 ,000 other video games that I've played in the last year. You know, like I think that's as we move away from proprietary engines, I feel like that becomes a bigger and bigger issue. But I was happy to see that. Hopefully they can get that frame rate ironed out. At the very least, get a smooth 30. Playing Destiny again kind of reminds me that like, yeah, 30 is not so bad if it's just like smooth and not jittery. But that, but the footage was quite, quite jittery. So hopefully they can iron that out. And hopefully it's 60 frames on PC.

2:42:05I would imagine that it would be if you've got like a good rig. But I'm looking forward to it. I'm, I'm, I'm happy with what I saw. I'm betting on a push to spring of 2027 personally like I just like like you said earlier like I don't think it's a smart time to release even if it was ready and if it's not ready and you go after GTA then you're just kind of I think it's kind of a lose-lose really um in autumn for a game like this a third person you know single-player adventure game I just think you're better off waiting and giving some giving some space to the behemoth that is clearly there or maybe they're just waiting to see if they get if they delay that is possible because they didn't give like a date they said autumn which gives them some some light wiggle room at the very least but we'll see how that shakes up but if gta if gta comes out this year i spring 2027

2:42:58Dustin Furman:i'd put money on that yeah we'll see yeah i would just based on regardless of it would just be dumb yeah and and yeah i agree i you got to really be kind of cautious around that time although Game Pass is going to need things to compete as well. Once it's a relative. We'll see what happens. All right. Just a few more quick things we can get through and then we can get into what we're playing and wrap things up with listener inquiries. I wanted to share this. I didn't see this making the rounds too much, but I noticed this on LinkedIn when I was spying on people, as I often do on LinkedIn. There's always interesting stories and things to pick up there.

2:43:33Dustin Furman:this guy named Simon Carlos who is the founder of a analytics firm called Game Discover Co wrote that the jumping games and all these different games that were removed from THI games or thigh games which I think is a German entity as I but I'm not positive about that but their website's in German so that's my assumption we were talking last week about how their games were just unceremoniously removed from the PSN like more than a thousand of them and And as this guy notes, and it's true that because of all the stacks between the territories, it actually comes down to 153 individual games. But based on their proprietary data set, based on these games, I just wanted to share that this guy, Simon Carlos, says that these games have made about$10 million cumulatively.

2:44:21Dustin Furman:So not nothing. If that's$10 million gross and that's$3 million to Sony, which is, again, gets into like the triviality of like, why would you even bother for that much money to ruin your storefront? But serious money being made on the other side. So just wanted to kind of close that loop that maybe these guys are making a little bit more money than we thought. Obviously, I knew people were buying those games by the thousands on PSN profiles. That's why they exist. But to run the score up like that is pretty extreme. So I'm eager to learn more about what happened there. And I wonder if anyone will ever say anything.

2:44:55next up is sales data from Sarkana the tracking company out of the United States

2:45:03Dustin Furman:Matt Piscitella who works over there usually puts on blue sky the social media platform the different numbers and the charts or whatever for each month so we have that for December 2025 and then because December 2025 is the end of the calendar year we have the whole cumulative 2025 data set as well so we can get into all of that so in December 2025 for that month the top 20 best selling premium games in the US by dollar sales had black ops seven at number one NBA 2k 26 and this is across platforms by the way NBA 2k 26 at 2 battlefield 6 at 3 Madden NFL 26 at 4 and EA sports football club 26 at 5 interestingly Pokemon Legends we were just talking about Pokemon Pokemon Legends ZNA was at number six and that's without that's on switch obviously and that's without digital sales being counted and Metroid Prime 4 same thing for them no digital sales but slotting it at number seven.

2:45:56Dustin Furman:Anything else interesting on here? Ghost of Yote falls down to number 10. Forza Horizon 5 based on its PlayStation 4 or 5 releases at 14. Flight Simulator based on its PlayStation releases number 16. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 holds on at 17. Quite a few Nintendo games on there though and a good showing for them again considering they do not share their digital data. So anything they show, Kirby Air Riders for instance at 18 is actually way higher than that. galaxy and galaxy two even and i guess this shows people buying hardware and then some some logical game like a galaxy game or something um this brings us to the top 25 uh the top 20 for all of 2025 and this is again across consoles battlefield 6 was the best-selling game based on dollar sales from the time of january 5th through january 3rd so that time period all encompassing except for those five days of 2025 so battlefield 6 the best-selling highest dollar grossing game in america for the year followed by nba 2k 26 and then borderlands 4 that's interesting monster hunter wilds which everyone seems to hate at number four and then Black Ops 7 at number 5 dude Borderlands 4 did better than Call of Duty Black Ops 7 which is pretty wild then you have a bunch of football games or a couple of football games in Madden and college football and actually three of them because you have Football Club as well Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion Remastered number 9 that's especially interesting because that's a$40 game isn't it so lots of units sold on that go see yote number 11 overall only on playstation 5 so good showing for them and then followed by mlb the show 25 at 12 night rain your game there dustin number 14 again another discounted game so moving a lot of volume which is great for them kingdom come deliverance 2 at 15 and again forza horizon 5 16 just incredible split fiction holding on there at the end at 19 so we have that data and then we have another data set to go into as well um but we'll get into that let's get you guys on the record first about how you're feeling about those cumulative data sets that i just shared awesome yeah borderlands 4 wasn't there something that they were like disappointed with it yeah they were they i think they said it was soft okay all right well um okay square enix

2:48:46Colin Moriarty:yeah i don't think i the craziest thing about this list which we already acknowledge is black ops 7 to me being all the way down at number five uh not very good but we've talked about that endlessly i'm curious to see what they're going to do to try to fix the ip going forward battlefield six number one they finally did it they finally beat not only call of duty but every other game and the game's really good so congrats to EA anything you want to share Chris no I mean I outside of the fact that like I remember I think I remember talking we when we talked about this conversation of the hypothetical like Battlefield versus Call of Duty like is it possible that this is the year that that they do it I remember feeling like yeah I think I feel good about my gut going into this about this particular year.

2:49:44Because this is kind of, I mean, it's fucking impressive for them. Granted, obviously, a lot of things to consider. Arc Raiders being in the mix to kind of soak up a lot of the attention. And then also, you know, just Call of Duty having a piss poor year. And also Game Pass is there too. That's worth considering. A lot of people just not even buying it for that reason. But it's dope as hell to see Battlefield at the top of the chart. It's really kind of, it's really cool. It's nice to see just from like the perspective of like, man, it's just good to see like a good PvP, a proper multiplayer shooter in that space over something that I consider to be like a bit long in the tooth and largely just an IP that's coasted on recognition and just kind of not really put their best foot forward as of late.

2:50:35Dustin Furman:so happy about it all right ps uh our playstation platform data cumulative for 2025 from that same period of january 5th 2025 through january 3rd 2026 the best-selling game on playstation platforms during that time was nba 2k 26 on all the other platforms well not all the other platforms but on xbox and pc battlefield was the number one battlefield six is number two ghost of yotei 3 black ops 7 4 madden 5 college football 6 the show 7 call of duty black ops 6 8 ea sports football club 26 9 and then forza horizon 5 at 10 very very interesting there i wanted to share just before we move on just to give people a little bit of taste what it's like with nintendo right top 10 best-selling games on nintendo platforms so switch and switch to from that same year period pokemon legends donkey kong bonanza super mario party jamboree mario kart 8 mario kart world super mario galaxy my metroid prime 4 minecraft hogwarts legacy kirby air riders eight of the 10 games are theirs and none of the games that they publish account digital sales again so it's such a bad it i guess what it said what i'm saying is it's such a bad showing for third parties on switch because even with that benefit of counting digital and physical sales for them they still can't chart and nintendo is just so mono-reliant on their own stuff and i don't know i don't know you know i don't know how that's gonna work for them long long term but it's working great for them now but it's why they just don't push volume comparable to even xbox nonetheless playstation yeah i wonder maybe i'm am i am i misreading this Why does it say Minecraft's publisher is Nintendo?

