#402 |The Story Was Quite Clear

43:32i just hate that so much like i just had to share that with everyone regina yeah um that's behavior i am very fastidious about getting my leaves because the leaves do blow around you got to get them off of your yard you got to get them out you don't want to blow them away you got to like lift them up, put them in a bag, get them out. So I think you I think with Regina, you got you got something going. You got something brewing here. You should take all the leaves and put them in bags and then just dump them all over a yard. You know, you have an HOA. Because if you if you do, you might not want to do that.

44:08But if you live in like a free for all neighborhood, you can fuck around with this woman forever, probably. So I've had it, I say. Regina, Dustin, do you do you rake? your yard we don't have many leaves that show up because we don't there's like my neighbor has a few trees but they don't really get into our yard very much so very little raking but i as fun as it would be to fuck around with regina or vagina you know there's nothing worse than having an enemy as a neighbor so i guess how much how much additional work is she really putting in like for your leaf raking time you know because if you're keeping the peace to some degree though you did literally quote that she said loves trump's because she uh because he's getting rid of brown people that is very directly racist yeah if that is an actual quote so maybe it's worth not keeping the peace yeah i yeah i mean why would you want to keep a piece the piece with someone like that anyway because you live beside them yeah but it's like you could win that battle too you can make them twice as scared of you as that you are of them it's this constant battle of attrition i know oh my god it's like for instance i play the drums i can make my neighbors miserable you know i play like only in the mid-afternoon basically but i can play at any time i can open the windows you know i can do that all that so i i probably talked about it at the time because it was some years ago now but i've only ever had a quarrel with one neighbor in my neighborhood and she actually moved, which was awesome.

45:51She was like one of the first people, you know, people start eventually leaving the neighborhood and new people come in or whatever and she was the first one to leave, which I thought was like so serendipitous because I had like real, it was like awkward almost. But like this woman lives next to like a communal kind of field and everyone brings their dogs there and like walks their dogs and all this kind of stuff. But she would just let her dogs go and poop there and then like come back in like as it was their backyard. And I got in like an argument with her over it. like straight up i'm like this is fucking rude you're crazy that you do this like you need to pick up like i'm sick of my dogs almost stepping in your dog's shit and all the rest and all these things are very awkward i was pretty i mean i was pretty heated because i was like this is bullshit like i i hate dirtbag shit i hate it i want to live in a nice place like a nice society no degeneracy high trust respectful but you fall out of that and you're my major enemy and it was just so we had this really awkward thing going and then they moved and i was like maybe you made the move i would be awesome i hope so over dog poop it's pretty you know what dude the second the third the fourth time you step in someone else's dog shit yeah or your dog steps in the dog shit yeah i'm not i don't give a fuck how how crazy it seems it's like no no way man if i'm not doing something to someone i don't expect it to be done to me period that's like that's like the whole thing i expect to be treated with respect and that's so disrespectful you know and a few of the other neighbors caught wind that i like had an argument with that lady and we're like thanks and i'm like well someone's got to do it i'm from new york

47:28oh man collie good luck to you and thank you for writing in and good luck to regina as well sounds like she's going to need it

47:38god what's up what's wrong with canada man I'm looking it up now. Regina is the capital city of the Canadian. Oh, Saskatchewan. I said Manitoba. My bad. My bad. Checked. Snopes. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I'm shot today, man. I don't know what's going on. Anything else to say before we get in the news? No. All right. Then let's go. Sacred Symbols is sponsored by BetterHelp, a novel way to seek the talk therapy you may need. Learn more now at BetterHelp.com slash symbols. There's no doubt that concern over one's mental health is no longer taboo these days, and that's great.

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49:26Talk to someone who will listen. Your emotional well-being matters. Find support and feel lighter in therapy. Sign up and get 10 % off your first session at BetterHelp.com slash symbols. That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P dot com slash S-Y-M-B-O-L-S. Again, for accessible, affordable, and convenient therapy that meets you where you are, head to betterhelp.com slash symbols. My friends, let's get into some of this news here. This starts with gamesindustry.biz. Just thought I'd throw this out there. We know that Sony, based on reporting from Bloomberg, looks like they're moving away from PC releases for AAA single-player games.

50:01and a lot of this probably comes from the fact that obviously there's a threat from steam machine and all the rest and the ubiquity of steam but also from just the lack of there being any real reason to do this comparable to the amount of money sony makes on its own consoles and of course what you lose by bringing your games to other consoles which is sometimes unquantifiable but games industry.biz reports on a new zoo study and they write sales data indicates sony's ps5 ports are increasingly losing audience share on PC, but only because of release timing. And they write, quote, following a Bloomberg report that Sony will no longer be publishing first party PS5 games on PC, which suggested the decision was driven in part by poor sales for recent titles released on the platform.

50:41An analysis by Nuzu for GamesIndustry.biz has suggested the company's release strategy limited its reach on PC. The company's strategy for releasing PC ports well after the PS5 release, save for the notable exception of 2024 hit Helldivers 2 led to lower audience. They write lead to. Oh, OK. Lead. I think they might have led to lower audience share on PC compared to games that released on multiple platforms simultaneously. The firm said the trend applied to all publishers, not just Sony. And the director of market intelligence at New Zoo told Games Industry Up is the following quote. New Zoo's data shows that PlayStation titles ported to PC after their console launch typically see PC account for around 13 percent of total players in the first three months across both releases.

51:22By comparison, when comparable AAA titles launch simultaneously on PC and console, PC contributes closer to 44 % of players in the same period. What's notable is that this pattern is not specific to Sony's first-party portfolio. We see almost no difference between first-party PlayStation titles, 12 % PC share, and third-party PlayStation exclusives, 13%, suggesting the outcome is primarily driven by the staggered release strategy rather than franchise demand on PC, end quote. there's a little bit more information if you guys want to go and check it out you can go on there on games industry up is they have some some more of the study dustin this is fairly obvious isn't it it seems like it's more this i this i wanted to talk about this because it's being circulated a lot and i want to acknowledge it and yet i think we know don't we understand that that's what hurt it's a matter of what that means to sony if you're selling 44 of your copies on pc as opposed to 13 percent um yeah yeah good well i think that they began to understand that it's like well because i've seen this point out it's like well they're not selling well on pc because they're not day and date and that's true there could be you know in a different reality if sony did decide to go day and date their pc sales would certainly skyrocket at least i think so that that would be the case is that you know people would be more excited at the launch all the marketing's there people are wanting to play it um and so that would maybe help and maybe even help them release sell more copies of a game on launch day but it's as you were saying colin the the hidden cost of that where it's like okay well you may get more day one sales but certainly that's going to erode the console base of people maybe not everyone there's always people that are going to be console only people but it's certainly if you are a pc gamer um or interested in getting a pc and and playing more there that you don't really need a playstation then anymore at that point and i think it makes sense where and we had this conversation last week about like yeah maybe steam machine isn't a problem now but the idea of pc becoming more accessible in the living room maybe not this year or in the next three years but maybe in the next 10 certainly could be an issue for them and also makes sense colin they mentioned the third party stuff why square annex wants wanted out of the exclusivity deals for final fantasy uh remake and rebirth and you know they finally got those out on other platforms and why part three I would imagine is going to be a multi-platform release at launch as long as they haven't locked it in it doesn't from the way they're talking about it I don't think I think they got out of that you know on one hand with Square I'm annoyed at Square Enix just because I think they're kind of assholes with some of the shit that they like they just nothing's good enough for them again I will reiterate dude selling three million copies of Final Fantasy 16 in like four or five days when ps5 had like 40 million units that was crazy and it still looked at as they were complaining about that it's like you're fucking nuts that is such a heavy adoption for your third party game um so i've kind of enjoyed that like their fortunes haven't necessarily sharpened up any when they've gone multi-platform not because they're multi-platform i don't care about that at all but because they were like blaming it like it wasn't the playstation audience wasn't good enough and i'm like well no one else is showing up for you huh they sold like 30 000 copies of final fantasy 16 that first week apparently or whatever on xbox it's like yeah well but again how would to your point how would they have done with day and date chris where are you on this uh i i feel like i want to acknowledge it but i feel like it's obvious sony would sell an enormous amount of copies day and date if they had intergalactic available on pc but that hurts playstation at that point yeah it also i mean we've i i don't think i have anything else to say that wouldn't just be reiterating what you guys have already mentioned, but like, yeah, I mean, you want to make a case for people owning your machine.

55:22And if the stuff that is on your machine that is almost meant to sell it is just available elsewhere, especially in an ecosystem that is becoming more and more approachable and more and more digestible as time goes on, the current economic situation notwithstanding, that does erode a reason to buy the machine. I feel that with Xbox at the moment. so like why wouldn't the same thing apply like if if if playstation games came to pc day and date as xbox games essentially do now um i'm already in the position now where i'm feeling even as an xbox fan where it's just like well i don't really need a new xbox then i'll just get everything on steam right i have a playstation because i know that there's stuff coming out on that thing on that machine that's not going to be accessible on pc and if it is going to be accessible on pc it's not coming right away and i just want to be able to get to it first and i think that's the obvious thing that i i don't know why it's it seems it seems weirdly controversial to even bring up that fact now or like it becomes like a like an argument for some reason as if it's debatable but it's just like no this is the reason why consoles exist in the first place this is the reason why you bought consoles is for the games that came out on them like what do we what do we what are we talking about yeah and the coherence of everything too like which we'll talk about in the next story about consoles remind me we were talking about apple earlier kind of like the apple ecosystem like this linear storefront and like ways to absorb things within that ecosystem the way everyone kind of experiences things the same way it's controlled um yeah it's why it's why like when we're talking about project helix it was uh it was interesting because i was like i'd be kind of upset that my console manufacturer was turning me into a PC gamer.

57:13I'm not a PC gamer. I'm, I'm a console gamer. I'm proud of that. I have no problem with that. Sure. Like, do I, do I come off of like a Luddite compared to PC people or whatever? Sure. Like I, but that's the whole point. So I will say, man, like I pushed square did an interesting study with their audience where they, they pulled them like people in the PlayStation ecosystem, like hardcores are so overwhelmingly happy about this PC failure. It's just so funny. Like they're into it. Like everyone's like, yeah. And it's like, well, that's fine. I don't necessarily agree with this, of course, but got to show up and buy these games then on PlayStation.

57:52Or I said this to Jaffe. I'm like, Sony's going to be back to this territory. Like this PC decision isn't forever, I don't think. They're going to have to figure it out at some point. and I think Steam Machine is a potential problem for them or at least they look at it like that I think there was someone reporting some rumor somewhere someone you know some insider saying like that Sony's well aware that like Valve is serious and needs to be dealt with as like the new entrant and you know you've kind of vanquished Microsoft Sega's been long vanquished all these things these kind of bodies on the road but like they're still new challengers and steam is going to be very very formidable indeed but i agree with you with this new xbox it's it's what i was saying like i i you give access to steam i don't know why you wouldn't just buy your games on steam and then i don't understand how anyone makes money but steam so it's gonna be a bit interesting thing to to see how that all works out but this is uh this fits in perfectly with this next story that i wanted to discuss as well and uh it's a smaller story and it's only in one territory but i think it's interesting and emblematic of where this might be going the BBC writes court hears millions of PlayStation players charge unfair download fees so we knew this was happening that there was going to be this lawsuit over PSN's closed nature and in and this hearing in the UK and it's actually beginning so here's what they write and by the way I make fun of push square for this too but BBC does the same thing where every paragraph is a new sentence stop writing like this what are we doing what the art of the paragraph dude are people that illiterate yes

59:34it looks like shit just looking at it it looks like i'm reading the fucking our father or something you know it's like it's just like a bunch of lines all right millions of uk playstation users have been victims of excessive and unfair download charges i tribunal has heard a 2.7 billion dollar class action lawsuit that's two billion pounds. Brought against Sony by consumer campaigner Alex Neal claims the console maker prevented players from purchasing digital products outside of its own closed ecosystem. Anyone who bought a digital PlayStation game or an in-game download over a period of about 10 years to February this year could be eligible for compensation if the case succeeds.

1:00:14Defending its business model, Sony told London's Competition Appeal Tribunal that third-party stores posed a security risk and it also used software sales to subsidize sales of its consoles. Opening the case for the claimants, Robert Palmer Casey said Sony had, quote, implemented a sustained strategy to exclude competition over digital distribution of products by monopolizing their sale through the PlayStation store, end quote. In order to publish any content at all for the PlayStation, he said, developers must sign a contract agreeing that it won't be distributed outside the official shop without Sony's consent.

1:00:43The case claims the shop built into PlayStation's operating system was designed to make players a captive class. Mr. Palmer further claimed users face restrictive license conditions that prevented them from seeking to bypass those controls and obtain digital content from elsewhere. He said, quote, the result, quote, the result is that Sony can and does set the retail prices of all such content itself without facing any retail competition for digital content, end quote. That's not true, by the way. We'll talk about that. He continues, quote, it allows it to obtain monopoly profits from digital distribution, setting retail prices at what it refers to as a target margin of an excessive and unfair 30 percent above the level of the digital wholesale prices, end quote.

1:01:16Again, there's no such thing as digital wholesale. The case claims Sony has unfairly profited from shifting consumer habits with more players choosing to buy digital games over physical versions supplied on discs. So the, and people can read more about this. The team estimates 12.2 million users could be in line for 162 pounds each. So that's like 220 bucks. I think, um, if this goes through, I want, I'm curious what you guys think of this, this, this is this act. And again, it can come off as pro Sony, but I would feel this way about any storefront. this pisses me off. This is kind of a version of what Epic has been doing with some success, specifically with Google.

1:01:59No one is captive to PlayStation. You're buying the console with the understanding, as has been the case since the 70s, that when you buy a console, you buy the games through the console manufacturer that either makes them directly or licenses those games. Nintendo would sue people for unofficial, as you guys probably know, like Color Dreams and Tension and Game Genie. They would sue anyone that tried to go out of bounds for them. And with mixed results. The reason this pisses me off is not because people are challenging the system. What pisses me off is that I like the way it is. And I think most players on PlayStation like the way it is.

1:02:39And I think that there are incredible downstream consequences if this actually goes through. and happens and PlayStation is somehow opened up to other storefronts or whatever, it would be basically the beginning of the end. So I don't know if you guys have anything you want to say about this, but I encourage people to pay close attention to this because I think this is total bullshit. It reminds me a lot of what I say about like when I'm when I reference Walmart and I'm like, well, Walmart decides what it sells. If you have a tchotchke that you want to sell, you don't you're not guaranteed that Walmart's going to carry it.

1:03:15And Walmart's very existence doesn't mean they have to give you an opportunity to sell your good. And if you don't want to use them, then go sell it somewhere else. I just don't understand these lawsuits are brought up by people that don't understand the business. And I'm not saying the 30 % isn't egregious. It kind of is egregious, but they use things. It's like digital wholesale prices. What the fuck is a digital wholesale price. Wholesale is buying physical goods at scale. sale. No, Sony doesn't buy the games ahead of time. They facilitate the sale of that game for one person to the other. That's the other thing they say is like, Sony determines the prices.