2:52:26Dustin Furman:Because Minecraft publishes on... Nintendo is the publisher of Minecraft on their platforms, I assume. That could be an error, but I'll look... No, I mean, I just didn't know that that was... That's what my assumption was, because they have the asterisk next to it. Well, the asterisk just says digital sales not included for... Right, which would indicate Microsoft shares their digital sales. Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. But I don't know for sure. It doesn't say developer-publisher... yeah it doesn't say it says the place that might be an error playstation 3 version was published by sony localized version of the game mainly published by mo net ease yeah i don't know it could be an error they make errors sometimes all right um we don't need this either and just a couple games that i want to talk about crimson desert is gold and they wrote it on pearl abyss's website.

2:53:21Dustin Furman:The game is gold, meaning of course it's ready to go and it will launch March 19th. I'm looking forward to this game. Definitely going to check it out. And the other thing I wanted to say was reliable leaker Dusk Golem notes that the long-rumored Resident Evil Code Veronica remake will be announced this year. So we'll have to keep an eye out for that as well. Code Veronica, of course, the famous Dreamcast game from 2000 that was ported to PS2 the next year. But very well known for being an early and prominent Dreamcast game. And that, along with Resident Evil Zero, looks like it'll be en route.

2:53:55Dustin Furman:There's some bubblings of a Resident Evil 5 remake, but who knows what's going on with that as well. That's all we have for the news, though. So it's time to move on to what we're playing. We take a break in between these segments, traditionally, and I realize I just... I hadn't gotten up since before we started streaming. Oh, man. So my body... Like a bag of bones over here. All right, let's get into what we're playing. Chris, let's start with you. it says you're playing jack and dax are a very interesting selection yeah yeah man i was uh i don't know i wanted to play something and i just i wasn't in the mood for something serious or something heavy or something that i felt was going to take me 40 hours so i was like what do i have and i realized i had jack and dax are installed i was like oh why did i install this i don't even remember doing this and i was like yeah it's here i might as well not that it would have taken me that much longer to install it's probably like it takes probably like three seconds to install it but yeah so i started it up i have no experience with jack and daxter really at all like i dabbled in it a little bit like in the ps4 generation when um when those uh those skews came if you remember um yeah that was the collect the uh the collection i mean i don't it's not in a collection skew like they just came individually to ps4 like oh that's right they've split them up you're right you're right um yeah because there i think the collections were for ps3 and vita and then i think they did a la carte releases i think they did the same for ratchet if i recall yeah very cool yeah i think so yeah so like i have all three i have like that entire series really and i just it was always like a blind spot for me because during the ps2 generation i was always in i was really in i was really focused on like dragon ball z fighting games or just what was going on over on xbox with like splinter cell and halo and those types of things so i missed out on this this entire generation of like platformers and i'm like you know i really should really do this i've been curious about jack and dexter for a really really long time i remember being kind of transfixed by it like when i was a kid and just never really making the time or setting aside the the savings to get it and so i'm pretty early on into it but i'm i'm enjoying it but man you know what it's really you know what's really fucking me up about this game man no way to un-invert the camera really in the first Jak and Daxter maybe that changes later on but like oh boy I'm still in the period of like adjusting and I know I'll be able to do it I adjusted the 30 frames I could probably adjust to a I adjusted at 30 frames for destiny so like I can easily I would imagine that with enough time I'll be able to adjust to the camera but like it's it's kind of kicking my ass but one thing that's striking immediately about it is just like i like i like how immediately obvious it is that these guys did crash before this there's like a spinning move when you press circle which is i think square in in crash bandicoot but it's like a very crash kind of spin attack there's all these like um the first like one of the first things you do is like go through this warp gate and it's like oh yeah all right i remember this i like i like this uh this trapping but i'm into it i like the i like the world i like the like the characters so far i like the tone of it it's like light enough that i'm kind of into it but it's not you know i i know i don't know it's it's it's good at kind of getting you involved and uh there's a lot more mechanics that they there's a lot more mechanics in here than i thought there were like there's like different types of health and like there's like immediately like immediately when it starts off it drops you into the a very ps2 era uh tutorial where it's like it reminds me of those early games where it's just like press the action button you know like sly press the action button to release the epstein file like it's it's it's it's a lot but I appreciate it because it kind of gets it all out of the way early, but I'm liking it so far.

2:57:59I think I'll, I think I'll stick with it. It'll be a nice little, uh, kind of end of day routine for me. I like this. I like this generation, man. Like I like, like three 60 and before is just like a very cozy. There's something cozy about the design of it and, and the scale of it and the approachability of it. There's something to be said about it. Um, and so that's really, that's really it. I am, I am still kind of working my way through the original destiny. There's not really much more to say about it other than it's nostalgic for me and it's kind of neat. It's really just kind of holding me over until Marathon gets here because I'm itching at this point.

2:58:34Like now that I know that it's so close, it really is kind of, it really is at the forefront of my brain just thinking about it. Like when is this free period going to be? But in the meantime, chewing on something light.

2:58:46Dustin Furman:Fair enough. I haven't played Jack in years. Interesting selection. Good selection. I should get back to that at some point. I always wanted to play it on Vita, but I never did. Dustin, Kingdom Hearts 2.

2:58:59Colin Moriarty:Yes. Yeah, not too much to report this week because I'm still just going through Kingdom Hearts 2. And I think it was just a lighter week on playing games. I was watching various shows and watched Harry Potter 3. Oh, that's Azkaban, right? That is Azkaban. and uh it's it was good so keep a kingdom hearts uh yeah i mean i'm trying to think there's anything different to report i want to talk about some of the later worlds in the game but i want colin to experience them for himself because that's going to happen at some point yeah some point i'll definitely play it we shall see i am also like thinking uh once i finish this and i also got to figure out i need a game a travel game steam deck game i thought is it time for final fantasy tactics on switch 2 because that's where i have it on switch since that's where holly was playing it and i can't commit not with dragon quest so close i feel like i'm kind of just in a stasis period where i'm enjoying kingdom hearts but i don't necessarily want to play it for hours and hours and it's like should I start something else play this on the side but it's like no I gotta I gotta wait for Dragon Quest I'm so excited for it so like I said light week uh but that's about it fair enough and I appreciate your your attention to the Kingdom Hearts 2 spoilers

3:00:28Dustin Furman:it's important um for me I platinum Mega Man 11 that's platinum number 198 um dude it's pretty it's a that's by pure gameplay standard so not time spent not having to like do things or check boxes but just pure execution of gameplay it is the hardest platinum i've ever gotten certainly up there with like velocity ultra and some others that are just really fucking daunting and the two hard trophies of megaman 11 i think i went over one of them last week which was doing dr light's trials and uh i did i finally did it which is really really hard and then beating the game in under an hour there's a trophy for beating megaman 10 in under an hour and it's so much more trivial than this game is because it's so much longer and more complicated and uh i got to the end of the game you can save by the way like in between stages so you can like get your time better if you're not quite happy with your time you just load the previous save and do it again but you'll find it interesting perhaps that by the end of the game i was so close to not getting the trophy at the end like i was so on the border that when i went i like just x through and started through the uh the the um credits after the game and all the cut scenes to get to just the menu and i saved my game and it was like one hour 13 seconds or something so it's like i somewhere in that period like between the ending when it counted it and then my ability to save after exiting through everything i i was actually above the hour so it was very very close and i would have driven me fucking crazy if i didn't get it so that's in the uh that's in the done pile and then i moved i didn't know what i wanted to play next uh that's where the borderlands came up because i was like oh borderlands and i went and looked up uh borderlands 3 and that's when i was like oh i beat borderlands 3 and then i was like maybe i'll play borderlands 4 i'm like i'm not really in the mood for this right now so i was just looking around like you know what i'll play front mission first remake why not and uh it was on sale i think i paid like five bucks for it or something and front mission is a somewhat obscure square soft era super famicom strategy role-playing game and instead of it predates it's kind of around the same time as tactics ogre started but it actually predates final fantasy tactics and it's a grid-based strategy game and it was only on super famicom and then they remade it and called it front mission first in 2003 i want to say and that was on ps1 but only in japan and then we got a port of that in the west in 2007 on the ds called just front mission and i that's where i played this game and then that game was remade and ported to switch and to playstation into xbox and all of these different things and came to switch in 2022 and to ps5 and ps4 in 2023 what's interesting about this game is that it's actually a total licensed job so square has nothing to do with it at all which i was surprised about when i was reading about it um forever entertainment which is a central european company licensed it developed it and published it under license and they actually did a front mission to remake and their front mission three remake is somewhat imminent that's why i had this on my radar radar at all for people that might remember front mission one and two and i think front mission two to this day which was a ps1 game never came out here and we and so front mission two's remake is the only time we've ever gotten it i started playing front mission with front mission three and front mission four is specifically a very nostalgic game for me first of all awesome box art love the front mission for box art but also uh nostalgic game came out i think summer 2004 spring 2004 something like that i was an intern at ign writing the strategy guide for that and that was my last the last time i ever really played front mission and front mission new front mission games kind of stopped with front mission evolve and there was also that on foot front mission game remember um Um, Was it called like Stay Alive or something like that?

3:04:25Dustin Furman:You know what I'm talking about? Nope. Anyway, so Front Mission is a if you know Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre, very recognizable game. But instead of having characters and character classes and all of that, you have pilots in mechs called the Wanzers. And the Wanzers are each upgradable, like you upgrade their bodies, their arms, their legs, their CPU. and then you give them weapons to hold in their hands and put on their shoulders if you want and all the rest. And it's all revolves around this weight system. And so you have to have like enough of a weight balance in order to put all these things and equip all these things.

3:05:04Dustin Furman:It's a cool idea. And I just beat it last night. The problem with this game is it's, in my opinion, too easy to manipulate. And it's not Final Fantasy Tactics is also easy to manipulate, but this is way easier. I guess what I'm saying is, and I wonder if you guys can relate to this. The game gives you a shit ton of options, right? Like make this Wanzer and give him melee weapons. This Wanzer can have like a shotgun and a machine gun. And he can have this body type and there's 25 different body types and there's all these different legs and all and whatever. I eventually I had a team of 17 players like on my on my team.

3:05:42Dustin Furman:And I eventually just reduced to doing the same thing with every one of them. which was to give them the same exact armor, same exact legs, same exact arms, same exact CPUs and missile launchers, all of them on their shoulders. And I fucking obliterated the game. Now I employ, I was playing it on normal, how I assume they, you wanted to play. There are much more hard, there are difficulty levels where it's like, now the enemies have 21 % more health. Now the enemies do 50 % more damage. Now the enemies do a hundred percent more damage, et cetera, and so on. but I was playing on the normal standard difficulty.

3:06:15Dustin Furman:In fact, you have to unlock all those difficulties. And I guess I was surprised by how uninteresting it was by the end. In other words, it was giving you, it's like what I always complain about skill trees where you don't want any of the skills. It's like, well, who cares? Like I'm just buying things to buy. They don't even need any of this shit. It felt like the same thing in this game where I'm like, I don't need any of these bodies or these arms. I'll just keep buying the highest quality body, the highest quality arms, the highest quality legs, as long as it's within the weight and then give myself the best missile launchers.

3:06:44Dustin Furman:And just literally everyone had missile launchers and we were just fucking, it wasn't even close. And I was like, this is kind of broken. Now, the remake beginning with the PS1 remake in Japan added. So the game is about, the game's actually kind of cool in the story. It takes place in this fictional Pacific island off the coast of Mexico that's being disputed by all these different countries. And there's like a civil war going on, like a proxy war. and you're on like one side of the proxy war. The remake puts a campaign in the game from the other side of the war, the people you're fighting. And I'm kind of curious to play that.

3:07:21Dustin Furman:And apparently it's supposed to be kind of like a hard mode. So I want to give it like a go because I just felt like it's, it was options for options sake. But I kept, Micah kept watching me play and I'm like, I'm like, I'm just struggling to understand why I would want to do anything other than what I'm doing. It's one of those games where it's like, yeah, you got to play it. Like you got to play within the road. It's like, but why? I'm going to make it arbitrarily harder for myself for no reason. I'm playing the game within the rule set that you gave me and you're letting me giving me unlimited access to all the shit.

3:07:50So I'm just going to use it now.

3:07:54Dustin Furman:And it's, it's so funny like how he, so the game's just easily to easy to manipulate. I wonder how front mission two is going to be and I'll play it at some point from mission three. I don't really remember, but I have played and I remember those games three and four being a little more dynamic and kind of stopping you from doing that. but I love the idea of it's kind of like Xenogears later on where it's like you have the pilot and he up he has like his own leveling and his own skills and then he gets into his wands or which is like its own thing that levels up and so it's kind of neat but it just the execution is kind of poor but the story is cool it gets I won't even say what it's about it gets kind of zany like where I'm like what is this about I had to even go like on the Wikipedia page afterwards and like make sure I was under I'm like what like that and it just becomes about this whole other thing so So anyway, that's what I've been playing front mission first remake.

3:08:40Dustin Furman:And do I recommend it? It's cool. I don't I don't know if you're really into strategy role playing like turn based grid based role playing games and maybe you want to like go watch a video. I don't know what it has on Metacritic. I'll look. Have you guys heard of this? I've heard of front mission, but like I've never actually like seen it. I was watching gameplay while you were talking. Yeah, it's got a 69 on switch. that's where it was first released nice oh and then it's all the other platforms don't even have enough reviews to to have worked but yeah that's that's my major problem with it it's just it's it's it's a it's a super famicom game yeah it's like a late gen super famicom game that's remade with some bells and whistles so it's going to be a little bit more limited i'll be very interested to see how it goes from there though so and cool idea it's modern postmodern, it's gritty.

3:09:36Dustin Furman:And I was reading a little bit about how Square Enix was like very skeptical of it or Squaresoft at the time was very skeptical of it. It was apparently one of the first games that was ever developed for Square outside of the studios that they own. And they were very eager about it because they they did a lot of sword and sorcery kind of like wizardry shit. And they didn't they didn't know if people would care about this sort of thing. And when you think about their catalog of games, it really was totally different from everything so credit to them for giving it giving them some room to work and obviously many sequels came from that very so that's what i've been playing very old school what we're playing yeah definitely yeah very much so yeah you're absolutely right all right listener inquiries let's wrap up the show with six questions comments concerns thoughts and ideas from the audience over on patreon patreon.com slash last day media if you support us over there you get a bunch of perks early ad free access to the shows and so on and so forth, but also the ability to submit your inquiries to each individual show in our network via the thread for each show on the newsfeed for secret symbols.