1:03:55It's like, no, they don't. I can tell you that straight up. We can charge whatever we want for our games. We can put them on sale whenever we want. You know, it's like, I don't know what you're talking about. So like, there's just, there's stuff in here where I just feel like it's not even accurate, like the way they're attacking it. But I think that there's there are major consequences. It's why I'm happy that Apple, for instance, has fought so hard against this idea of like opening up their storefronts. It's like we know what we're getting into. We've been doing this for a while. If you don't want this, then go do something else.

1:04:28But I like the closed ecosystem. And I don't want they're right about the security stuff. Like it could fuck a lot of things up. It's not only about security, about your passwords. It's like none of that. It's like they can vouch for like the credit card not being stolen. They can vouch for you getting what you paid for they can't vouch for like they can't vouch that they're breaking trophies they can't vouch that people are selling save data they can't like it's like what like don't you understand how crazy it would become and why it's important that these things remain closed and if you want the open ecosystem then go and steam's not even an open ecosystem there i guess you'd have to go to like what some of these drm free websites that sell some pc games and stuff like that and that's cool if that's what you're into too.

1:05:08This just bothers me a lot. I feel like this could really I don't think this is going to succeed, but I also think it's going to it could fracture like what it means. By the way, this will fuck up Nintendo shit and other people's if it goes through, too. So I don't know if you guys have anything to say, but I think this is something I wanted to keep on people's radar. I agree with you that I don't know how a third party seller on the PlayStation store would work. I do agree, though, that it appears to me that Sony does take advantage of pricing on PlayStation Store over physical, which that mentions.

1:05:44And I looked up just an example, specifically a first party game, though this applies outside of first party as well. A copy of Horizon Zero Dawn Complete Edition New Physical from GameStop,$19.99. PlayStation Store,$39.99. It's not on sale at GameStop. and there's numerous occasions where I've looked and found games. It's like, oh, well, not even, it's not even just that a game is on sale physical, just the actual retail price of a physical game. That's older is significantly cheaper than it is on PlayStation store. And like I said, this applies to both first party and third party games. So I do think there is an element of truth that Sony does take advantage of their, you want to call it a monopoly or whatever, of being the only place to buy a game digitally on PlayStation, that prices are more expensive.

1:06:42I don't know what you do about that. And I don't think that what they're proposing is the right solution. But I do think that digital-only gamers, not always, because of course there's sales there too and stuff. No denying that. They often are charged higher prices. it's it's funny though i feel like that's an incomplete i think you're right but it feels like a big an incomplete analysis in that the 20 version of horizon for instance wasn't sold at a discount to amazon to sell it for 20 they overbought the game at wholesale prices physical so now wholesale does come in and they're selling it at a price that they think it'll move they still bought it from Sony from the for the same amount of money you know that's my whole thing but because they're buying it at scale they're trying to sell it to either lose as little as possible or to make a little bit of money on it or break even or whatever so in other words I agree with you but that would own that that analogy would only be perfect if Sony was actually undercutting itself on purpose which it's not they don't want they don't give a fuck about physical games so I just think it's I don't know they want you to buy it from their store where they make they can charge whatever they want.

1:07:56Right. But what I'm saying is, is that Horizon did cost the same amount of money digitally and physically when it came out and that people overbought that or invested in too many copies or had more copies coming from second and third printings. That's their problem. Right. And now they're trying to they're playing capitalism, which is good. It's like, well, our shit's cheaper. It's cheaper because they want to get rid of it. They have to, as opposed to the digital good, not sitting anywhere on a shelf somewhere. So you're always going to get undercut physically, especially because there's not that much demand for physical games anymore you know so do you understand what i'm saying like i don't think you're wrong i think that like it's not quite complete to say that either because in other words what you're saying would only be true if sony was literally selling the games to be sold at 1999 which they're not well this copy is a playstation hits version of horizon zero dawn complete edition so it's not like the launch copy right that's what i'm saying about second or third printings like they're buying these at premiums and expecting that they're going to sell more at 29 or 39.99 like there's no way those were made to be sold at 20 you know playstation hits yeah i think they might have been back in the like the red label ps2 era i don't know that this is a red red label ps4 disc i i mean i have to look it up yeah but i think when they did introduce that playstation hits line they were either 20 or 30 bucks okay so yeah so maybe there's something to that then i i'll make sure but well no i think that that makes a little more sense though dustin And I think the only way it's funny because the only way you would solve this, I think, is to be more.

1:09:25I don't even know how you can really force anyone to do this as opposed to just withholding goods from them, but to say like you literally can't sell this for any cheaper than this. And if you do, you're not going to get the next good, you know, bundle of games. In fact, I'm pretty sure Nintendo does that right to some degree. Their games never go on sale. That must be for some reason. And it has nothing to do with the stores not wanting to undercut themselves. It's to not spurn Nintendo. Right. So Sony could use that level of force, I guess. Everyone would win, except for the consumer that wants the cheaper good.

1:09:59But I don't want whatever. Chris, do you have anything you want to add to this? I mean, I don't I don't really indulge in physical games anymore. And really, that's and really, that's a personal choice. You know, like I'm aware that I could find like games for cheaper if I if I look for look physically. I just prefer the convenience of not having to keep track of a disc or worry about the health of a disc or worry about where it is or whether or not it gets scratched or whether or not I borrowed it to somebody who's not going to give it back. You know, it's just it's more convenient. So, like, if there is a disparity there and there is, like, advantage being taken, like, I just don't care.

1:10:30But what about the what about this? The the monopolization of digital sales? Like, do you think Sony should have access to all the storefronts or? No, no, I just. We're making a choice. you know like i i like the i like the world the walled garden like i kind of i appreciate that i also have a pc also by the way which you know i if i want to go outside of that i can i'm not like restricted from doing so so i just no i i don't i don't see how that would make i don't know how that would make business sense and i also don't think from a user experience that would be all that much nicer either because it just seems like would turn the if that were to happen it would make the i feel like the ps5 ui would just be a convoluted mess of just it doesn't sound enticing to me i understand like where people are coming from from the sense of like yeah you don't want to be taken advantage of and um like i can appreciate that but i just i don't know if the solution is to just open up proprietary machines to every single storefront just because you don't like how the business is shaken up you know what i mean Like I don't, that seems kind of, that just seems kind of off to me.

1:11:39It just, it just doesn't take into account the economics of how the industry works. And I don't, I don't like this idea that like a store exists and therefore must be forced to sell everything at whatever price anyone wants. It doesn't even, it's like not the way it works. It's like, so like, what is wrong with everybody? That's, it's just so strange. You know, I went, I went and bought a, uh, this weekend, past weekend, Mike and I went to Lowe's to buy um a like hedge trimmer and they didn't have it so I ended up buying it online which is fine but we use um cobalt because you know you like you're kind of it's it's kind of funny they capture you in a way because they all share batteries so as you get like three or four these things it's like well I'm kind of like we're kind of like a cobalt family now and cobalt is a house brand of Lowe's which I didn't know actually until more recently and oh I didn't know that yeah because i learned because we were at like something else i'm like let's go to home depot and see if i can get this thing and they just didn't have any cobalt shit and then we looked it up online it's like oh cobalt is like a brand that's only sold at lowe's it's like sears and kenmore right right and craftsman used to be like that too at sears yeah right which was a huge mistake but they had to do it um and uh that reminded me it's like so like i so what you're basically saying is like i can go and bust and be like home depot has to be able to sell cobalt and and then Lowe's can't say like well that's our brand like we want you to come to our store you know and it's like well it's too bad it exists and thus it needs to be sold here it's really the same logic not for nothing um and nothing's stopping me from going somewhere else getting a different hedge trimmer using a different company not buying things at all all that kind of stuff and it's the same thing here it's like well if you want wolverine you're gonna buy it on PlayStation 5 from Sony.

1:13:25If you don't want to play Wolverine or you don't want to do that, then too bad. It's the way Nintendo's operated forever. And I understand. I think what they're really getting at if you read the language of the of the suit and like what people are saying is like they especially want you to be able to just buy in-game goods directly from the companies without Sony taking a cut. So like if you're in Fortnite, you just buy straight from Epic and Sony gets no cut. And it's like, I don't know. I don't why. hmm you'll and this is why i'm saying like you don't want this if you're a playstation fan i'm telling you right now you don't want this not only because it will degrade the experience but because playstation will quickly die i'm just letting you know it's they're talking about subsidies it's not subsidizing like because the consoles aren't really sold at a loss it's like it's how you make money it's not a vcr we're like you know uh dustin who's the company made the vcr JVC right and then they would they would license it and so like you'd always see that logo that BCR logo famously we didn't have a DVD player because they didn't want to license the DVD technology for the Wii that would have cost them literally like 50 cents a unit or something yeah so that was like that that can go or that syndicate exists and like people are getting their money it's the same reason like Sony makes money every time a blu-ray is sold um right but if you're not that's already baked into the cake if you're not going to do that then I don't know I think the economics of this of everything falls apart really badly and I like the way it is I don't want it to change you can wait for discounts you can get games for free basically if you wait long enough it's on you there are games I see sales all the time where I'm like this is what like triple a games that are like three bucks five bucks I'm like dude just wait yeah the thing is too it's like it's not it's not like an imperative thing to be a part of the conversation or whatever, like you can just wait.

1:15:18And if you don't want to wait, that's fine. But like, that's a choice. That's we have free will. You know what I mean? Ostensibly. Right. Oh, yeah. You know, maybe there's a debate about that. Yeah. Jaffe thinks it's deterministic still, but yeah, I think, I think it's to the extent that it matters. You know, we have free will. And so like, you could just wait. Like I've, I've gotten a lot of stuff on the P on the PlayStation store and on the Xbox store for dirt cheap, just because, I didn't buy it at release and I got some really great shit for five bucks same thing on Steam Steam's outrageous with that shit I can't even I feel like I'm robbing Steam half the time I'll pay three dollars for the for ten games in this like iconic series like all right well that's what I was saying Chris at the time I'm Mass Effect trilogy a couple years ago remember was five bucks and I'm like five bucks that's such a status such a steal it's insane I bought it just like was like all right on principle okay you buy that on principle you know like all right because what was that uh what was that what was it the um the guys who made peak they were talking about like the uh the math of how pricing works in in people's heads or whatever how like one dollar is free two dollars is free three dollars is five dollars yeah right right seven dollars is five dollars eight dollars is ten dollars you know yeah it's very funny it's very interesting it's it's it's totally true though it's such a it's such a nonsense that was such a nonsensical tweet or like statement but i i remember reading and being like that all of this makes perfect yeah it makes perfect sense yeah on two dollars is free right exactly it's a shame it's a shame that money has been eroded so much that that's all true that like you could be integers away from the actual number and you still feels like that not a good sign um not great so i yeah i just i mean i appreciate people want the best prices they want the most options i just don't think you get like like who plays console gaming for the most options what are you talking about like it's just it's like are you fucking new it's like i bought an nes i want to play master system games on it's like shut up little kid go buy a master system it's like it's always been this way or be a pc nerd and go emulate your games like a fucking dork i saw one of these massive rom repositories is shutting down.

1:17:38Oh. It has like, I don't, I don't know the name. I just see it circulating on social media the last few days. That's been up for a really long time. I literally haven't even looked for ROMs in probably, no joke, 20 plus years at this point of anything. I'm too afraid to even look. It's been a minute for me. Zophar's domain, that used to be the spot back in the day if people remember that. Yeah. TaxAct can think of a million things more fun than filing taxes. TaxAct is going to name some now. Sitting in traffic. Folding a fitted bedsheet. Listening to your co-worker talk about his fantasy team.

1:18:21Digging a hole. Digging an even larger hole next to that original hole. Unfortunately, TaxAct's filing software can't make taxes fun. But TaxAct can help you get them done. TaxAct. let's get them over with. All right. Well, I moved this story up because we were talking about this and this is this kind of all plays into it. PS prices dot com reports and this has been widely circulated. Sony is testing dynamic pricing in the PlayStation store. Now, we've known that dynamic pricing seems to have been going on since maybe last year in certain international localities, but it seems like it's now found its way into the United States and other Western countries where PlayStation makes the most amount of its money, so they're no longer testing things.

1:19:05And they write, quote, Sony is running a large scale A-B price test. The same games are shown to different users at different prices with discounts of up to 27.8%. The experiment includes over 190 games in 70 regions, including the US, the largest PlayStation market. The testing has been running for more than four months. Since November 2025, Sony has been running A-B price tests in the PlayStation store. Over four months, the experiment grew from 50 games in 30 regions to 190 in 70 regions, including the largest market US. Sony is testing prices on its own AAA titles and launched a new IPT LTM program with elastic pricing.

1:19:38Some PlayStation Store users are seeing experimental prices that are significantly lower than the standard retail price. It looks like a controlled A-B test. Users are placed into different groups and see different prices for the same games. So the pricing shows that Spider-Man, for instance, is shown at a 12.5 % discount, while The Last of Us Part II remastered is shown for a 10 % discount. In the U.S., the price differences are much more severe. So Helldivers is being shown for some for$28.89, which is a 27 % discount. The Last of Us Part 1 for$52, assuming all these games or most of these games start at$49 or$69.

1:20:12God of War Ragnarok, for instance,$57.99. And then there are third-party games in there as well. These seem like a random assortment of games, kind of, but then if you look at them kind of more closely, it seems like maybe they're working with willing partners because they have WWE 2K25, Red Dead Redemption 2 Civilization 7 and Mafia the old country in here is three of this or four of the seven games Dustin what are those games share in common

1:20:41who published them 2k right take two is definitely not so it seems like take two is in why do you never never pop quiz Chris I never get a pop quiz you want me to pop quiz I'll pop quiz Chris next thank you but I don't want to do it give it time. Like, let it like we don't want him to expect it. Now he's going to be expecting it. Sure. So it seems like they're not doing this randomly. And it might, it might be that your games have to be opt in to do this, which I think is interesting. Came to come deliverance to is one of those games. Doom, the dark ages, which is excellent is in there. And space Marine two is in there as well.

1:21:15By the way, the space Marine remake still hasn't come to PlayStation. Don't know what that's all about. Oh, oh yeah. I forgot that that even happened. Remember Xbox doesn't have any exclusives though. so all right guys people are upset about this i uh chris i'm curious what you think about the dynamic pricing i have to be honest with you it sounds nice but you think about it for a minute and you're like well i someone is getting the shitty price am i getting the shitty price how do i know i'm not getting ripped off how am i how do i know i'm not getting the dynamic price how can i manipulate this to give me the dynamic price it seems like it's kind of unworkable actually you you open yourself up to too much for no reason in my opinion like just just sell the game for how much you're going to sell it for it's completely equitable it's completely fair there's no real reason to explore shit like this like i don't know i i don't see any real benefit for not only the reasons that you're laying out there where it's just like oh well it kind of opens it up for people to scheme or figure out like oh how can i how can i game the It's just it turns into a game.

1:22:26Basically, whereas if it's if if it's one price and that's that's what it is, there's not really much you can do about that. There's not really. There's no finagling to be done. And so I'm not a fan of this generally. Yeah, I actually it's I mean, it's easy for me to say, I guess, but. I kind of like Nintendo system more of like we don't discount anything. At least you don't feel like you're getting ripped off. There's always this razor's edge with PlayStation games where if you don't buy them in the first few weeks, you're going to get got and you're going to see it because it's going to show up on like your, oh, I saw that with Borderlands.

1:23:07That's why I haven't bought Borderlands yet because I didn't buy it at the time. But I was like, oh, it's 20 % off and now it's back up to full price. And I'm like, well, now I know you charge that much for it. If I, if I inherently know you're charging less for this thing at some point somewhere to someone, it makes it more difficult for me to, to maybe put the money down as opposed to that's not a problem with Nintendo. Everyone knows they're not going to discount the games. And it seems like it works fine for them. Pacopia sold like, I'm pretty sure as many copies as Ghost of Yote has sold already.

1:23:35Yeah. So things are going fine over there. Chris, who was the fourth president of the United States? J. Edgar Hoover. Close enough. All right. James Madison, by the way. You almost got there when you started saying J. I was like, oh. Oh, no, yeah, no. interesting very good see i got him i got him for you doesn't fucking nailed him no not satisfying no i could well a little topic was a little bit off yeah it wasn't exactly timely yeah but we don't you know time we i wanted to listen to what you were you know i wanted to try to please sure sure when he did it i did notice it though it's like he always goes he always goes for Dustin.

1:24:22It's like this targeted airstrike. I'm sorry. I don't want to make you feel like you're being targeted. That's okay. I'm usually targeted. I'm used to it. If I seem distracted by this, because there's a fucking stink bug in here. Do you know what those are? Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's happened to me while recording that's landed on my mic. Yeah. And it's not a comfortable feeling. I hate them so much because they're not even dangerous. They're just nuisances. Yeah. dynamic pricing um i hate this i think it sucks i like i i think i'm in line with you colin that i am overall a capitalist but i can't deny the uh increasing amount of late stage capitalism happening and this i mean it's not just video games because there's talk of like dynamic pricing where there's like grocery stores that have, you know, digital displays that they can just change things on the day.

1:25:25Yeah. And that's not necessarily new, you know, supply and demand, things go up and down based on how people are buying. And of course, demand, right? That's why it's called supply and demand. So I get it. But when we start to apply dynamic pricing for everything in order to just squeeze as much as we can out of people. I dude, it's just it's too much at this point. And I understand that some people it's like, oh, well, you're not we're not charging you anymore because we're not raising the price dynamically. We're only dynamically lowering the price. And I'm like, it doesn't work. It has the same effect.

1:26:05it does not work that way because if someone else for some unknown re algorithmic reason is getting a lower price i am being charged more it's just the way it is when you have two prices like that and one's the higher price yeah it's not an increase to the base but i'm paying more than this other person for whatever reason your ai algorithm decided that that person that we're dynamically changing in order to get the most profit out of everybody yeah it's the other thing too is that this it just feels like a slippery slope situation to me where it's like you don't flinch when they're oh we're giving you discounts but then it's like oh but now everything on the playstation store has a dynamic price and i just i this is this is uh what did you say calling scumbag oh dbs dirtbag shit i think this is some dirtbag shit that's disguised as trying to do something nice that will eventually once we've all gotten nice and comfortable with it is going to try to bite us even harder well i think it's a i think it's them commodifying the immense amount of data that they've garnered for many many years now about people's buying behavior and i think that they have probably a great idea of exactly how to do this and this is them being as if so as opposed to having these passive sales they're now being active about going after people like even on an individual basis i mean that's why it feels a little shady too is that it's obviously individually targeting people likely that are that buy games on sale or or they probably have data where it's like person looked at game a backed out person added to wishlist backed out wishlist told him game was on sale person went in bought game yeah you know like but then yeah but but then the other thing is it's like you probably have people like us right we're like we got we a lot of games that we buy we buy on day one for the maximum price they're probably looking at that guy's gonna pay full price anyway don't don't show him any sales right right right because why would we right it's just like i just want the same yeah it's it's fucked up just because i want the same rules for everyone and again that's why i just appreciate appreciate the the overwhelming transparency of the nintendo store of them just saying like we don't we charge the same amount of money no matter what for a really long time and you're never going to get a discount so you might as well just buy it now and in fact the only argument you can make about waiting is that inflation will erode some of your value or your money the price will remain the same so the game will technically be cheaper if you want to play it like that but otherwise you know but otherwise like the gate like animal crossing is going to cost this and mario is going to cost this and so on and that's there's something like really honest about that what's funny about this too is that sony has adopted some really cool transparent shit over time that people used to complain about to make it more consumer friendly.

1:28:48Like you guys might remember for it was probably for the first what? I don't know. Not 10 years, maybe like eight years of PlayStation Plus. Like you didn't know what was coming until it was live. And people used to be like, dude, what the fuck? I just bought that two days ago. And now it's free. And so they eventually they were like, oh, we'll start telling you when things are going to go. And then and then they'll start announcing sales. And then now they have little modules where it's like this was last this price. on this. It's like, so you're doing all this cool transparent shit, very pro consumer.

1:29:21And then you're kind of shading it up a little bit with dynamic pricing. And I understand, but again, I think it's them just deploying everything they know about you. And I, I, that's, I'm, I'm fascinated by that, that they probably have individual, they probably pull out random individuals and use them as examples and meetings and stuff like that. But really, it's about like this wholesale. We know exactly what you're doing and we're going to, we know, But some of you have been on PSN now for literally 20 years. We have every one of your purchases. We know exactly what you went to the cart once and you added it to the cart and you removed the cart.

1:29:55What was that? And they can have AI scrubbing all this and analyzing it. So, yeah, it feels a little shady. I just want to know that I'm not getting ripped off. And you're right, Dustin. And like the. The them saying, like, obviously, it's like we're not raising the prices dynamically. It's like, yeah, but it is the same thing. If you're only lowering the price for some people, then you have effectively raised the price for everyone else. That's such a lawyer speak. No, we're not raising the price, right? It's like, yeah, like we're only lowering the price. And it's like, OK. Except for those that didn't get the lower price.

1:30:36Yeah, weird. it's it's hard for me man because like i just look at this reminds me when i worked retail and i just kind of i i caught a peek behind i saw some shit that i definitely shouldn't have seen because it completely jaded me to how everything works or it's just like oh this three thousand dollar tv that it costs this three thousand dollar tv that's not on sale cost sears like $23 you know and I'm just like ain't none of this real man ain't none of this real it's all fucking nonsense and it is I mean it is classic late stage capitalism I don't like the term late stage capitalism just because it suggests that capitalism is going to go somewhere and I really don't think it is I think it'll just become increasingly absurd and because it's still the best solution there is ultimately to always revert back to it there's got to be a better term for like the insanity of whatever this is and i'm not talking even about dynamic pricing but literally just whatever this is in in the life generally um markets and all that are good now everything sucks everything you buy now is worse than it used to be definitely but and and it's because like there's just i i agree with you colin that i don't think there is a better solution but as i've gotten older and have seen the way the world was before and now i'm much more like why is no one doing anything why are these companies unchecked you know like it's just they make a lot of money man well yeah the people that are supposed to be checking them are certainly making a lot of money from them too yeah it's just everything sucks yeah i think ultimately i don't know man it's just like this is kind of the where it will trend inevitably like you i've used this analogy before but it's like it's capitalism can work it just needs it needs consistent trimming it's like a garden like you can't just like leave it because then it just it smothers everything you get weeds everywhere and you can't do it you got to kind of have it's almost like it's almost like a live service game you gotta you gotta have resets sometimes you gotta update the meta oh the oh the meta is this this this this part of the game design's busted for a lot of players no one's having fun only this group of people's using it we gotta tweak this a little bit otherwise it's just a it's a dead game and no one cares so like i really yeah i don't know i don't know where we go from here really because because you're totally right everything that we get now is like worse than it used to be nothing nothing you get you own anymore everything's a subscription your car has subscription services in it to activate the fucking heated seats that are already in the car that you're using that you're driving around it's insane paid for it but you paid for the phone it it is actually crazy i actually think we're like late staging ourselves into a situation where we're like we're we're gonna kind of we're eventually going to have to just jump into something that we probably shouldn't be jumping into like i don't know what i don't know how you answer this without like completely subverting everything yeah it's well that's true i think it's getting worse i think there's a like you're right too i mean both you're right oh dustin you were saying the the inshittification of everything that is true i mean micah and i have been talking about that a lot she's experiencing that right now with uh it's it's just like the most random things like oh the coals that's the charcoal where it's like yeah she like there's like this really famous brand of charcoal she used for you know and everyone loved it for you know many decades and then it was purchased by some other company and now it's not the same anymore it's all fucked up i was talking about um it was a big thing with a few years ago when el fudge changed their cookies and i was like flipping out about it and the saddest thing about that was i was like dude i've eaten these forever you change them they're different they suck no one cares like like you're such fucking consuming pigs that like they change the thing you eat that now tastes way worse and it's like yeah we're going to do it we're going to get away with it you're going to continue to buy it and we're probably going to raise the prices too and it's like damn dude everything is like not only is everything broken but people are so beaten down like when things like everything does suck and i was you guys are old enough mike was old enough i was like i'm old enough it wasn't always like this no and i it's going to be so interesting with the 25th anniversary of 9 11 this year where it's like everything changed after that date and it has nothing to do with well some of it has to do with the terrorist attack itself obviously and like the reaction to it but like that just happens to be like this shift date it really might just be because it's kind of like the millennium and but like everything before that was better like i'm telling you like it was like all the products were better the entertainment was better lifestyles were better people were happier like you know it was more equitable like everything was just better and now everything kind of fucking sucks.

1:35:32And you see the restaurants, you see it in the grocery store when you when you buy something and it's full of, you know, a bag of chips full of air. And it's like, what is going on here? And it's not it is an indictment of capitalism, but it's also an indictment of people's comfort with. With the excesses of capitalism being foisted upon them. And I think you're right, Chris, like it needs to be trimmed back. There's a lot, a major part of late stage capitalism and the whole philosophy around that like the marxist philosophy of of you know dying capitalism is wealth inequality which is what we're what we're seeing in a major way now but i still believe that it's the it's the best possible system we should have just rolled right into moscow in 1945 and put the shit away it's the best system for a for certain things you know what i mean certain industries and certain things like that i think it i think it makes sense in medicine i think it makes no sense i think it's actually crazy well but like in video games and shit like yeah like yeah make the best shit but then at a certain point it's just like i don't know man like if you can't we're going to talk about it soon but like if you can't if you we i'll save it in fact for when we get to that when we get to the battlefield story okay but like i just brother like yeah how do you how do you not make money on or how are you not secured by well we can well i'll bump that up go ahead dustin and i'll go yeah next i guess to conclude about this with being with sony correct me if i'm wrong was there the thing that was it a sony patent was the idea of like showing you an ad and the device that it was on you had to like acknowledge the ad like it was a mcdonald's ad yeah you had to say mac or something yeah so it's so dystopian it's crazy when i see them when i see them start to implement this and it was sony right colin yeah no that was it wasn't yeah they patent it when i see them implement stuff like this and they're cooking up shit like that in the back that is so crazy and i'm like dude stepping stones you know like how they are constantly testing you to see what you're willing to put up with constantly and i don't know i don't know if we'll be screaming uh at the tv like watching an ad for mcdonald's and screaming mcdonald's in order to get your playstation discount in the future but i'm they are they are literally thinking about it they're literally cooking this shit up right now they want AI podcasts of your favorite characters harassing you it's all so so weird you heard of Persona 5 Royal it's on sale on the Playstation store what do you think boy oh man this sucks and then Alex Jones shows up talking about the Ritual Network Ragnarok is coming I'm telling you right now alright well let's talk about the battlefield let's talk about the battlefield stuff next IGN had a scoop last week that EA had layoffs across all of the studios that are working on Battlefield 6 they write quote EA has laid off an unknown number of individuals from across its battlefield teams including workers at Criterion, Dice, Ripple Effect and Motive Studios IGN understands individuals are being informed that the layoffs are taking place as part of a realignment across the Battlefield studios as the team continues its ongoing live server support for Battlefield 6 following launch.

1:38:53All four studios will remain operational, though the layoffs seem to be impacting a variety of teams across multiple studios and offices. IGN asked EA for comment on total number and types of roles impacted as well as specific reasons for the layoffs, and EA spokesperson told IGN, quote, we've made select changes within our Battlefield organization to better align our teams around what matters most to our community. Battlefield remains one of our biggest priorities, and we're continuing to invest in the franchise guided by player feedback and insights from Battlefield Labs, end quote. they write battlefield 6 was the best-selling game of 2025 in the united states sold a record shattering 7 million copies in three days and it was the best launch ever for a game in the franchise um obviously it's fallen off a bit i mean quite a bit i think since it launched um its user base has kind of eroded it was at they note here 747 440 people concurrent peak on steam when it launched now it's at 67 000 still a huge game at 67 000 plus you made all of your money up front because it's not fucking free.

1:39:49Chris, I have no, I have, I know you have a lot to say about this, so go on. Well, dude, it just, it ties in a little bit to what we were talking about before, but I'm looking at this and I'm like, okay, you had the best-selling game in the entire series. You've made a shit ton of money. You dethroned Call of Duty for the first year, and that's still not enough to keep people there? Right. Like, what do you mean? Like, you're just irresponsibly managing these things at this point. Like, there's no, there's no real way around it. It's not, how is that not a definitive win for you? I don't know.

1:40:23What is the expectation also? Is the, I think I said, I think they said something about how like we expect 100 million players or something. Do you remember when they said that? It's like, okay. As if it's just like, what the hell are you, who do you think? I love Battlefield. I think Battlefield is stellar. And I even think this last one was pretty superb, at least in the beginning. I don't know if they've changed anything and made anything worse. I can't imagine that they would have done too much to it to make it worse. I think it's just the natural cadence of those games where you kind of just play them as you feel like it.

1:40:53But I just, that was never going to hit 100 million people. Like, be real. I mean, that's an insane thing to say. Have you guys seen the Jeff Kaplan interview that's going around right now? I saw the clip. Yeah, the clip where he basically, so for people that don't know, Jeff Kaplan was at, he was the director of Overwatch, but he was a designer on Warcraft. He was there for a really long time. He was giving an interview and he said that one of the reasons he left was because he was summoned to the CFO. This was on Lex Friedman. He was summoned to the CFO's office when they were making Overwatch expansions or whatever.