3:10:34Dustin Furman:I publish the threads the afternoon on Wednesdays and delete them on Thursday. So you have about 24 hours to get your inquiries in before you have to wait for the next week. We begin with KB. He says, Hey, gents, I wanted to piggyback off a discussion from the most recent episode of summon sign with Radek specifically around the amount of noise. Naughty Dog seems to find itself dealing with in a post the last of us part two world. They were once the undisputed darling of the industry, but now they seem to constantly find themselves in the crosshairs of an online mob eager to tear them down at every opportunity.

3:11:03Dustin Furman:Whether deserved or not, there's a growing sense that the studio no longer gets the benefit of the doubt it once did. The constant badgering of its creatives, bad faith criticism, and online pylons can't be easy to tune out forever. So my question is this. Going forward, is every Naughty Dog reveal going to be met with crossed arms, instant skepticism, and preemptive backlash? Trailers disliked on site before anyone even knows what the game actually is? if that's the reality what can naughty dog realistically do to win back goodwill what say you thanks dustin what are your thoughts

3:11:34Colin Moriarty:yeah i was thinking about this the other day with intergalactic how we know so little about it and as uh kb mentions people have already made up their mind about it i was thinking about that too for a lot of people that hate it are like the the anti-woke people and i'm like if she just had hair yeah it would have changed everything no one if it comes down to just the hair so the the lack of hair is an assumption of like oh she's she's gay she she's manly i don't know um she's gay she's gay

3:12:16Colin Moriarty:but so i think they are gonna have i mean this is something they're gonna have to continue deal with i think the last of us season two not that they made that but it's so related that's not helping either so i i think that if i was in their position which would be insane but at this point you just got to put your head down and make a game that is so good it silences people that were naysayers about it and they're like oh shit maybe this this game is actually awesome and i can understand i i don't want to shut down people that are that didn't like last of us part two because i think that a lot of it is valid uh from a story perspective some of it maybe i agree with some of it maybe i don't but i understand that but i kind of feel like let's you know give them a clean slate there's a whole new game a whole new ip and based on some of the comments that neil druckman has made it sounds like it's going to be quite different and that's intriguing to me because regardless of how you feel about last of us part two from a story perspective the gameplay was great and the production quality is unparalleled and so any team that made a game like that no matter what they're doing i think it's it's worth giving them at least a little bit of the benefit of the doubt for the next game even if you didn't like the story or something like that chris what are your thoughts yeah i mean i think um we we mentioned it earlier in regards to when we were talking about marathon but i i just think we've we've entered an era and by the way i feel like we've we entered this era a long time ago where it's just it's simply cool to hate things um it's not you know it's it's uh it it's not cool to be excited for things or earnestly enjoy things it's like it's it's very unfortunate but that's kind of the the space that we're in and also that combined with the general um psychological thing of of these people have been at the top for a long time uh just waiting for waiting for the big dog to fall basically uh that's always been true i think in some in some way shape or form and so i think it's just it's just kind of mixed into a cocktail that's rather unfortunate i do think part of it is also just the reputation of the battle of uh of the last of us part two um and how that shook up regardless of what was true and like there you know for a fact that there are people out there who still believe that abby was trans yeah for sure they were walking around several several years removed from the game's launch uh believing something that's just not even true and by the way were it to even be true would still not be a big deal uh it's you know people want to see them fail because they've been at the top of their game for quite a while and by the top of their game i just mean simply from the perspective of being a top sony studio being the uh proverbial golden boy uh their games are successful and incredibly like objectively polished so i think eventually there's an appetite to see to see you know the successful people kind of crumble or make a mistake there's schadenfreude in that that people like but i think ultimately people shut up when the game is good and i i don't think people have that long of a memory if if the game just turns out to be surprising or not what they expected or you know i i don't think they have anything to worry about as long as they make a good game ultimately at the end of the day which i think they will um but it is weird that it seems to only come from the fact that the character has short hair that seems to be like the only thing and i guess and i guess it's the and i guess that it's not like a white character and it's not like a man but like i i don't know if i the thing that's confusing about this is like i remember a time where a game like this would come out and no one would care you know like i remember games where like the lead protagonist would be not some gooner bait you know and it wouldn't be a it wouldn't even be a conversation that people would have and so it's it's it's bizarre to me that it's gotten to this point but i don't think the people who think that way really matter in this i mean the last of us part two sold a fuck ton of units so it's just loud people at the end of the day who aren't really aren't really factors i'm sure they could lose sales from it like you know from from negative word of mouth or whatever but not meaningfully enough to disrupt the fact that like this game is going to be big and i would imagine at worst it will be good that's my expectation of the game is that it'll be good i'm not even necessarily expecting it to be great purely because naughty dog games don't necessarily vibe with me in the same way that um like i haven't vibed with a naughty dog game like really really intensely probably since probably uncharted 2 was the last one that i really really really really really loved um and so it's been a minute but like i would even as somebody who doesn't prefer those games uh the games that come after it and the game that predate it that come after ctr there's an objective quality to them that i i think you'd be just dishonest with yourself if you just didn't recognize.

3:18:06And that goes into what we were talking about earlier too, of just people not being able to see outside of themselves is a dying skill. And I don't know what you can do about that other than just make a quality project that gets the people who believe in you on board and then other people who just don't care.

3:18:24Dustin Furman:I'll leave, I mean, I'll say a little bit here, but I didn't speak about this extensively. That's why I wanted to get you guys on the record here. I spoke about it on Summon Sign as can be noted, but I'll just say that I agree with the sentiment that they really just need to deliver a great game. I think if they do that, they win. It's quite simple. I mean, it's incredibly complicated, but in terms of PR and marketing, it's quite simple. And yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with just people wanting to hate things and looking for targets. And that's why I think it's so important the way they show the game next has to be a very deliberate and careful exposing of what the game truly is at a nuts and bolts level with gameplay and all the rest and just get away from the presentational heft of what the game means and what the game could be clanker rosa sparks sit in the back of the bus road in is that one of your people that must be rosa sparks so stupid what's up boys what are y 'all's top settings eras or sub genres you feel are unexplored in gaming.

3:19:30Dustin Furman:I personally love to see more alternate history or steampunk games set during the age of imperialism, ideally outside of the US. It's funny, man, that you wrote in about this because I've been thinking more and more, I really want more, maybe very American-centric, but just more 19th century American stuff. There's just so little in that space, and it's hard to do because it's going to be less action-oriented. I mean, what do you really have? I guess Red Dead, what would be, one takes place in the late 19th century, right? Does it? I thought it was early. It was 19. Oh, so it was even after that.