1:41:32He was like, you have to hit this much money. They actually blurted it out, which is interesting. They did him a solid. Or we're going to lay off a thousand people. And it's like, the margins are so thin and you're hiring so many people that it requires that level of output. Like, what are we even doing? Like, the shitty thing about it to me, Chris, is, like you were saying, the game sold extraordinarily well. First of all, 7 million copies in 3 days at$70 is$490 million. and i'm pretty sure there's i mean i could be i could be wrong because i don't i don't i don't interact with these elements of these games too much at all and i don't know if i remember even seeing anything in battlefield but battlefield i'm pretty sure has micro transactions oh yeah i'm pretty sure there's a storefront so that's like that's the minimum of what they made right exactly and that was the minimum of what they made in three days right yeah not even yeah and it was still selling pretty pretty well like uh on word of mouth and like all that throughout the several months that followed so like i just i don't know i look at that i think about the interview with kaplan where it just like dude like it's there's i know that this is like a standard observation or whatever or like you can call it shallow if you want but i mean just dude like this is just unrepentant greed i don't know how else you describe it like it's it's this should be this should have you set for a fucking long time if you managed your shit properly and you weren't spending inordinate amounts of money on shit that you didn't need to be spending money on i i don't i i just don't get it fundamentally i just don't understand yeah i don't i don't know what it is to be on a team that delivers a game that sells like that and then you become expendable um yeah it's like it's not like you made fucking turning point fall of liberty you know like you you like and then you shouldn't be surprised that any or any of you have a fucking job.

1:43:36It's like, oh, we were the best selling game in the United States. Call of Duty didn't finish number one for the first time in 13 years. Like we should probably be set for years in terms of just like what we did. Like we did it, you know, and if the lack of support for the game is the problem, which it seems to be like they can't move fast enough. That's not their fault. You know, they delivered the game like they should have better planning or communicate better that it takes time and effort to get these things going or have the game be more robust when it launched. This all falls on leadership, in my opinion, and I do think there's a lot of blame to go around in development, but I think this time it's completely fucking crazy.

1:44:11What do you think about this, Dustin? This is a really interesting story, I think. yeah battlefield's an interesting case just because it was so incredibly successful at launch and clearly i mean the article points out there's 67 000 peak players as of you know the day before this article came out or whatever so it's not that it has died by any means but i would imagine that ea is like disappointed uh with the long-term legs of battlefield what's interesting too i know it lays out the complaints of monetization, generative AI, and fewer content updates than expected. But I think that Battlefield's lack of longevity, certainly Ark Raiders has something to do with that.

1:44:56I mean, that's what took my crew away from Battlefield was Ark Raiders. And we just have not gone back because there hasn't really been anything exciting going on. I mean, I haven't really been following it, but I haven't hurting oh you got to check out this new whatever in battlefield right now it's awesome uh no one's really had the desire to go back to this and so while i i agree with both of you to play devil's advocate a little bit which i know absolutely sucks to defend giant corporation after i just so hard in the last segment but like and it does come down to a leadership thing where it's like If they thought this game was going to be way bigger and they over hired for it and now it's simply not as big as they expected, then I could understand them laying people that that would make sense in their mind.

1:45:50But it's as you said, Colin, if the problem is that the content updates aren't coming fast enough, laying off your people is not going to solve that. No, it's going to make it far worse. But I mean, reasonably so. You want to definitely. You know, balance the economic realities. I just think I don't know how you did so well and you're still over your skis unless there are other things that are true too. And I think there's a really important component to this that a lot of people are not bringing up. And it's that EA has$22 billion in debt now.

1:46:24So they had, as you guys remember, the Saudi Wealth Fund leveraged this buyout through borrowed money. um ea's debt was two billion beforehand and is now 22 billion and they have to pay and if things are not like whatever is going to pay that bill i mean this is why it was a bit this was a stupid thing to do i mean the the stockholders of ea got what they wanted but it's like i don't know what you thought was going to happen that you you have to service that debt that's why when you hear things like 100 million players, it's like, you better hope so. Because just the interest on those payments is going to be insane.

1:47:07And again, it's like one of the, I think the biggest leverage buyouts ever. So that's a major financial component to what happened. Like everything that EA does in the future has to be looked at through that lens of servicing that debt. So that's number one. The second thing is, is what you were saying, Dustin, is it's just about team structures and expectations. I know I've been beating a dead horse with this recently but I really think we have to start talking more seriously in the industry about how we make games in a way like that is more sustainable and I know people are having those conversations broadly and generally but what I mean is like making the hard decisions which is like we probably shouldn't have the studio structure we have like that's good for that's good for moneyed confident talented teams that really prove themselves otherwise you have these ships of DCS these cover band studios that aren't really original studios anymore.

1:47:59And it's like, what is the purpose as opposed to people coming together? So Battlefield in a different world might have been made by people where it's like, yeah, your contract is through when the game launches, your job is done. Let's see how the game does. We can retain people. We obviously need people to design the new content or whatever, but maybe we don't need X, Y, and Z. I think there's better ways to do this that are more respectful of people's, not only their jobs in their lives, but like their specific disciplines so that you move from project to project more nimbly as you're needed without this overwhelming expectation that the studios studio or studios that work on these games could exist after your game comes out as you take five or six years to make the next game.

1:48:36It is economically perilous. And it's not again, not the way entertainment is made in any other scene. So. Like, there's no there are TV, there are production companies and there are showrunners that like working with the same directors and the same producers and all that. Of course, that's true, but that's it's all a la carte. And I think it keeps things safer, but you probably need to have real unions. To be able to execute on that, and I mean, like interdisciplinary SAG-AFTRA style. Industry unions, and I don't think that's ever going to happen because the the scene is just so internationalized and you're seeing movies are wrote away like I don't know, Chris, if you see this especially because you live in LA but everyone's kind of saying like LA is kind of dead in terms of the movie scene like if you like really if you like zoom out um people are just filming everywhere now some some union some not union some international it's just it's just strange like everything's decentralizing so I think we should also look towards that especially because our products are typically more expensive and take longer to do but yeah um like Lily I I mean, Lily Moe is not a great example because we're not a big studio, but like it's just me and Barry and then whoever we decide we want to work with on a specific project because we can't ride everyone.

1:49:56Like that's just not realistic. And that's probably the case for most studios. And if you if studios didn't have that overall, if studios existed on a one off basis to not have that overwhelming. Burden after the fact, then like you you're paid to make the game and then hopefully you make a lot of money afterwards, but you're not riding on that. I think it would be better, but it's I don't think we're ever going to get to that point. All right. Let's go on to the next piece of news. I moved around a lot of things so we can talk about all that in sequence, which I think was good. Glad we did that.

1:50:27This next story, though, is from Bloomberg. This is a strange one. They write net ease to stop funding Negoshi Studio as it cuts back on gaming. And this is a strange one just because this game was revealed like three months ago, But they write,

1:51:12such as social media. Negoshi Studio was created in 2021 after Toshihiro Negoshi, one of Japan's most famed game creators, decided to leave Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. and go independent. NetEase and Tencent Holdings Limited, which were both actively recruiting Japanese gaming talents for their expansion overseas, competed for Negoshi at the time. NetEase began cutting its game investments in recent years under founder and CEO William Ding's initiative, leading to job cuts and studio closures around the world. In Japan, Oko Studio, a team that pioneered NetEase's overseas push, was closed in late 2024, while Negoti Studio was given time to complete its first game in development.

1:51:46The studio unveiled a teaser for its first game, Gang of Dragon, in December, but the decision to stop sponsorship before the game is released came after NetEase discovered additional funding of at least 44.4 million dollars would be needed to 7 billion yen for the project to be completed. Negoti is trying to find new sponsors without success so far, the people said. The studio is in discussions with NetEase on the handling of game materials already developed. So of course, NetEase is a guy's been getting out of a lot of their investments, and I think reasonably so. I think a lot of it is blowing up in some of these publishers faces, not unlike what happened with Embracer.

1:52:22This is a surprising one. First of all,$40 million in the Japanese game scene is a lot of money. That's what three and a half times the budget of a Pokemon game. That's like what they need to finish the game. They just revealed it. Negoshi is a big name. very big name was that sega since the 80s i am um there's got to be a suitor for this right doesn't like someone's got to come in and finish the game and i wonder if it would be sony um 44 billion dollars so i was talking about this with michael we were eating one night i was like let's call it 100 million because you're gonna have to market it you're gonna have to ingest them it might not really be 40 million so let's just call it 100 million.

1:53:09That's kind of good for what this game is. And I think will command on the market out of sheer interest. You basically let another shareholder fund much of the game. I think this is a great opportunity for a take two for a Capcom for even a Sega, although they wouldn't do that. What do you think? yeah i think that would make sense i think that one element again like for for net ease is that they are more intimately familiar with the how the project is going and maybe can see maybe they're reading the tea leaves a little bit obviously you mentioned earlier that they are divesting quite a bit in in gaming but maybe they're looking at what's there and you're like oh you you need another 44.4 million uh and this is what you have so far so maybe there is some skepticism there for that but i like your idea of you know i could definitely see sony doing something like that or even um xbox because they've done a lot to have yakuza games on Nintendo or on Xbox as well.

1:54:26So I could see someone coming in and wanting to get this game. I'm just curious about like, is there something amiss with what's there currently that is causing them to be skeptical about putting more money into it? Yeah, I mean, that's possible as well. I'm looking at their published games list and they really don't have like huge hits to rely on, which is probably why this is blowing up for them. I mean, I guess Marvel Rivals would be their biggest thing. Where Winds Meet was also published by them. And then Destiny Rising was co-published by them. That game Frag Punk was published by them, but I don't know that it seemed like people kind of cared about that game.

1:55:07It's also interesting if you look at some of the studios that they both invested in, purchased outright, or are publishing on behalf of. They've closed seven Western studios that they like basically funded from the embryo and then they never even got a game out. They do have a quote unquote strategic investment in some cool stuff like Rebel Wolves, which I think will do well. They own a piece of them. So like they're keeping their investments going and also Quantic Dream, I'm pretty sure, is the majority, NetEase is the majority owner of them. So I wonder if they're a little nervous now. They haven't put out a game, you know, an internal game since 2018, which is pretty crazy.

1:55:49and grasshopper manufacturer i think is also or at least was with netties but i think they still are so they still own a few notable things chris do you think some some publisher some western publisher will come in and save this thing i don't know it seemed like it seemed it seemed pretty maybe pretty far along is the wrong word but it seemed relatively it didn't seem like i was looking at something that was like early you know what i mean you'd see like trailers for things and you'd be like, oh, that needs some polish or whatever. It looked fairly competent and fairly complete. I'm sure there's a lot of work to be done, but it seems like it could be saved, you know what I mean, for relatively little in comparison to, you know, spooling up a whole new IP.

1:56:29I think it's likely, or I should say it's possible. I think the issue is with the economy the way it is right now and investments kind of not being as abundant. A lot of things don't seem to be moving. in the space. So it is kind of the worst time for this kind of thing to happen. I think would probably be wise of someone to scoop this up. I don't know who or for what price or, or, or, you know, for what release date or, or, you know, what the, what the plan would be, but. I don't know. There's, I mean, you know, there's like the investments are not not coming. Yeah, I don't, it's, you're right in that it's, we have to know like what the state of the game is.

1:57:18I feel like he left Sega in 21, let's say he got everything spooled up in like 22, 23. I mean the game should be fairly far along, maybe for a 27 release. 44 million dollars, especially in Japan, sounds like a lot of money, like multiple years. And again, I keep saying that because I don't know if you guys saw that it was released today i think genki actually had it of the average annual salaries in japan for at the game developers and it's like oh my god dude now because we were talking about entry level stuff uh days ago or weeks ago um about like college graduates being on this pay scale and that they're increasing those pay scales but according to him uh sony pays the the average person in japan that that works at sony makes $63 ,000 a year.

1:58:07The average person that works at Square Enix makes$43 ,000 a year. These are high skilled white collar jobs that make games that sell for hundreds of millions of dollars. So if you're spending$44 million in that market, it's a lot of money. So something definitely worth keeping in mind. But I feel like Negoshi, man, I mean, being in business with him would be wise. He's incredible. Like if you read about him and I'm sure a lot of people know, like he was like an incredibly important person very early on in Sega's like push in the 3D era. He was, I'm pretty sure virtual racing and virtual fighter.

1:58:53He worked on both of those. He was the director of the Daytona series, which was massive series in the nineties racing series. He was the director of monkey ball. And it's funny if you read about monkey ball did really really well outside of japan it wasn't like a really irrelevant game in japan and he says how sega gave him a lot of credit for like having the idea of doing that and like how it focused on the external market and he kind of took credit for it even though that wasn't his intention at all he was like i don't know i didn't mean he's like i didn't mean it like i didn't had any idea what the western market would like and um obviously he was at ryo gokodaku for many many years and was the creator of yakuza so i just i think he's an interesting person to be in business with and and i wonder if you can kind of get this game over the finish line if you're take two then you have like maybe yeah i mean what i would do i mean i wouldn't necessarily do this i want to see the game and see like and you know obviously study it but if you're going to do the deal what you might do is say like listen we'll give you we'll do a hundred million dollar deal we'll market it we'll make sure you have the money you need we'll we'll ingest you into your into our production pipeline and um we want you know we want the ip and we want the first right a refusal on your next game or something like that.

2:00:06So it could be a good way to grease the skids towards getting more games out of in the future, especially if this game is big. It's kind of what I was surprised about with Stellar Blade. I don't really give a shit if Sony publishes it or not, but I'm surprised that it seems like the new game is going to be multi-platform. It's like, how did you not nail that down? And certainly you didn't say no to the sequel. So it's like, that was just, so things are changing. And obviously the creators are in the driver's seat. We see that with Kojima as well. But I think this would be a really interesting person.

2:00:32Like Sony really is kind of should be like the insider for this along with. A Capcom or something because just because they're Japanese and it's going to be easier to do. So I would not be surprised to see this game picked up by someone else personally, unless it really is like in horrible shape. But I doubt it. They just showed it. And I'm not saying that means the game's done, but I mean, it feels like you're you hit a milestone like you're good, like it's time to show the game and announce it. And it's like, dude, that was in December. showing the game is a big is a big i mean not for everybody i guess because some people just show it and then they fucking cancel the entire thing but generally speaking i feel like if you show the game it's it's far along definitely so we're wishing you the best negotiate i'm sure you guys will figure it out it's kind of how i feel about blue point where i'm like i feel like you might live we'll see yeah people are sniffing around blue point that was what the article said all right a couple more pieces of news to get through this is kind of neat uh this comes from lego minecraft goat who's apparently i was reading a little bit a lego insider that leaks lego sets all the time so on instagram he leaked a lego code name p for p or play it's number seven two three zero six in the lego line and it is the playstation one includes at least a controller in the console, 1 ,911 pieces, and it will cost$159 for a December retail release.

2:01:59This is obviously true, I would assume. This isn't the first Sony Lego set. Of course, there's a Horizon Lego set, not the Lego game, but the set, which I think was a tall neck, which is kind of neat. Lego is amenable with working with lots of different people, so that's not a surprise. Sony obviously is very happy to license these days as well, as we've been talking about on recent shows. Are either of you guys going to check this out? Chris, do you want to get the PS1 Lego set? It's cute. I'm not big on Lego, really. At least not these days. I played with the big blocks that came in the bucket as a kid.

2:02:36Oh, yeah, I had that too. I never really had any of the sets. I thought about the Seinfeld set when that came out. Yeah, that was cool. I did think about that one. I ended up not getting it. Probably won't get this one either, but it's a cute idea. I like these. these um these littler kind of uh niche niche ideas for lego sets i dig them but they're not for me it's 100 it's 150 bucks it's a lot for me to build something it is a lot legos are so i mean i don't mind there's a market for it it's like people love lego but it really is like enthusiast kind of it's gratuitously expensive in my opinion like like i feel like i look at lego prices and i'm like it should be less than half of what you're charging now charge what you want charged with the market will the market will withstand this obviously and by the way in my local area here in uh chesterfield virginia we're getting the very first american lego factory um it'll apparently employ a thousand people it'll be the first domestic manufacturer of lego which is cool um so it'll be good for my neck of the woods i guess but i i look at that stuff and i'm like yeah it's like i have the money to buy this stuff it wouldn't hurt but it's one of those things where i'm like i just don't want to like i'm like i'm i just can't do it it's why is it so expensive yeah and um the one thing i really like my nephew's really in the lego and so i talked to him about it is like well two things there's like these third party stores now like minifigs and something or whatever like where they like they resell legos and stuff and then i like the idea of just people like kind of selling their legos and reselling their legos and i used to get those buckets as well i had that bucket chris when i was a kid but then i would sometimes get like i was a little kid i was a dumb little kid so i would sometimes get like a lego set and there weren't licensed sets when i was a kid it was like a lego you know knights lego right right lego car whatever and i would just combine everything like a fucking moron you know so like i basically my lego bucket which i still have my lego bucket as a kid it just has like all of the shit in it that is not even like from the core lego sets but it's from like you know some spaceship or something um so i ruined all that as well intellectually lego is very attractive to me like it's very it feels like it's very peaceful you put it together it's very fun it's cool high quality no doubt high quality cool licenses it's you know all that's good stuff but yeah the 150 for a ps1 yeah even a you could buy you you could buy several real ps1 right let's check i was gonna say the playstation one was 200 when it came out you're charging me 150 for a lego facsimile of it you know yeah it just seems kind of like i i like putting together like i think i did like um with some friends of mine years ago when i first moved into my new place um and we had like just a lot of space to kind of sprawl out and build shit we built like i think uh somebody bought the infinity gauntlet and we put that together and that was that was fun and i liked it it was a cool experience but we also split that set so it was like yeah that's a reasonable kind of thing like i think i would i would probably buy this and have a good time putting it together if it was like 80 bucks yeah 80 bucks yeah I can do that yeah by the way PS1 was$300 when it came on I don't know why I said it was 200 it's one of the most famous moments in place in history I don't know why I said that Dustin are you going to buy the PS1 Lego sorry are you a Lego guy I love the idea you're going to play Magic after that Magic the Gathering I've never played Magic the magic the gathering cast a spell the you can buy a complete in box uh playstation one on ebay for 100 bucks uh but i totally understand that's like it's the experience of building it the fact it's made out of lego so i'm not saying that's a full replacement but an interesting fact i love the idea of lego because anytime i've bought them i've really enjoyed building it the most recent one is my uh mario world set that holly got me for i think my birthday and i got we got it like very discounted i think it was 80 bucks or something i think it was normally a much more expensive set and i had a blast building it it was so much fun and i love the way it looks in the background of my set here so that was good um but i do have the problem with some of these other sets you guys had the the seinfeld set that was interesting i was really interested in the lego ribbendell set that was huge and looked so cool but it's like dude i already don't have enough space to display half the shit that i want to put up in my house it's like where am i gonna put this it'll be so fun to build that but once it's built it's like now what unless you've got the you know and some people do have like very dedicated lego shelves for all their builds and i think that's awesome i think it's super cool if you're super into that but it's uh it's not for me and for in in specifically my case and again i know this won't be everybody's but i would rather have an awesome real ps1 display than a lego version and it would actually and it would be cheaper you wouldn't get the experience of building it of course no but well you can you can go you can go to foxconn and build one if you want dude i'll uh a day in the life of the chinese quarters yeah you know they have bunk beds there and stuff you'll be fine they'll be like a sleepover you'll get all you'll get the company money go to the company store yeah fall into the company suicide net sleep in the company bed after they put the company tranquilizer in you and then it'll be a the dream yeah it's it's gonna be perfect for you love that i love that let's do it all right lego ps1 we'll see you in december i'm sure many of you will buy it again intellectually it's like when the tall neck was announced i think i was like yeah maybe i'll get that but then like when the time comes i'm not gonna do that yeah if i got that as a gift i'd be stoked you know i'd be like i'm definitely gonna put this together i'm gonna have fun yeah it's very i haven't put a lego together in many many a year and it is something very satisfying but it's God, it's just so expensive.

2:08:46I imagine 3D printers. It's the same thing I know is happening in Warhammer where it's like an other figure kind of minifig games where it's like. 3D printers are going to destroy this shit at some point. And probably already are. Like once you get really high quality ones and you could just print really nice blocks and stuff, I'm sure this is going to be. Yeah. Warhammer is a similar thing for me where I'm just like intellectually, I think like I think I would I think I would probably have a really good time painting like a figurine or something. if I like really sat down and like really like committed myself to it but it's just like this is expensive and it's going to take so much time it is expensive it's really expensive I was I was never exposed to it personally until one of my nephews got into it I was like wow this is like how much it costs to like get all these supplies it seems like you can be much more your money can go much further by having other hobbies instead but it is well you're right it's super cool like a lot of those like hardcore war games board games like it's all good it's just It's magic.

2:09:40The card games like it's cool, but. Well, cool. Maybe not cool. I don't know if I want to call it. It's cool. Let's not get carried. Yeah, let's slow down a little bit. By the way, it's crazy. It's a Mike a text to me. It's snowing. I want you to know that it was. I want you to know something. It was 87 degrees yesterday. OK, like the trees are budding. Yeah, it says on my on my weather thing, it says rain and snow. It's like what? It was 60 degrees. I was dying yesterday, dude. I was walking the dogs. Like it is so hot out. Oh, my God. It's like the summer is almost here. And then it's like, oh, my God.

2:10:15Now it's 34 degrees. It's like, OK, this is disgusting. Whatever. I don't like that. I don't like this part of this season for the tension between March and April. So, yeah, yeah. Where it's just like it's going to be 60 degrees and then it's going to snow. Hmm. Now, I don't mind a blizzard in January. I don't mind like a heat wave in May or like June or whatever. but like this I hate this non-committal wishy-washy fucking Owen Wilson rom-com bullshit get this out of here get it out all right saw this posted over on Pearl Abyss's website at Pearl Abyss of course the South Korean developer that is prepping Crimson Desert for launch imminently comes out what next week uh the 17th I think right is the date something like that yeah it sounds right um people are really really excited about it i think it looks great we'll talk about that in a minute there are pc specs of course but there are console specifications as well that i thought we would get into so there for playstation 5 and playstation 5 pro each there are three performance options of performance balanced and quality and dustin i know you're a little bit of a tech nerd i wanted to get into this with you are you surprised by what they're showing here.

2:11:31It seems like on PS5 Pro, on performance mode, you can do upscaled 4K at 60 frames with high ray tracing, which is awesome. Also, I saw this morning and I have not watched it yet. And I don't really want to see too much because I don't want to see too much in the game, but Digital Foundry posted something about the console builds and PS5 Pro, I think specifically. Because I think a lot of people are skeptical about Crimson Desert, reasonably so on console. It's very ambitious, but it seems like it's going to work out all right. So what do you think about these specs here? Yeah, I watched the Digital Foundry video.

2:12:03I didn't get to watch all of it, but I wanted to make sure I saw the performance part of it. And it's looking on PlayStation 5 Pro pretty good. It's definitely not a locked 60, particularly in the video. They show off like the section where there's like all these bug enemies. And so it seems like the more enemies there are on screen, that's where the frame rate tends to dip. But even down, and again, a high stress point down to 30 FPS, or in the higher end of 30 FPS, to be totally clear. But in general, for the scale of the game, the PS5 Pro version is looking pretty good with this performance mode.

2:12:44The other thing to point out from the Digital Foundry video is that the build they were playing on was not PSSR 2. It was PSSR 1. So it had some of the issues that PSSR 1 has. um i have been a little bit skeptical about this game because of the way pearl abyss has been treating the console versions of this it seems like all the reviewers playing it right now are playing on pc there has been no one no one has said that they are reviewing the game on console so all the reviews as far as i can tell on launch day are going to be pc reviews that's concerning to me now they went ahead and did this thing with digital foundry which i think is good a good step in the right direction of transparency of this game but i just saw this that this piece so the the digital foundry videos only ps5 pro and the reason is if i'm i'm looking at uh the the creator of the video john lineman uh they only were able to test on ps5 pro because they sent them a ps5 pro console with it installed on it now in other tweets john lineman was pointing out that this is because the game is not live on the playstation store so they weren't able to like send them a game code where they could have it on an account.

2:14:13Yeah. And they could send them a bit like I'm sure they have debug consoles. They could probably send them a bill, but then it would be in the wild and they probably don't want to do that either. I would assume. Right. So between the fact that as far as I know, I don't think there is any footage of this game running on base PS five out there. I don't know if there's going to be before launch. I mean, we're a week away at this point, but they are acting weird about this game on console, specifically on base PS5. I really hope it means nothing and the game comes out and it's really good regardless of where you play it.

2:14:53Oh, and this also applies to Xbox Series X and Series S, which the Series S, the performance mode is 720p, 40 FPS. So maybe don't pick this up for your Series S. But I think the way they're handling this whole situation is really weird it's acting it's definitely red flag territory for me if i was and i'm sure many people listening to this podcast are on a base ps5 and you're interested in this game i would not pre-order it like i would wait until it's out and you can see how it's performing and how it looks before you go ahead and buy this because they from everything they've done they are hiding how this game looks on ps on base ps5 so take that as you will yeah the the the game only being reviewed on pc is can go both ways for me because obviously they want people to play it there but it's also probably most complete there and they really could still be patching the ps5 version and the xbox version getting it ready to go so there's something there but i don't i don't it's not uncommon for people to want you to play and to force you to play on the on the best possible platform like that's not in and of itself a red flag to me.

2:16:04I do think that like the caginess around it generally is more of a red flag, but then them sending like an entire pro unit is kind of a ballsy thing. And like they and they're sending it to the people that will tell you the truth. I don't think Digital Foundry is dishonest, right? I mean, they don't have that kind of reputation. And so it's like I feel like that's kind of buying as much goodwill as you can. But I agree with you. it's like there is no reason to not wait unless like you must be part of it in the minute one like i don't know why you can't just wait two minutes for someone to upload a long play of it from pro and then you can see like what it actually looks like so i agree with you there let me let me present it a different way the skew of this game that is going to be outside on console that is going to be the highest sold and played on the base ps5 they have not sent yeah that's true yeah base ps5 will definitely that is the thing to me that's like this is where maybe not you know pc is probably going to be the is is the lead platform on this game and that's going to be where it's played most but secondary that it's going to be base ps5 and that's where they have not shown as far as i can tell once again anything on base ps5 and that to me is the problem where it's like dude a huge huge slice of the purchasers of this game are playing it there and if we're seeing the ps5 pro version which is looking very good and they have similar cpu specs so i can't imagine it being that different but it's like what do you why are you hiding it it's interesting the on playstation 5 they claim performance mode will be 1080p at 60 with low ray tracing uh balance will be upscaled 4k from 1280 at 40 frames and quality will be upscaled 4k from 1440 at 30 frames so i can't i would never want to play a game like this at 30 frames but that's gonna be pretty stinky xbox series s performance mode 720p 40 frames no ray tracing quality mode 1080p 30 frames no ray tracing but they met they managed to make it work i guess they even have a little thing for rog ally which is cool like a little sheet for that And they have Mac as well, which is very interesting.

2:18:15I don't know who's doing that, but God bless them. Yeah, there are Mac gamers, I guess. I mean, they exist. It's nice. There are it's it's a nice option for people that are very casual that only have a Mac. There are some games for them, which I think is cool. Yeah, it must be worth their while to do it. It must sell appreciably enough that people still do it. Yeah, the triple A space anyway. All right, a few more pieces of news and then we can get into what we're playing. we can move fairly quickly through this. This happened the day we published last week, but I wanted to acknowledge it. Pragmata got pushed up a week, which I think is kind of weird.

2:18:48And when things like this happen, I'm always like, why? I always try to figure out why. I look at like the release calendar. I try to look at Capcom's other releases in this case. It was originally supposed to come out April 24th. It'll now come out April 17th. I'm really, really looking forward to this game. I think it looks awesome. But yeah, like why? Especially because I think, Dustin, you would know this better than me. I'm pretty sure if you move the date on Nintendo, specifically you have to cancel the pre-orders and shit like that that you've accumulated i think so oh it's like not it's not nothing yeah because you're hurting yourself in some way all those people will not pre-order again some of them will well pragmatis coming out on uh switch too that's what i'm saying so yeah so them do did they so did that happen to them i think that they what What do you mean?

2:19:39They have to cancel? Because, yeah, did they have to cancel all the Pragmata 2? I think so. I think that's like a rule on Nintendo. Yeah. So that's what I'm saying is like moving it a week. Like. Yeah, like why? And then like doing that to yourself.

2:19:55I'd love to know more about that, but it's cool that it's available. I mean, it's probably gold and just sitting there. Maybe they just want to get out, but it can't even be a thing. Like I would understand, for instance, if it went from April 24th or let's say it was supposed to be like April 2nd. And they're like, now it's coming out March 25th. I'd be like, oh, you want it in that quarter. OK. But like this is this movement doesn't even move it out of it. Like it doesn't move anything for it. It's just like, OK, now it's still in the second quarter. It's still in April. Yeah, very weird. But that's happening.

2:20:24So please look forward to it. And let's see. I didn't read this inquiry, but we don't need it. I saw this. So Push Square noted this, but I saw this on PSN profiles myself. is that Myst remake and Riven remake trophies have both been published, though ports to PlayStation have not been acknowledged. Are you guys a Myst and Riven people by chance? You would have been very young when they came out, but those are iconic adventure games. Yeah, my dad played Myst. Oh, you should tell him that these are coming. Yeah, he he played Myst on the PC, and I would sometimes boot it up when I was a kid. I had no fucking clue what to do, but it looked cool.

2:21:02So, yeah, I'm gonna have to let him know about Myst. I had a missed novel like that, you know, like a young adult novel that I bought from like the scholastic fair or something when I was a kid. So for people that don't know, Myst and Riven are part of this larger series by a studio that was called Scion Productions. They're now called Scion Worlds, and they're based out of Washington State. And Myst, which came out in 1993, I was in fourth grade when it came out. I remember because it was like such a it was so beautiful. Like, it's funny when you look back at games, you're like, Jesus Christ, we thought this was like the most realistic looking thing ever.

2:21:33but it was an adventure game. I don't like adventure games really, but it was like a big hit. Like it was like one of those games that like all your friends had and they did end up porting. The original Myst came out, I think was a PS1 launch game or at least a launch era game, but it was on Jaguar and Saturn and 3DO and all that, which is kind of interesting. It later came to PSP. Even there was a PSP port of Myst and then it was followed by a sequel called Riven, which came out in 1997, R-I-V-E-N. and Riven actually also came to PS1. Interestingly, Riven, I remember, also came to Saturn, which is kind of strange.