3:20:08Dustin Furman:So, yeah, that doesn't think I got to look. I believe you. I just feel like more things in that agrarian American era, I think would be pretty cool. I've always brought the American Revolution and the Civil War and all these things as touchstones, but you really could just do a like thing about Pentiment. Not that you'd want a game like I really think Pentiment is awesome, but not necessarily an adventure game, but like think about how unusual the setting of that game is yeah what is like what is this i i want more like that more where you really get to know the ins and outs of a time and a place very granular but also very random not attracted towards the touchstones of like world war ii like everyone's tired of world war ii right it's been yeah things like that vietnam and all that i mean you don't necessarily need those touchstones what did you say kingdom come deliverance is is kind of like that where you're saying it's like a very particular point a little too i watch micah play both of them pretty extensively it's a little too i don't want to say real because that's not what it really is it's a little too demanding it's intense like yeah not really what i'm looking for but i i appreciate it and people love it you know yeah maybe one day i should give it more of a fair shake the first one especially i'm just like yeah when i not even the switch version which michael was playing but i remember what it looks like what it was on ps4 and i'm like yeah the second one's way better yeah i would imagine so i would imagine so yeah um but anything stick out

3:21:27Colin Moriarty:to either of you my answer i don't even know if this is underrepresented but it's a setting that appeals to me i feel like i don't see all the time it's just a simple modern day setting with fan fantastical elements specifically persona i think is really good at that where they made an rpg that is set in modern day that usually ends up they go into some kind of mystical world and come back uh i always like that and i'm so excited one of the things about kingdom hearts four that's so appealing to me is that it has a modern day aspect to it which is so weird for that series but i've always thought that that's cool if you can make a a fantasy version of reality that works and it's somehow grounded and over the top in the same time yeah there's so many options anything for you yeah i there's a lot kind of going through my head when this this question you know what the i'll say i don't even know if this is necessarily an accurate way to put this but like villain games like a like games that like a like overlord or like or or prototype or destroy all humans or like things like that are like it's not necessarily about like they're like sandbox oriented games where you're taking you're taking the perspective of what is what would usually be the fodder i guess what would usually be like something you would be fighting against in a typical um game like i remember that was like a destroying humans was a big moment for me because i was like oh this is like you're like every every game is about killing aliens but this is like you're you're the alien like that's cool like it's interesting and it's and it's weird and i wish there were more i wish there were more games like that like because i really dig those and even mercenaries to like a lesser extent like you it could be argued that that's like more morally gray but like i mean mercenaries too you're just straight up nuking venezuela which is you know i wonder if trump played it he's like i like this but it needs more me uh i don't know like i i like i like that type of game like a sandbox villain oriented game i they're cool my other answer would have been cart racers but like i mean cat racing cat racing

3:24:02Dustin Furman:the wand one wrote in and said hello cdc while dustin is going on his date with brad this weekend to see the persona concert one question keeps popping in my head is this the year we are finally seeing persona 6 persona 5 came out in 2017 in the states that's almost nine years without a new mainline persona game six years if we are if we are going to be generous with the release to Persona 5 Royal. It's crazy we might get to the end of the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy before a new Persona game. How can this be? But honestly, enjoy the concert, Dustin, and tweet if they show a hint of P6, even if just the color.

3:24:32Dustin Furman:They won't do that, right? Because there's like multiple shows.

3:24:36Colin Moriarty:Yeah, there's a leak. Yeah, there's a Friday show and two Saturday shows.

3:24:41Dustin Furman:Where are we on Persona 6? It's so funny, dude, because Persona 5 is so old. I mean, it is true. Persona 5 is so old that I remember very vividly being at IGN. I mean, people can probably go look at the IGN object for Persona 5. I wrote like some of the original stories. You remember when like the the art of like this, the desks came out or something with like, yeah, it was all red and black. Yeah, like I was still an editor there when that happened. It's crazy. Like they are really taking their sweet fucking time with this thing. And we do know that they're looking at the way they make games differently there now, but I don't know how that affects the new games.

3:25:17Dustin Furman:It affects rather how you treat the old games. and maybe that's them saying there will be no Persona 6 Royal version because everyone's tired of that shit so all the stuff we were planning for that maybe we're putting in the game right away or something and so it's taking more time I don't know also they're in no conceivable money rush both because they're making the game in Japan where it's cheap and the game is so big that they've made an enormous amount of profit so I'd be very curious to know what you think of this

3:25:41Colin Moriarty:yeah so he included like the last like if we even want to include Persona 5 Royal as the last mainline release. I know this isn't a new release, but we did get an entire remake of Persona 3. That's true. That was absolutely excellent. And right now there is another Persona game announced. Again, not a new entry, but a Persona 4 remake as well. So it has been a very, very long time. Persona 5, remember, released on PlayStation 3. was developed primarily for PlayStation 3. Of course, released on PS4 at the same time. We never got the PS3. Did we get the PS3 version in the West? I feel like we did.

3:26:28Colin Moriarty:But it's so funny. I'm not positive.

3:26:32Dustin Furman:I'm looking here. Persona 5. Yeah. On PS3. It came out in the West, April 4th, 2017. Japan, September 15th, 2016.

3:26:45Colin Moriarty:so it has been a long long time and metaphor is not a persona game but metaphor also is kind of

3:26:53Dustin Furman:yeah it's it's the team that made it right yeah kind of a persona game people are a little soft on metaphor over time i really i thought that game was awesome i really liked that game a lot

3:27:02Colin Moriarty:i think it's really good it's just nowhere near a persona game to me uh so when will we see six they're in a man they people thought this game was going to get revealed like two years ago and so now they're just kind of waiting around this year is i believe a big persona anniversary so i think the the hard part is that they have persona 4 remake at the same time so that makes me wonder if it's like well why don't you just get this remake out yeah and they're not gonna

3:27:35Dustin Furman:Yeah, get crazy with all the distractions.

3:27:38Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I would love if we got news to be like, hey, here's Persona 4 remake. It's coming out this year. Here's when it comes out. And here's a little teaser for what's coming next year in Persona 6. That'd be great. But clearly it's been development for a very, very long time. So I have very, very high expectations for it.

3:28:03Dustin Furman:Our friend Sean Mason wrote in and said, hey, CDC. what's the over under on how long high guard lasts until it's shut down i'll see it at three and a half months thank you for writing in sean high guard is imminent the reason that this is relevant is because by the time we record again next the game will be out we're recording this on the 22nd the game comes out on the 26th so while light entertainment will be launching their much maligned raid shooter pvp raid shooter as it's described on steam we've talked a great deal about how negative everyone is about this. I think it's just going to come down to how good the game is, but it doesn't seem like...

3:28:41Dustin Furman:Without open minds and open hearts, it's going to be very difficult to win. And I kind of want to see this, like, from a storytelling perspective, a media industry storytelling perspective, I want this game to do well. Now, I don't think it's... Because I just think it would be interesting for it to dig its way out. I just don't know that it really... People just seem to be totally against it. I don't know. I don't know how they're going to. I don't know how it's going to work, but we're going to know pretty soon how well it does. Chris, what do you think? How long until or if it shuts down? Do you think it'll last?

3:29:18Dustin Furman:Do you think it'll really be three and a half months as a friend of the show, Sean Mason says, before this thing is nixed? I mean, I don't really know. I feel like with a game like this, it really is like an anything's possible situation. like i don't know here's the thing right concord because that's the that's the thing that everybody's everybody goes to now because it was so historically insane that they that they shut it down in mere weeks that was a 40 game from a studio from a new studio from a new studio with no real pedigree right like they had some dna from other places but like no real studio synergistic pedigree that they could really lean on i think it's one of the reasons why marathon was able to crawl its way out of you know you know art raiders you know territory was because like even if you thought it looked weird or odd or whatever you know destiny and you probably know that it plays really well and that gives you a lot of leeway this is a game from from people who made from people who did Titanfall but it's not the Titanfall studio so there isn't that pedigree it is more of a Concord situation than than anything else but it's a free-to-play game and there's really no barrier of entry unlike there was for Concord so I could my feeling is that like I don't think it will shut down even remotely as quick as Concord did I think there will be people who are going to be jumping into this out of sheer curiosity i think they will find fans and if this is a free-to-play game in the way that we anticipate free-to-play games existing in the modern era there will be a store and people who really really are into it if that happens are probably going to maybe feel a bit of an underdog complex and they're going to be like hey well what the fuck this is actually pretty good maybe i'll jump into the store maybe i'll support it maybe i'll do something you know i i think a lot of these things are possible i it's hard to say um i i the thing is for me like if i was working on this game right and i had the unfortunate uh you know i was dealt the unfortunate cards of having the last placement in the video game awards and having all this unfortunate press i would want the game to speak for itself and it seems like maybe that's what they're betting on this could be fear and just not wanting to jinx it or ruin it any more than you already know that it's ruined it could very well be that it's a fucking disaster but i just i don't really feel comfortable saying one way or another I think if this flops, I don't think it sees the end of the year, though.

3:32:19Yeah, I think I think that's I think that's pretty safe. But I think it's possible that it's better than we think it is. I'm going to try it out. I'm going to give it a I'm going to give it a fair shot. I paid for Concord, you know, like I'll definitely jump into. I'll definitely jump into this. Sure. But my gut feeling, my gut is telling me that, like, I don't know if this has the legs. What do you think? Oh, I'm sorry, Chris. no no i just meant it but that's but that's not really that's just a gut feeling

3:32:44Colin Moriarty:got it yeah sorry to interrupt dustin good i i wonder this feels like in some ways this is either the greatest marketing opportunity or one of the greatest marketing opportunities where they now have all eyes on this game. Maybe not for good reasons, but people are very aware of this game releasing, which is interesting. They're very aware by them saying almost next to nothing. To be fair, they did have the best slot at the biggest streamed event of the year. But since then, their lack of saying anything has created a huge, I guess it's not necessarily positive, but a buzz around the game to the point where there will be so many people that are just going to be curious and will check it out.

3:33:44Colin Moriarty:And there has been things percolating that clearly people behind the scenes are playing this game. There's going to be some kind of big media thing, whether it's a day or two before launch or maybe the day of launch, where we're going to know pretty quick what people think about it. And you're right. I think what Chris is, you know, they may not be saying anything because they're scared. But if we want to look at the glass half full, that they're like, oh, we don't need to say anything right now because people, we know the game is good. People that have play tested, maybe even media people that have played it also think it's very good.

3:34:22Colin Moriarty:And now we just need to show everybody. And the more we aren't saying anything, the more eyes are on this when it comes out we're like what's going on with this again maybe i'll check it out it's free so i could be totally wrong about that this game could come out and it's terrible uh or not even that it does that's that's the sad part it doesn't even need to be terrible yeah just needs to be not appealing enough and that can certainly happen my assumption is that it'll be good but maybe no one will care that's you know that's the that's like a fate

3:34:57Dustin Furman:worse than death and that's what i think is going to happen to it in some way is that because i don't think it's gonna be bad by any stretch of the imagination i don't think concord was bad we've said this over and over again like there's just other factors yeah many other factors yeah i think it'll be better than concord yeah i'm talking about but i know what you mean but yeah like that was the least of that game's problems that might be that might be a similar situation here again not a game for me but i am rooting for them like it just seems at some point i think it becomes maybe i'm just a very soft person but it just becomes mean-spirited and strange and i think you're right dustin that they're getting a lot of free marketing but i also think they're in between a rock and a hard place that anything short of letting people play the game would not be sufficient and even a beta would have been bad for it probably because it could have reaffirmed things or people could have at least pretended to reaffirm things and created a bad narrative so the only choice they really ever had after the reaction from the game awards was to go away and i agree with you it seems like i've been hearing about people playing it behind the scenes for a while now like just on social media or whatever like the implications where it's like what is the embargo like what what are we doing here and it's like you're saying are they going to do it like a day before are they going to have a big marketing campaign with streamers and stuff like that?

3:36:18Dustin Furman:Is it going to be a very strong foot forward, very expensive foot forward, but to try to get this thing going with people that are curious in these various environments, these various communities? I don't know. But I just... It seems divorced from the game at this point, and so I don't know how you win. And I'm hoping they figure it out. We'll see. It's up to you guys. I'm not going to... Am I going to fucking download and play it and put my money where my mouth is? No. Come on. But hopefully some of you out there will do it. Well, I mean, I'll be talking about it next episode. Yep. Very excited to see that.

3:36:52Dustin Furman:When does it come out? Like what? What day? It's the 26th. So that's a Monday. It's Monday. Yeah. So I'll have I'll have time. I'll play it. We'll talk about it next time. And by then, we might even know what the what the tea leaves are going to say. But Dale Ketraccio wrote in, said, hello, Colin. This question is for you, but anyone is welcome to answer. What is your plan leading up to Saros? Will you be playing Returnal again? I just got the Platinum Trophy for Returnal this weekend after playing it on and off since it was released and it was a great feeling. Will you be wrapping up those surveys to pop the Platinum Trophy on your end?

3:37:28Dustin Furman:There is also a DLC arcade mode that was added to the game that I've been enjoying. Not to mention Returnal looks and plays great on PS5 Pro. Are you planning on abandoning Helios and returning to Atropos anytime soon? So as we know, Housemarque's Saros comes out April 30th on PlayStation 5. Very much looking forward to it. a spiritual successor to 2021's Returnal, which was wonderful. I have not played Returnal since I think the year it came out, so it's been a while. And my intention is to go back and play it. I don't know the... As I remember, the frustrating thing about the trophies was that they're very RNG heavy, and so you just don't know what you're going to get, because you have to get all the different collectibles in the world as you put the story together, and you get what you get.

3:38:09Dustin Furman:I don't know if they fixed that or whatever or made it easier. I also never played the expansion, the DLC stuff. so yeah I kind of want to get back into the mode these are good get good games I feel like by reacclimating myself to Returnal it will benefit me in Saros maybe not maybe they feel very different but I they obviously have like you can slide and do shit but they're going to feel I think similar and so it'll probably be nice for that from that perspective but I also just want to reacclimate to arcade shooting and also to the world that they've created as well and then have something to compare it to when we get into Saros and really be able to contrast the two experiences more actively.

3:38:45Dustin Furman:So my plan is definitely to get back to Returnal. Are you guys going to spend any time with Returnal leading up to Saros? No.

3:38:53Colin Moriarty:No, I'm good. I love that game. I think it's an amazing game. I really enjoyed checking out on PC with mouse and keyboard also, but I'm just going to go in. Yeah, we get it, Dustin. I'm just going to raw dog it.

3:39:05Dustin Furman:What? We get it. The mouse and the keyboard. We get it.

3:39:07Colin Moriarty:The mouse and keyboard, dude. It was elite. Real good. But yeah, I'm just going to raw dog it. Go straight in.

3:39:16Dustin Furman:As is your way.

3:39:18Colin Moriarty:Yeah, as is my way. There's proof.