2:22:08Very late Saturn release. And it became part of the series that I think became called, do you know anything about this, Dustin? I think it became Uru, U-R-U, the series. And then it went back to being called Myst. And I think there's like six or seven games in the series at this point. Yeah, there's a whole lore that is well beyond me. And by the way, the PS1 version of Myst was a one of the PS1 games that you can buy on PS5. Oh, OK, cool. Oh, OK, cool. So you can get it for five, five. Yeah, get the original right now. I also wanted to say that the remakes, there have been multiple remakes I think I've missed over time.

2:22:44This remake, I think, came out on PC in 2020 and has been on Xbox since 2021. So PlayStation is just now getting it. Riven, I think, never came to console the remake and it came to PC last year. So it seems like they're releasing them both. so anyway those are very notable games and if you're in the adventure space or you just like to know about truly i mean this is kind of an iconic game so it's just one of those things you might want to be aware of that's coming to psm yeah am i misremembering or does kevin o 'leary have something to do with that game uh i swear to god i swear to god he was talking about like he was talking about like how he knew the people who like made mist or some shit some weird thing let me or maybe it was like an anecdote that he said i have a weird oh his soft key international he owned I guess a piece of I'm looking at it now Softkey International and Softkey acquired the learning company oh so so they acquired Broaderbund Broaderbund was the publisher I think of oh okay so yeah that's interesting that's good that's interesting I never knew that wow look at you yeah I was listening to some interview with him and he mentioned it and I was like he was talking about these they had these software engineer guys they were working on a thing called Myst and I was like what?

2:23:55Why are you even what do you have to do with what do you it's just a bizarre thing to hear a person like that say that's interesting. He's an interesting guy, actually, in my opinion. He's like popping up a lot more on like you'd only see him on Shark Tank, but now he's like, you know, you see him as a talking head kind of now. Yeah, he's in the movie Marty Supreme. He is. What is that? I don't even know what that movie is. It's a Timothee Chalamet movie about a guy about ping pong. Oh, OK. Yeah, I haven't seen it. I want to, but I'm not spending$20 to rent it. I fucking hate that. It's ridiculous.

2:24:32All right, let's see. So that's that. Oh, yeah. Okay, Dustin, I was especially Chris won't care about this, but I was especially curious what you thought of this. Falcom, Neon Falcom, Japanese developer is celebrating its 45th anniversary. So congratulations to them. It's so crazy how things are like outside of Nintendo and Atari and stuff are getting really old. Neon Falcom, of course, is best known these days for the Trails games, Legend of Heroes and all that kind of stuff. They are apparently, according to an announcement, reviving their Dragon Slayer series. Did you see this? I did see this, but it's a blind spot for me.

2:25:08I mean, it's a blind spot for me, too. And I'm going to tell you guys. I mean, I know a little bit about it, but I did a lot more research. So this is a fairly substantial deal. Depending on what you read, Dragon Slayer is considered the very first jrpg and the very first action role-playing game and there's some consideration of like maybe it's hide light or some other things but it's like certainly up there so like neon falcom went on to kind of pioneer action rpgs more with like ease later on but like they they kind of pioneered the entire thing and the whole jrpg feel like the japanese is the a Japaneseization, as it were, of European centric role playing game themes, knights, dragons, you know, that kind of shit, castles.

2:25:57And so the Dragon Slayer series, and this is what's so interesting, and I had a it's like it's quite complicated, actually, but yada, yada, yada. The Dragon Slayer series is like the same series that we still have today in trails, like one begets the next begets the next begets the next and I learned a few interesting things so the sequel so Dragon Slayer came out only in Japan and has only ever been released in Japan it came out originally in 1984 there was a Game Boy port a Saturn port an MSX port which Square soft published which is pretty interesting there was a sequel also only in Japan on PCs and MSX called Xanadu, which came out in 1985.

2:26:40Now, here's what's interesting. I didn't know this until last night when I was researching this. And you know how like, you know, you don't know something, but then you learn something that you just didn't think was true. Like you just were like, what? Wait, what? Every once in a while, I talk about a game that I love from the NES called Faxanadu, right? And it's a game. It's actually a touchstone for Saintslayer. it's a wonderful side-scrolling role-playing game i loved that game when i was a kid i learned yesterday that fact xanadu is a spin-off of xanadu which is a sequel to dragon slayer so as a young kid actually i was playing dragon slayer and the reason i didn't know is because it was a licensed game hudson made fact xanadu so like there was no sign that falcom it would just been falcom at the time had there's no connection to i was like i and as a little kid i wouldn't know that anywhere but but yesterday i was literally at my desk like writing notes my notes here on my pad and i'm like wait i literally said i like wait what as i was like reading all this stuff and i was like fact xanadu is a reference to xanadu why didn't i know that like it was just one of those things i'm like i didn't know that i can't believe i didn't know that so anyway the series goes on and on broader bund ironically gets involved legacy of the wizard is the first time we get a core and you might know that game dustin that's an that's a fairly i think sought after nes game that's dragon slayer 4 that comes out in the west in 1989 that was the first time we really got outside of fax anadou from hudson a dragon slayer game and then we never really got another one after that there's like cesarean and then um i think the series kind of goes away there is a so I'm going somewhere, I promise.

2:28:26Dragon Slayer in 1989 had a spinoff called The Legend of Heroes. The Legend of Heroes was a TurboGrafx-16 game, and it came out in the West in 1992. So there's that game as well. And then Ys begins in 1987. It comes to Master System in the West 1989. So all these games are kind of marinating all at the same time. And as we know, later on, the Legend of Heroes begets Legend of Heroes colon trails in the sky, which brings us to, so all these series are intimately interconnected. And now they've decided on their 40th anniversary, they're going back to the very, very beginning, which I think is pretty cool.

2:29:10So I promised I was going somewhere. Maybe some people don't find that interesting, but I thought that whole thing was interesting. I knew in other words, that Dragon Slayer somehow got us to this, but I didn't realize that they were all so intimately interconnected and really East is kind of the series that's outside of all of it but I was reading I think Push Square was saying yeah they say it here they say this in part quote some would argue that Falcom's never been a very ambitious company but that's partly why it's lasted so long it's always kept its spending fairly modest and it's always retained a relatively small number of employees rarely expanding beyond the scope of what's necessary end quote and so yeah they're all the way here And of course, they're doing their Tokyo Xanadu game, which is somehow connected.

2:29:47So shout out to them, dude. Like that's that's some fucking legacy unbroken. And they're still going on and on and on and on and on. Yeah, I don't know. I'm fascinated by them. I wish I had enough time to just dedicate it to it, but I don't. I just don't. Yeah. Sounds like the Trails fans out there. Maybe you're tourists. You haven't played Dragon Slayer. So, you know, you guys are always like, oh, you need to go back and play. trails of the butt fucker 9000 or whatever it's like dude no you need to go back and play dragon you need to go play dragon slayer 5 cesarean the 1989 japanese only released and you need to report back yeah thank you i was gonna say this though i'm surprised now i don't these games sell hundreds of thousands of copies probably it's enough for them it's great i'm a little surprised that some of these games i was reading it's like some of these games literally still have not been released in the West.

2:30:42And it's like, what are you doing? Like just release the original dragon slayer games like that. Just translate them. Yeah. They might not be very playable anymore. I mean, if you ever play the original East, like East one, no, it's so funny to you. Like these games, like when we, when we say action RPGs, there's not even an attack button in East, like you run into enemies to hit them. And, um, so it's like, I understand some people are not good. Can you imagine what dragon slayer is like east came out three years later so i'm sure it's not very playable but it would be probably interesting to have those games out in the wild for the people that are curious so and i'm sure there's like all sorts of you know fan translations and stuff if you wanted to go down that route as well but anyway i thought that was all interesting so we got some of these games back in the day we got fax anadu we got legacy of the wizard we just didn't know it that it was a dragon slayer game um we got the legend of heroes if you own TurboGrafx-16 like Mike Dagan's good friend John did.

2:31:40That was so weird. Like he had a TurboGrafx and we messed with it and it almost felt like he was the only person in the entire world that had it. It's like TurboGrafx-16. What the fuck is this? TurboGrafx-16. And we played it and it was great. But I didn't know a single other person that had it. So, all right. And then finally, is that uh yeah this is right new game new ps plus games for the game catalog so if you're at the extra or premium tiers you'll have the access to the new game catalog entrance and these will begin to be available on march 17th so imminently uh some big ones here warhammer 40 000 or 40k Space Marine 2 is available for PS5 Madden 26 on PS5.

2:32:34That's pretty nice. That's the newest Madden game. Obviously, the football season's over, but I'm sure the sales fall off a cliff at that point. But you can kind of relive the glory days, if you'd like, of last season. Persona 5 Royal for PS5 and PS4 and Persona 5 Royal Ultimate Edition on PS4 as well. Blasphemous 2 on PS5 and PS4. I've been thinking a lot about Blasphemous because I didn't like the first one very much, but I feel like it's for me. I just was in a weird place and I got to go back to it at some point. And Blasphemous 2 is supposed to be excellent. Metal Eden. I highly recommend Metal Eden.

2:33:06A great sci-fi FPS. Lord of the Rings Return to Moria on PS5 and Astroneer on PS5 and PS4. And then a single premium game, which is a retro game, Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection will be available. And I assume that's, what is that going to be? The PS2 or the PS5 or the PSP rather. port i can look into that but is there anything uh here for you guys uh warhammer space marine 2 is excellent and a really fun romp uh very old school feeling kind of gears of war-esque i highly recommend checking that out persona 5 royal of course is awesome uh again with the playstation plus premium we need we need to do better it's no offense to the tekken fans but you you've gotten tekken games i think multiple times on the premium service.

2:33:57Yeah, clearly, clearly Bandai is down or I'm, yeah, Bandai is down with a, would it be Bandai? Yeah, Namco. Namco Bandai. Yeah, of course. I'm sorry. Yeah. Why was I having a brain fart there for a minute? Scary times in my life. Looks, no, this is, I agree, man. Like, I don't know. I haven't been excited for a premium game in a while, it feels like, which is kind of a bummer because I like retro stuff. But, Warhammer 40K, dude, that's a game like i i have that on my epic account i remember playing it a little bit and be like yeah this is really good i'm gonna get back to this and then like i just couldn't find it in me to couldn't find it in me to open that launcher again to play it's not so stupid because it literally is just a separate launcher on the same machine that i play everything else on but there is something there's there's like a psychological you're not alone there i don't think at all like i don't know how to make sense of it logically but but it just it exists um um so i'm definitely gonna snag this on ps5 and i feel like it'd be a good living room game as well like something about it from what i remember i feel i remember feeling like yeah this would go really hard on a tv actually like a big a big tv it probably looks great on ps5 pro as well that's the standout for me i'm probably gonna pick that up easy yeah by the way tekken 5 dark resurrection i thought it was the psp port and it is the psp port the the classic stuff is disappointing but i think it has to be balanced just honestly with like this is a pretty good collection of games being added to the to the uh list this week i mean this is a nice high quality list of games i don't know what's going on with the premium stuff though and the the classic stuff i just don't think that there's a lot of money in it and so i don't think people are bothering and so uh and that's unfortunate and that that requires sony to be more aggressive on their own front the games they own to start populating that that thing but i think it's just uh we're we're in the insular hardcore community and i just don't think anyone gives a shit yeah you're probably right but then again it's like what are you really selling at that tier then i guess like game trials like i like why even have that tier if you're not going to truly support it especially because if you're only releasing a game at a time basically it's like you could just buy that game a la carte for cheaper than an amortized subscription the premium these games are like five or ten bucks each so it doesn't you have to actually by virtue of the existence of the subscription you feel like you should support it more um just for that reason alone but whatever all right that's all we have for the news all right we're back from our little break that we usually take there that you wouldn't know about unless i said something about it the reason i say that is because i went and saw micah downstairs and she's like you got to see it i was telling you before it's snowing dude it's it's like two or three inches of snow on the ground it was i'm wow seven degrees yesterday it was i'm not kidding what is i've never seen anything like that it's upsetting like what is going on and i feel bad for all the plants out there that are kind of like you know being like is it safe and they're like yeah bugs just all the bugs yesterday flying around everyone's fucked up now everyone's like oh my god all right let's get into what we're playing uh dustin let's begin with you says here you're playing pokemon pacopia yes uh i bought this when it came out last week and it is awesome i absolutely love this game And it is the it's from the team at Koei Tecmo that does Dragon Quest Builders one and two.

2:37:23So if you've played those games, it's very similar to that. I haven't played Dragon Quest Builders to Holly love that game. So after playing this, I'm very interested in going back to it. But yeah, I played the first one. I never I played on Vita, actually, but I never played the second one. Oh, interesting. so yeah this is a a game where you are building out uh an environment for pokemon to come live in and so it has a little bit of animal crossing in it it has a little bit of minecraft in it because it is cube based in the environment and stuff like that um so it has those two elements but it has a lot more comparing it to animal crossing is interesting because it has that where you're like you're building in like habitats for pokemon to come live in um and so then they're kind of like your villagers but it has way more gameplay than an animal crossing game where they'll want you to do certain things like you need to make this environment more better for uh plant-based Pokemon by raising the humidity in the area.

2:38:36We need you to rebuild the Pokemon Center, so you have to gather all the different required materials in order to do that. I am shocked by how expansive this game is. It is technically level-based, but the levels are absolutely huge, and they each have their own Pokemon in them that you can find and build the different habitats for the shocking thing about this game though it is actually extremely depressing and i don't want to get into why without spoilers but it has probably the most compelling story in a pokemon game what i can tell you is that you are a ditto in this game and then a lot of people reacted to this trailer with disgust including myself where you play as a ditto who his trainer is gone and so he or she you know transforms to look like a human and so you are this fucked up human ditto abomination and lo and behold you find out that there are no humans around for any of the pokemon and so you find all these lore documents left behind from the oh and it's all like totally dystopian as well like everything's fucked up destroyed um but there's all this evidence of people that used to be there and it's really sad because you find all these pokemon they're like man uh like you find a lapras and it's like man i i remember my trainer riding on my back and we would go go out in the water together where'd he go and it's really fucking sad because all these pokemon don't have their trainer anymore and they're they're not used to like living on their own or like making their own community and stuff so it's this really interesting story of like the of all the pokemon coming together and a lot of the goal is they're like if we could just if we could just rebuild enough maybe the maybe humans would come back and so and some of the lore that you read again not getting into i don't want to spoil the mystery or anything like the fact that humans are gone is what's known in the marketing so but you like you find out like the stories of like what happened where did these people go and it is shockingly sad and really it's i don't want to say it's like super deep but way deeper than i thought for a pokemon game and so i'm having a fantastic time with it it's always super fun when you create a new environment for a Pokemon and certain Pokemon require certain things like so there's very basic one where it's like a two by two square of plants and that will make Bulbasaur show up or something some of them are more involved so you need to get like certain items for example last night I needed to get my favorite Pokemon Porygon and so he required a computer that was powered on because there's a whole electricity system where you need to wire up everything and create like generators and stuff like that so you have to like get a computer put it on a desk you need to find a science kit to show up and so you have to make everything perfect for them and then eventually they show up and it's always like super fun I knew that Porygon was going to show up with that but other times there's been huge fun moments for me where it's like oh who's here who's going to show up and then it's Charizard I'm like fuck yeah I love charizard now he lives here and so you can it starts with like real basic environments and then you can build houses and stuff like that and decorate and whatever you want to do um but it one of the the funny dissonant things about the game too is that the pokemon you can be like how's your living right now and they'll be like ah it kind of sucks right now i really could use some decoration or sometimes they want a toy to play with and so the different items are designated as like okay there's a decoration or a toy some of them want to be like a zoo bat wants to be in a darker environment so he's like please move my house into a cave or i'm gonna fucking die out here like okay cool um but certain items like i got a microscope that was designated as a toy and so i have like this open grassy field and he's like i want a toy so i just give him like a microscope sitting on the ground he's like oh yeah this is awesome i love this so it it is extreme it is insanely cute it is one of the cutest games i've played in a long time and it's so insanely addictive where uh i'm i'm trying to play the game and do the story though it's been very tempting for me to be like oh i'm gonna rebuild this whole town but as you play the story you unlock more abilities that make it easier to do certain things because he's Ditto.