3:39:22Dustin Furman:There is proof. I think I'll definitely be playing it again. That's been a game that I've wanted to play again for a while. It's never been the right time. But I think so. I think that's in the cards. Yeah, I think I'll do that as well. April 30th is still a bit away. We have Resident Evil and Crimson Desert and a couple other things. I feel like Mina might end up sneaking out in there. I just because I feel like they were close to getting it out. And so maybe that will I don't know, but still feel a little bit open right now. A little flexible. So, yeah, my intention, Dale, is to go back to Returnal.

3:39:56Dustin Furman:I think that will happen. And yes, Saros, April 30th, I'm sure we'll all be playing that at that time. Unless Dustin wants to wait for the PC launch. No, I won't do that. Gordon Slaveman has the final inquiry. Good goodness. I didn't get it at first, and then I'm like, oh. So stupid. I didn't get it until you read it out loud. Greetings, gents. What have been some of your favorite or maligned trendy tropes over the last few gaming generations? These are things that seemingly every mainstream game adopted, such as quick time events, having a bow and arrow, a canine sidekick, a summonable horse or vehicle, detective vision, squeezing through a gap to mask loading assets, post-apocalyptic world, overgrown landscape aesthetic, yellow paint means climb here, et cetera.

3:40:37Dustin Furman:The list goes on. Thanks and keep on keeping on. Gordon, as you were reading through those, it's funny because I'm like, yeah, there are some, there are so many and there are many, many, many, many, many more than that. But like, as you kept reading them, I'm like, yeah, you're right. And yeah, the squeezing through the gap, the, uh, the quick time, quick time events. Dude, everyone hated quick time events. Now you don't really seem to hear about it anymore. When, when God of War really introduced them as we understand them, people were kind of like fine with it. And then I think people started quickly getting tired of it and i remember it coming to a head with heavy rain uh where people are like fuck this game like like it's because it's all quick time events and i'm like what do you want it to be but do you guys remember that there was like this uproar like people couldn't stand quick time events you don't you don't hear too much about that anymore i don't mind them personally i never did the uh the squeezing through gaps obviously like it's so annoying to see that there are games that still do that i think it's fine to do that not even to mask asset loading, but rather just to like bring you into a new area, showing you that an area behind you is closed.

3:41:42Dustin Furman:Without having to say it or without having you like like Drake will stumble forward and look behind and like the rocks fall. So you don't really need to do that necessarily. Yeah, but I don't really mind that. Some of the other tropes I was thinking of, though, that I love like first of all, I love post-apocalyptic stuff. I'll always love that. But just checkboxes like the Far Cry, really Assassin's Creed. I feel like it's probably the one that really set the predicate. But, you know, the checkboxes to get the eagle feathers, jump into the piles of hay and and do like just do all these different things.

3:42:13Dustin Furman:I happen to like that kind of gaming, but I know that that's like a big problem for people, too. But tropes become tropes, I think, for a specific reason. And when I see the yellow paint one, that especially bothers me. That doesn't bother me. But I'm like, don't you understand that like 95 percent of people would have no fucking idea what to do? that this stuff doesn't they the designers aren't they're painting shit in yellow like they're watching people play the game and be like no one knows what the fuck to do yeah gotta like make it more obvious but maybe making that stuff like turn that off and then see how well you do without it i i'm not afraid to admit that sometimes sometimes i see it i'm like i get it guys but sometimes i see it i'm like oh okay so i'm not so hard on it where are you on this chris well i to the yellow paint stuff i feel like people that's another thing where it's like i feel like people just refuse to look outside themselves because i don't think they think about that in the way that they should where the reason yellow paint is so prevalent now is because everything looks good like it used to be that and it used to be that like um do you guys remember watching like cartoons or whatever and then you like you'd be watching and there'd be there'd be these beautiful hand-painted backgrounds or like there'd be like a book on a shelf and it's so clearly not painted yeah because it's going to be grabbed or whatever because it's going to be because it's going to be moved and like i feel like that was true for like really really early video games where it's just like oh obviously the ladder is going to be the thing you climb it's it sticks out like a sort of there wasn't nearly as much detail so like i feel like people aren't really thinking thinking about it in the right way where it's just like it's not a matter of like them wanting to splash paint on everything it's that everything looks interactable now everything looks fucking great everything's at like a higher fidelity than there's probably be assets in like there's gonna be assets in uh uh intergalactic that have more polygons than entire libraries of video games used to you know like it's it's fucking crazy so i lighten up a little bit with that i think i think it's forgivable but i would say like i would say crafting man i'm just not into crafting at all yeah i'm kind of over i don't i i just if the game's built around it that's that's fine cool like minecraft i've never had a problem with that's it's in the name i'd have to be a fucking idiot to jump into minecraft and be disappointed to see the crafting system you know like that's the whole point but i've definitely played games where i'm like why does this have a crafting system i remember they imported one into destiny and I genuinely have never once interacted with it.

3:44:50Why am I crafting in a game about finding loot? Like, I don't want this at all. And it's in a lot of games where I feel like, that and like RPG light mechanics, like Kratos having like, you know, this armor increases your fucking right hand damage. And I'm like, ah, this is God of War, dude. I don't really want this at all. it doesn't work for me but those are the two that stick out to me as far as like tropes go the from soft type design is becoming that a little bit i don't know i don't know if it's as prevalent as it feels in my mind but like i feel like i see that type of third person action game a lot more often now like i talked earlier about like i just feel like they used to feel a bit more distinct and now there's there's like a blueprint that i feel like a lot of people are following and that's kind of a bummer i don't know if that's so much of a trope you could argue that it is but those are the three that stick out to me that i would say fair enough it's a good

3:45:54Dustin Furman:question games are constructed on tropes often and so it's cool to be aware of that but i don't really mind a lot of that i just want games to be fun and playable obviously unique and novel are cool too what you're trying to aim for not handholding not any of that kind of stuff but i i love what you said about crafting though i kind of hate crafting these days i i also hate weapon degradation but i've always hated it since far cry 2 was really the first game i ever came across where you remember your get gunwood jam and shit i'm like what is this fucking bullshit yeah why is my gun jamming are you kidding i didn't mind it in dead rising um yeah like it's i i it makes sense in a game like dead rising or i mean it makes sense in all games really when you think about it but i just don't know if it's fun and that's that's the the difference if you're trying to create some sort of like difficult rubric by which the game is played and you really can't rely on anything i remember really hating it in zelda for instance i'm like this sucks dude like oh destructible sword what yeah you know it's a good answer though like uh do you guys see that video that was i don't know if we talked about it in the show or not there was like a viral video going on of um uh mario like a like a like a a triple a mario that's oh yeah real engine and like yeah the type of voice acting that was in it it's it was it was so it's very it was so compelling actually it was it was there was so much i love that video because you can tell that there's like such a passionate degree of hate definitely in the construction of that video where I'm like, yeah, I get this.

3:47:28This bothers me as well.