2:43:37He can transform into other Pokemon. So you learn different Pokemon transformations that are like, I can water the grass or I think I can transform into Hitmonlee, maybe. So that's like the ability to punch boulders and stuff to break things. If you do play this game, it's best to play the story first because it's almost like a tutorial for the game. I was learning about how to make elevator shafts from an Alakazam yesterday so it is excellent and what i think um what's really interesting about this game is that it appears to be i don't want to say the first true system seller for the switch because obviously that was mario kart world but this game at least from what i can see on on twitter and stuff like that it has people like going out and upgrading buying switch 2 because it's only available on Switch 2 and I think I just saw what was like 2.4 million copies in less than a week.

2:44:35Yeah, 2.2 million in four days. My prediction, it's the tip of the iceberg for this game. If you look at how much Animal Crossing was such a big hit on Switch, obviously the pandemic had something to do with it, but it made a lot of people fans of the Animal Crossing style. And so a lot of those Animal Crossing fans have been wanting a new game. they gave them the shitty switch to update which doesn't move the needle for most of them and so you have the dedicated pokemon fans they'll buy anything pokemon and now you have animal crossing fans and you've got your first huge system seller on switch two so i am absolutely loving it it's great and i'm very curious about how micah's finding it as well because i saw she picked it up yeah i think she's enjoying it but i don't think she has like too much experience with it yet to have maybe an opinion.

2:45:28She's really been into a few things recently. She got really into Brigandine. Oh yeah, I saw her posting on Discord about that, I think. Interesting. She's got some things on her plate. Alright, Chris, it's time to talk to you about Marathon. Brent Lindquist wrote in and said, hey fellas, I want to talk about Marathon. Its hooks are all up inside me and won't let go. The fonts, the colors, the shooting, the lore, the gameplay loop. It's all big chef's kiss for me. I'm wondering what classes are Chris and Dustin gravitating to? I'm a triage boy myself as always. Thanks for the show. So Chris, you're really into it.

2:46:01You're loving this marathon. Very divisive game right now for some reason, but, um, but you're really enjoying it. So talk to us about it. Yeah, man. I don't know. The more I play of it, the more I, the more I find that I just, I love what this game is doing. I think it's, I think it really is a superbly well-designed first person shooter. It, it, it's hard to say because I don't want, I don't, I'm aware of recency bias like i'm aware of what that is you know what i mean i'm aware of like oh i'm having fun with this new thing but this really feels like i i don't think i've felt this addicted to a pvp game since probably like neither destiny game did this for me um i i loved the hell out of destiny but it didn't it did not it did not have its hooks in me in the way that this does because it it caters to that pvp side that i feel has been underserved not only just by destiny because destiny's pvp is kind of just like very casual and it's like there there are hardcore modes but it's very it's a very different kind of thing this feels like really like halo 3 level type of like this is just excellent pvp game design and i don't even know why or what or like i'm still trying to dissect everything i still haven't used every weapon in the game i haven't used every bit of build crafting i haven't you i there's a massive part of the sandbox that i have yet to even uncover um and discover but like it it just plays so immaculately and there's a learning curve to it which i didn't i didn't i kind of expected only because i i remember the alpha but i'm before the alpha like it surprised me how much of a learning curve there was like it kind of demands a lot of you it demands that you're literate which i think is a brave thing it's a brave thing to bet on in this area like you do you do have to know how to read and understand what things mean which is you know that might not pay off but yeah like i'm just learning every match i feel like i learned something new and the feeling of like getting the drop on another team or like having the drop gotten on you and then coming out on top anyway because you just kind of knew you knew the map well enough by that point this is like your you know 17th try on this map and so you know that oh there's a vent in this building and i'm stuck in here but i know about this vent i can hide in here and then just get the drop on these people it's just so it's so satisfying to the point where like i mean dude i've been up lately i've gotten myself back on schedule a little bit but i was up to like the latest i was up playing this game was like i think i went to bed at 8 a.m wow which is hardcore i can't remember the last time even in high school when i was a kid when you know when when the stakes were so fucking low and i had no responsibilities at all i i didn't get that feeling from anything even the halo games that i played endlessly so this feels very very this hits something for me there's a lot of story here that i think is surprising uh it feels like there's more story in this first couple days of marathon than there was in the entirety of like the first year of vanilla destiny which might not be that's either an indictment of destiny or or a praise point of marathon i don't really know which one quite yet but yeah the codex is really rich there's like there's bioshock style audio logs that you can find if you extract with the right types of valuables the right types of relics from like old civilization and the maps are have a lot of character there's like there's something colin in in the world design of these maps in particular i haven't there's a final map on the marathon ship proper which we have not had access to yet i think there's like a community-led arg to figure out how to unlock it um so that's going on right now uh so that's not out yet but there's an there's a weird element of like you're walking through these play spaces and they feel like they feel vaguely alien even though they're human-made structures because it's so far away and because it's so far distant into the future it feels i think it's like in 2888 or some crazy cool crazy future timeline it's super far ahead so like you're walking through these facilities in these places and you you you walk into a bathroom and it's like it's kind of uncanny because it's like yeah this i recognize this as a bathroom but it's so it's so unorthodox it's it's distinctly human but so like like it feels alien and human at the same time and it's they do a really great job of like making things feel familiar and uncanny.

2:50:55And I think that's where the art style shines a lot. It's like this, like kind of like pristine kind of recently 3d printed shells running through this, like kind of like desolate place. There's dust everywhere, but also everything looks like it was printed yesterday. And there's like, I don't know, man, like it's, it's really cool. And what I found most enamoring about this, and I wasn't expecting to actually I remember kind of going in and being like okay this is going to be a team oriented game and you know I'm probably not going to like the solo play of this I'm probably not going to have a good time running through this game by myself I just kind of got that sense because it seems like a game that's meant to be played with other people and for for the majority of time like yeah it definitely is it's that marathon I think is at it's most um stereotypically fun in an action oriented kind of way when you're playing with two people that you know fairly well or you know even just with a squad that you're communicating with on mics that you just haven't spoken to if even if you're just matchmaking with them that's when it's the most fun because it's when you can synergize abilities and you can communicate it's like oh over there i knocked him he's on the staircase over there throw a throw a drone or whatever you know it's there's team play oriented that's that's very very satisfying but when you're alone and you don't have your friends talking to you and you're kind of aware of just like oh i can't really make a lot of noise because if i i'm by myself and if i make a lot of noise someone's gonna get the drop on me uh be it enemy uh be it another player or an ai the air really are really tough so it becomes this like really tense horror almost like splinter cell kind of like stealth game where like i've had i've had a startling amount of fun playing just by myself crouching like in like crouching in the grass and like hearing gunfire and like oh there's gunfire to the west and you kind of observe and you're just kind of like sneaking your way through making it through an entire match like that without even firing your gun once and just not engaging in combat at all sneaking through vents sneaking through the water and like just crouch walking everywhere it's it's really it's so satisfying and it lets the sound design shine because dude it's like it's it's it's surprisingly immersive when you're just playing like by yourself but that's not going to be everybody's style like i've just happened to be this weird mix of a person where like i really like first person arena action and i also love stealth games so like this just happens to hit really hard in my in my really weird niche of preferences where it's just like, dude, like this, this game has like a.

2:53:45I'm never in a position where I'm not in the mood to play some variant of this game. And I'm just really into it. I've been happy to see you. Well done. I've been happy to see you enjoying it so much. It's fun to see people enjoy something. Yeah, I put like hours into it, which is I mean, that's I mean, it's an incredible amount of time and like it's. It's a. I don't know it's nice to see people like really it's such a fucking dire space recently and has been for years and everyone hates everything and everyone's so downtrodden and it's like it's just cool to see people kind of I mean a lot of people don't like this game obviously and we'll talk about that too but it's cool to see someone that I like and I know like something and kind of just it you know I know you're looking forward to a bungee game and so it's good it's cool it's cool I really I thought it would be fun, but it's it's different.

2:54:34Like it's. I didn't think it would hook me like like this much. I think I'd be going to sleep at 8 a.m. Yeah, I mean, that's hard. I don't even do that. So that's now it's fucked up. It's got to stop. Supes wrote in. I don't know if you know anything about this. He says, hey, fellas, this question is for Chris. Given that it's been established that the Clinton administration is canon to the marathon universe, what do you think the odds are that Bungie releases a future map update that takes place on a certain private island maybe even a raid where we take down evil financiers and inject and drone adrenochrome into our veins to gain purple shield just saying it could happen so and on one hand it's not that surprising all of those administrations would be in the in the lore i guess did they specifically mention the clinton administration or something well so so so yeah so marathon is so technically all the bungee games are connected even halo was at a certain point until they you know microsoft bought it and now they kind of went in their own direction or whatever but like it was always kind of the intention that a lot of bungee games followed sort of do you know anything about like the song of roland like that like that there's it's it's like a very old kind of like i don't know if it's a poem or like an old like kind of folklore thing but a lot of the games are like kind of built around around that like a lot of the characters are named after the weapons like during like during durandal from the original marathon is is a sword and so is cortana who is cortana and you know um halo so it's like a lot of it is drawn from that but marathon is kind of also like unofficially a sequel like the original marathon is unofficially a sequel to pathways into darkness which is bungie's like really really old first person kind of adventure game about a special ops marine or a special ops soldier in 1994 who is sent into a mysterious pyramid that's risen up out of the ground to to kill a sleeping god basically it's fucking awesome but that game's very very weird but like there's like there's aliens that are mentioned in that game that like are ancient in marathon by the time marathon happens because it's so far in the future but like in in pathways into darkness it's 1994 cool and what happens in 1994 in that game is that like an ancient alien like shows itself to the american administration basically who was clinton at the time and they tell him like look there's a sleeping god on your fucking planet and we're gonna we're gonna come here in eight days and if you haven't figured this out it's everything's done so technically yeah technically bill clinton is candid i love that by the way the song song of roland according to wikipedia is an 11th century chanson de gest, which means medieval story based on the deeds of the Frankish military leader Roland at the Battle of Ross and Vaux Pass in 8778 during the reign of Charlemagne.

2:57:24Europe alert. Europe alert. But OK, so this is what you're talking about here. Just so you know, I never heard of this. That's very interesting. Yeah, a lot of a lot of bungee lore is like kind of like predicated on a lot of like the concepts in that. That's too highbrow for me. It's all really cool. Like a lot of them are just remixes of the same i i like the fact that they're like they kind of just take the same ingredients and like mix them up a lot it's kind of makes makes it flexible but also familiar it's it's it's cool but but yeah i don't know man i i don't know if uh i don't know if we're going to be seeing earth anytime soon and i mean that would be really cool i just don't know how you would the story of the story of this game of which there is a lot of i don't i don't know if it would make sense for runners to be running around on earth at all well you're in house another system yeah you're you're far the whole point is that you're like so far away that it's do they do it faster the lighter do they do with generation ships in that world um they did it with generation ships nice uh like it's a 300 year generation ship and then people you know they're they're they're people called bobs they're boy the born on board um that's cool they just kind of and then eventually they just got fucked up and aliens came and ransacked them i guess you're not you don't technically know that in in this game because you're kind of trying to figure that shit out but the plant the story is like the planet is is basically just like no one knows what the fuck happened and at at the time of the original marathon trilogy a distress signal goes out but it's so far from earth that it takes like forever for that signal to reach home right right yeah and by the time they know by the time they know something's wrong it's already been like way too long and so like the conceit or the story is and i think i mentioned this last time is just like the the ship and all of the original corporate sponsors that like provided the food for the ship and provided the tech for the ship they're like well fuck we invested a ton in this colony we gotta what the hell we don't know anything about what happened what happened how can we prevent this from happening and also more importantly how can how can we recoup our losses and they can't send anybody down to the planet because the planet's now like undergone this crazy metamorphosis where people can't go down there like it's like a hostile environment now so they use like these disembodied consciousness in these in robotic shells as like mercenaries to do wet work and go down there and like figure out like grab important tech and like grab important files and documents and figure out what happened it's super cool i love that that's all of it's really fucking cool the part that i thought was really cool and i thought of you colin is really enjoying this is that your different missions that you get are from different entities that each have their own goal so the one company i chris i think it's the company you start with cyber is yeah oh so yeah it's cyber acne but then there's the ones that make food a new caloric new caloric so they sent a bunch of stuff on the original ship and so they're hiring you they're like yeah we got to reclaim some of our losses from this so we need you to go do that then there's the company that makes that made the shells themselves and so they're like your pvp oriented group where they want to use you as research to see how the different shells interact in combat um and then there's like the resistance group that you chris you know all these might have might have yeah and they look sick dude the first time you talk to that guy he's like has like weird like glowing like a glowing like almost black light effect on him it that's been the coolest part of the lore it's like whoa there's all of these entities involved that are swarming this place for the different resources or different things they can get out of it it's it's it's kind of morbid it's like a gold rush to this like abandoned colony of like of like dead victims who just like and they're just like they're trying to scrap uh pick them for scraps and it's like it's it's i don't know man it's surprisingly like there's a lot more here than i thought there would be like just straight up like i was expecting just a good and i just remember destiny one being like kind of light on story so i was like you know what i remember falling in love with destiny over time and i remember like liking destiny pretty immediately in spite of that so like if that happens again with this i'm like kind of down for that that's fine but there's just so much here the codex i think is just fucking It's a plastic bag show.

3:01:36Thank you. it's really good like it's shockingly good i love that shit i love the good writing reminds me of mass effect a little bit where there was just fun to read everything oh exactly it's a lot like mass effect in that regard like this and it's nice that it's actually in the game this time destiny had a great codex too you had to go to the website to read it yeah that's weird i don't understand that at all it felt too you fucked up that like it was good but like you i don't know why you did that you could have just put it in the game and had a win really easy people love codexes yeah dude i love i love the in-game writing and a lot of these you know some of it could be a little dry and stuff but i but But generally speaking, and it's funny, like marathon sounds really fun.