3:47:29Dustin Furman:Yeah, that was like that was going around a month or so ago. I think it was very, very funny. I watched it a bunch of times because I was like there's something really good about this, but also the contempt this year. It's so hateful. Focus M. Yeah, focus. I think that meme got a little bit too like people completely lost the plot and what that even means like really, really quick. I've never seen something die so quickly, but that initial that was hitting on something yeah all right guys that's all we have let's get the hell out of here well wait did i not go to you i didn't get the answer i'm sorry i didn't go to you i'm sorry i'll make it quick no don't take your time i'm sorry it's my fault uh my favorite trope is being able to pet dogs in games it's thanks to that twitter account yeah that's why they do it now it's smart in some way because you know you're going to get mentioned yeah well and if

3:48:20Colin Moriarty:you don't do it people will also say something be like yo why can't i pet this dog it's cute i like it uh favorite but by favorite i actually mean least favorite but something that's reoccurring i think we've talked about this is that uh rpg mechanics and fucking everything yeah particularly i'm thinking about god of war yeah i think both of those games are excellent fantastic games but I always am like I don't need this I don't need RPG mechanics or skill trees in certain games things like

3:48:51Dustin Furman:that dude that's that's why I don't think Naughty Dog gets enough credit for the restraint they showed in Uncharted and especially The Last of Us yeah I totally agree right and there were some in The Last of Us there are some minor permanent upgrading but it's not you're not earning experience points and I think Uncharted with that shit would have been intolerable but but The Last of Us the last you could have imagined The Last of Us being a much more robust game and they didn't do it and i think it actually served the game a lot so restraint is important with that stuff like i i think i think both god of war games would be far stronger games without them without those mechanics i like earnestly i think you detract from a lot of things like you could just build a lot cooler shit without it i agree my friends it's time to go that's it now we're really done i'm sorry i almost sent you into the great beyond without without uh allowing you to speak on the last inquiry here, but now you go to California, but we'll get to you.

3:49:48Dustin Furman:Let's say goodbye to everyone. Final comments, closing comments. Chris, let's go to you first. Goodbye to you and be well. Any plans that you want to report? No, I think I'm going to take it easy. I got to clean up because I was like, I was sick for like, I was weird. Like I had like a cold or like a flu or something that knocked me on my ass for exactly like a day. But it was just like, I've never had something feel sick. I've never felt so sick for such a short amount of time. It was confusing to me. I was like, why am I okay now? But that one day, I was open and shit, and I just didn't care because I was not feeling good.

3:50:30So there's a bunch of stuff that I got to do, like dishes and taking some stuff out, a bunch of boxes and mail. So I'll probably just do that. It's a very low-key day.

3:50:40Dustin Furman:What about you, Dustin? Goodbye to you. Be well.

3:50:42Colin Moriarty:anything to report and you're so you're leaving tomorrow i'm leaving tomorrow afternoon uh direct flights that's nice but of course if there's you know we have normal weeks all the time when i have nothing going on but then the one week where it's like i would be nice to have a normal week because i'm traveling xbox is like no conference so i'm very busy after this getting duke out and then we'll have sacred out tomorrow nothing's going to change of course with any of the content other than no sacred streaming on monday right because we already did it we already did it uh yeah mr turkentine already explained it to you yes yes uh but yeah i'm flying out tomorrow saturday going to universal persona concert and uh it's gonna be fun i'm sure we'll see i'll see some uh listeners around so you can say hello and um that's it how big is brad's bed is he you have a queen bed or king bed me i think it's a single i don't know i don't remember no you're gonna remember soon enough i know i hope you're comfortable again two jokes this episode

3:51:54Dustin Furman:yeah i know i'm just rehashing them yeah i know i'm sorry rehashing them and the stream yeah i know i'm out i'm a lot of material i'm fucking running on fumes here it's okay so does the

3:52:02Colin Moriarty:audience it's only two things they want to say is jokes about japan jars uh and brad and brad Yeah, Japan, George and Brad, your greatest passions.

3:52:14Dustin Furman:All right, my friends. Well, good work today. Thank you for your time. We got a lot done. Thank you all out there for your love, kindness and support. Hope you enjoyed the show. We'll see you next time for more. Last Stand Media dot store for merch and Patreon dot com slash Last Stand Media for early ad free access. 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 Collins Last Stand LLC. and is proudly recorded in the USA. The show is conceived by, is written by, and is directed by me, Colin Moriarty.

3:52:47Dustin Furman: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. As 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.

3:53:41Dustin Furman:Thank you.

3:54:09Dustin Furman:of the Diocese of Brig, Gabe's New Gabe Cube, Gary Cavallo, Gavin, Ghoststorm672, Geo Corsi, Grayson Maxwell, Gregory Slavinsky, Gus, Hush, Jad Rita, Jake C, Jamie Fraley, Jason Arzon, Jay Getter, Jean-Francois Forzy, Jeff Mercado, Jerome Ferreira, Jimmy Rodriguez, Joe McPartland, Joey Gondaliger, John Schultz, John Zile, Johnny Waffles, John Cordero, Jonathan Coates, Jonathan Cortez, Joosh, Jorge Pal, Joseph Baker, Joseph Lopez, Josh Godfrey, Josh Gravelick, Josh McKinney, Josh Schullinger, Joshua Smallwood, J.P. Lynch, Justin Payne, Justin Wagaman, Cam Wallace, Keith Richards, Kendrick Caius, Kyle Hagel, Kyle Martin, Lizard King, Logan Little George, Madmock Media, Miranda Grubba, Martin Beck, Mason Bouchard, Matt Flowers, Matt 20, Matthew Ash, Matt MGS 24, Michael Buffel, Michael Gates, Michael Mash Potato, Michael Vecchio, Mr.

3:55:09Dustin Furman:Tom, Morgan Ashley, Mr. Finkler, Mr. Malf, My Name is Mayo, Nate Izod, Nathan R, Neil Amon, Nick Amato, Norse Nuts, Ali Fritz, Omar, Omar Rosa, Orchard, Organic Produce, Out of Focus Bigfoot, Patrick Leslie, Paul Joyce, Peyton Stone, Phil Crone, Qualia Freak, Randall Holsey, Rallo, Relentless Rex, Remington James, Ray Ligia, Robert Byers, Robert Schultz, Roto24, Ross Marenka, Ryan T. Mandel, Sakib Alam, Saul Balcazar, Sean Mason, Shane Brecky, Shane Miller, Shane Rayoum, Silent Butt Deadly, Simon Conception Jr., Sketch McGetch, Spencer F., Steven Glasman, Steven Innerfield, Stewie108, Sunny Sides Up, Sweaty Magic, Sweet Jones, Terry Tip, The Fandom Traveler, The Shady Mailman, Throw Seven, Toby Ryland, Tony Zuniga, Trelon, Trench Goat, Trey Woodward, Tyler Tremel, Uncharted Shinobi, Vance Cody, Vega the Late, Vitra, Who is Stephen Day, Will Williams, William Holbert, Worry-Son, Whiskey -Sin, Zach Cohen, Zachary Wood, Zen Red, Z-Man 8601, and Zainal Yuichi.

3:56:21The Super Mario Galaxy movie hits theaters on April 1st, and it's easily going to be one of the biggest film events of the year. This time the stakes are cosmic as Mario and his friends travel across entire galaxies to stop Bowser Jr. from destroying the universe as we know it. You've got all your favorites, Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Bowser, plus Yoshi and Rosalina joining the adventure in a way that fans of all ages are going to love.

3:56:47Dustin Furman:It's funny, it's epic, and it really leans into the wild, imaginative energy that has made Mario a pop culture icon for the last 40 years. Whether you grew up playing the games or you're just looking for a great time at the movies, this is one you'll want to see on the big screen. Experience the Super Mario Galaxy movie only in theaters April 1st. The galaxy is waiting.

3:57:09Colin Moriarty:Why have I asked my electrician I found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster Nibbles in our yard for me? Because I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires, I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet Nibbles after his untimely end. Huh. Nibbles.

3:57:23Dustin Furman:Gone too soon. May he scurry in peace. Hey, sorry about your pet, but I just wire stuff. Nibbles would have loved you like a brother. Connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home projects at Angie.com.