3:02:12I just I know it's almost certainly not a game for me, but it is funny that and we talked about this in the past is that I kind of unintentionally played an extraction shooter when I played when I really loved the division in the division, too, because of the dark zone stuff. And since I play alone, I was joking with you guys making you laugh because I was like, I never one time got out of the dark zone. Like I would go in just like to see once in a while and like slink around and try to get And some funny and memorable moments of like running, like just full bore running to the exit, like almost getting there, you know, and like being chased by an entire team of people.

3:02:45There is something really fun and interesting about it. And sneaking around in that world, I think would be really cool too. But yeah, you can't really sneak around in the division. No, because it's more of like a, it's more straightforward in like the Gears of War, kind of like chest high walls, kind of cover to cover. But in Marathon, you have a lot more flexibility. Like there's characters that go invisible. there's there's a there's a particular character that i like that i didn't think i would uh it's it's called the rook shell and what that is is basically like you go in by yourself you can't bring anything and you start at the middle of a match already in progress so the match typically starts i think about like 24 minutes and the rooks come in at around like 15 minutes but you're alone you're by yourself your only abilities are you can blend in with the ai on a timer and you can heal yourself kind of with an ult but that's been really surprisingly compelling because you're because you have you know that you're in a room with you're in a match with like teams of three so it's mega tense but if you manage to wipe a team of three as like as like a lone guy with nothing it feels it's so dude the highs are so good yeah it's interesting it's very compelling interesting game interesting game very weird i'm excited to see when we stream on monday um be interested to see especially at your higher level play i think that'll be really cool yeah it'll be fun a few more things to get into here chris and dustin you can sign up sound off on these two if you'd like parker freese wrote in said uh hey guys this question is for chris what are your thoughts on the lowish player counts for marathon and how much time do you think sony will give bungie to develop this game according to paul tassi of forbes steam is the primary player base for marathon which is average 60 to 80 000 concurrents so it is surmised total player counts would be somewhere around 100 to 150 ,000 concurrence this is probably well below sony's expectations probably hoping for arc raider numbers i really don't know if they were that unrealistic man i really hope they give bungie a decent runway because i feel the core of the game is great thanks and i will hang up and listen so yeah what do you do you think that i'm curious does the community of players that are playing and engaged like does that feel like it is sufficient to see this game through that i well that depends on i really think it all comes down to the this raid level that comes at like this because that's going to be that's going to be the vault of glass moment um there was there was reports of like bungee asking like outlets to kind of hold off their review until cryo archive came out yeah uh because they they have experience with this already they know they know what happens when they put out a game it's just like oh it's fine and then something comes out two weeks later that changes the narrative and it's too late um and so like if that hits like i don't know like it this was playing it playing this game as deeply as I'm playing it like this was never really geared to be this kind of incredibly approachable game in the way that like fortnight is or the way that arc raiders is this feels like a deliberate intent attempt to make a very hardcore game that's going to latch onto a lot of people not as not millions and millions and millions and millions but many many many hundreds of thousands maybe even potentially like down the road i this game feels like a game that is going to hit its higher player count later this i get i get a sense of like rainbow six siege from this game where like this is not particularly approachable but the people who are going to play this are going to be really fucking into it and everybody i've seen so far everybody that i've that i've met like normally in game right like just by matchmaking is like really into it.

3:06:15I can see them. I can see the skins they have. It's like you've bought that skin. I can't get that skin. That's a good sign that the players who are engaged really heavily are interacting with the MTX. Even though the MTX kind of suck. I was looking at the Battle Pass and that kind of stuff. I was like, I don't know if I care about anything in this. I'm not necessarily a mark for that stuff anyway, but this doesn't strike me as anything all that interesting. But people are playing it, so I don't know. This is... it depends on what Sony's internal expectations are. They knew what this game was ahead of time.

3:06:50Like they've known what this game was for a while. It's a hardcore extraction shooter. So I think part of me knows what they were getting into, but these numbers are soft. There's no doubt about it in my view, you know, whether or not they're so soft that it's like they're done. That's a different question. I do think this game has a long life ahead of it if they're willing to like really give it to it. um and i also think it could be done for fairly cheap like i don't think that it would cost a lot of money to support this game in comparison to like destiny which required like you know all right we're gonna motion capture entire fucking you know 40 minute cut scene you know uh 40 minutes of cut scenes for the entire expansion or whatever and you know build you know bespoke you know what i mean like it just doesn't feel it feels like you could do it and have it be successful whether or not they're willing to do that is a different story like i really have no idea if they let this game die though it'll it'll be it'll be another titanfall 2 situation it would just be another tragic masterpiece in my opinion that would just be like thrown under which is possible but like who the fuck knows yeah i don't know i mean i wonder because i don't want to compare it to tarkov because i know it's a much smaller game like much smaller budget game but obviously that's like the touchstone of hardcore extraction shooters and marathon and and its all-time peak is 47 000 like so i i know and it's only on pc true but i think tarkov wasn't always on steam oh okay no so i think i think it probably had a i don't know what i i have no idea i can't i can't imagine that tarkov would have been that high necessarily like i feel like it would have been like also fairly modest in comparison to like i don't know your your you know day one two million you know i mean it's not going to be great it was never going to be grand theft auto so i would imagine that tarkov in general based on the the hardcore niche of it would have also been fairly soft um but i don't think i don't think that's necessarily uh i don't think the steam counts are fair that's fair okay fair enough The other thing I was thinking was it was what you were saying was.

3:09:04Listen, I've been more critical than almost anyone of this Bungie acquisition since since day one. It was four years ago. Yeah. And I always said, like, they're going to be judged based on the amount of money they make back on their games. And if they can justify this, this cost of purchase, I don't think it's fair to assume marathon at its best. would. And I remember saying this, it's like marathon. There's no prayer that marathon is going to be the game that fixes this for you, but it can buy time and stabilize the company if they're able to do something with it. I'm sure this game was fairly expensive to make.

3:09:40I the numbers probably are a little soft. I would agree there as well. But I also think it's just a more hardcore game like I. I look at people kind of judging that the player base during the server slam and the fall off of the numbers even during the free period. And it's like, well, I just think it's OK for people to try something that's free and realize it's not for them. And I think a lot of people realize that it was probably just too hardcore and too demanding. I'm not saying it's the best game ever. I don't know. I just think that people there's like a there's a. The whole steam number thing, I think, bothers me to begin with.

3:10:14We'll get into that here. Grant Davidenko wrote in and said, hey, fellas, I'm curious what your thoughts are on the hate campaign directed at Marathon and its effects of the future life cycle of the game. Personally, I had low expectations for it, but I can't put it down. The way current day Bungie has honored their original franchise with this game is nothing short of impressive to me. I think the risk they've taken rebooting a niche franchise is commendable. I don't know when retarded slop tubers who snipe with SMG iron sights became the arbiters of discourse on games. They are unable or unwilling to approach with an open mind because of perceived wokeness.

3:10:45But I suppose this is just how things are going. Things are for gaming critique now. staring at Steam charts, hoping for games they don't like to fail. I'll sit back and listen and hope to see some fellow hogs on Tau City 4. Take care of boys and let them oink. Thank you for writing in, Graham. I wanted to sound off on this for a minute. I'm curious if you guys have anything you want to add. We've spent a lot of time, maybe even too much time, talking about cultural reactions to things recently and the loudness and the boisterousness of certain sectors of our gaming industry. But I do think there is something distinct, which is...

3:11:19it's okay not to like something. It's okay to be critical of something or make fun of something. I mean, it doesn't really matter to me. This idea that like we should be watching steam charts, like it's the score of a baseball game is, is I think kind of it's the only way I can put it is, is it's deeply off putting to me. Like I, listen, dude, I, I, we talk about schadenfreude sometimes and there are certain things that I want to fail like I want you to like in and out of games but generally and people and organizations whatever but generally speaking like I'm somewhat agnostic on it it's like I don't in a perfect world like lots of money would be spent on games people would be mega engaged with tons of games and I don't really feel good even if a game's not for me or even if I think a game is bad when I see its steam chart numbers and people reveling in its destruction I find it all quite strange and i'm a little confused why marathon is being targeted like i i don't know like concord's obvious high guard's more obvious but but marathon like i don't what's woke about it or what's like what is unlikable i don't i don't get it it's because we've kind of forgotten so so like i want to speak on a couple of these i i think the steam charts thing is interesting it's kind of if anybody's like a fan of like music or like keeps in touch with the music industry or like how that works steam charts is kind of like this is like the billboard kind of 100 shit all over it like like that's the equivalent almost where it's just like oh look at what hit look what's on the billboard and it's like it's all generally stuff that like you know who gives a shit it's it's like i don't know bruto mars or whatever you know um yeah it's good cool right uh it's not really a mark of quality if that were the case then roblox would be the best game ever made and it would be and every game would be embarrassing in relation to it and obviously that's not true I don't know I think the reason why marathon there's a couple reasons I think people aren't I think there are a lot of people who are performative I think there's there's people who are like I can't believe they did this to my favorite franchise like motherfucker you did not play marathon you are 23 he was a mac gamer yeah there's no fucking way like i'm sorry like i kind i barely played like i played the first i played marathon and marathon durandal a little bit you know what i mean i think i beat marathon durandal i didn't i didn't finish the first one um they're old fucking games and it's fine you know like and i remember really being into the stories or whatever because i would remember i read up a lot about them but there's like a performative nature of just like you turn this single player game into a multiplayer game it's like how how disrespectful even though the original game told its stories through codex entries which is like this game is actually surprisingly faithful to the original marathon in a lot of ways outside of the fact that like there's other players in there now that can fuck you over it's like it's really kind of it's kind of shocking how much of the original marathon is in here there's even the same terminals and shit that you're interacting with so there's a performative angle of that then there's the revisionist history angle and this kind of this pisses me off dude i can't believe they went to death they killed destiny for this i was there i was there day one yeah everyone hated destiny everyone everyone hated destiny i'm sorry you can you can say all sorts of shit i loved destiny from day one from the alpha i i I was into it like like hardcore.

3:14:50OK, I remember streaming it. People were like, what is this shit? They let Halo die for this. Oh, that sounds familiar. It's like, oh, they let Halo die for this. Now, suddenly you love destiny. No, no, brother, you can't you can't do that. I that bothers the hell out of me. But I think the bigger part of this really, in my opinion, is that we've forgotten that multiplayer games can be really, really high quality purely because we started referring to a lot of these games as live service and live service only. I don't know what people assume about the multiplayer games that they grew up with, that they loved, but Halo 2 and Halo 3 were live service games.

3:15:37They were games that had updates. They had map packs. They were consistently given new content. they just weren't called life service games because we didn't have a thing to call them yeah there was no nomenclature at that point yeah but i and i think now like if a new multiplayer game came that comes out like we look at it through the lens of life service instead of the way that we should look at it which is just like this is a new multiplayer game of which there are many exceptionally high quality versions of those games and i don't know i don't know if it's like a a lack of knowledge or a lack of context or just like a a deliberate uncuriosity about like how things work or how the industry evolves but a multiplayer game being multiplayer is not by virtue of that alone a mark against it i don't know what the fuck happened in that regard yeah that's very strange especially because motherfucker i see we see you these are all these are the only games you're fucking playing that's what when people always bite back at me about my my want for sony to find success and continue to invest heavily in games as a service it kind of like people's reaction to that just goes in one ear and out the other to me at this point because it's like come on man like i actually was saying it on on on the stream with jaffy where i'm like they're they were getting to a point now where people need to speak a lot less and listen a lot more because there's too many people that don't understand what time it is like they just don't get it and they think that you're speaking or i'm speaking specifically from a place where it's like this is what i want i'm like no dude i'm just observing the obvious and uh yeah it's like if it was for me we would all play 70 single player triple a games only and like weird indie shit and i give everything was but i i've long understood that the industry is not focused on me i've long i've known that since i was a kid you know like i'm not the average games consumer you have to look beyond yourself and realize what people are playing so you're absolutely right about the just the games of the service thing and and we didn't have a word for it and and can i say this too it's like there's i'm finding a lot of hypocrisy obviously which is nothing new there's all sorts of hypocrisy everywhere but like there's always this thing it's just like we want something new you know we want new shit we want we don't want the same thing over and over again right and then so bungie's like all right hey let's uh we just did halo uh we we did like you know single player story campaign we did you know robust multiplayer suite map maker you know theater mode community stuff we're gonna do an mmofps rpg we're gonna tell a story over over the course of the next decade a story that by the way they ended in a way that's satisfied a lot of the people who were playing it which is crazy um so we we did that it's like all right well we did that let's do like there's tarkov and there's there's this extraction loop but let's do like let's make it kind of class-based and let's let's let's put a lot of effort into like the storytelling and let's put like a deep codex in there and let's put like let's get some destiny build crafting in there like let's shake up the genre a little bit like do something that's not really in you know arc raiders or tarkov or like hunt showdown or anything else that's like really make this kind of different and then they're like uh why didn't you just do the single player campaign with the multiplayer suite again it's like do you do you want new things or do you want the same thing again because i guarantee you if they did marathon and it was just like okay here's a single player in the multiplayer suite and it was the same thing as halo people would be like what a creatively bankrupt studio they're just doing the same thing as halo again and by the way marathon looks the way it does now because if it looked the way marathon looked originally it would look like halo so like i don't know i don't i don't know what to tell people it really is kind of like and by the way it's one of those things where it's just like you know if the game is not for you that's fine i do think this game is a lot is more for i do think i think this game is for more people than more people would expect i just think it's kind of one of those things where like you do have to kind of learn it a little bit um but people are going to bounce off it if it if it takes too long and that's fine that's normal it's normal for things to not be for you and there's a lot of things that are not for me like baldur's gate was just not for me you know i just i i'm not a turn-based guy i don't really love fantasy that much so it was kind of like it wasn't for me but that is i look at that and i'm like that's in a that's obviously like there's i look at the design of that game and i look at like how people who interact with it deeply like love it and i'm just like there's clearly something there and that's a clearly exceptional game and the inability to step outside yourself i think is like a really sad thing yeah i agree and i don't know it's like the people that we make fun of that can't see the apple in their head it's like there's yeah there's a uh dustin i want to get you on this if you have anything you want to say but i will say this that i mean i've long been critical of the of the way people talk about games wherever but like the the behavior is becoming such loserish degenerate hopeless like i don't need to call you a loser if you're like listen if you observe a game fails you didn't like you're like fine whatever good or whatever that's different but like reveling focusing following games you don't like like rooting and for their downfalls like it's it's I don't need to tell you you're a loser if you do that.

3:21:11You know. Like, you know. Like, because that's not a thing normal people do. And I'm not saying it because of Marathon. It's anything. I remember I was pretty upset about the way people were talking about High Guard. I don't give a shit about High Guard. Concord, I totally understand. I just think like games die or live or die, should live or die based on more than the loud boisterousness of like someone said, someone that doesn't even know how to play a game. and um there's something unnatural about it and i don't mean unnatural in the way you're acting like towards the way it bends the market there's something actually unnatural like people can't be excited or curious and there's like a prevailing thing like you don't want you don't want to play the unpopular thing you don't want to be called out people talk like we all i think are like this and have been for a long time it's like the amount of shit talk towards me right like the amount of things horrible things people say about me it hurts once in a while but you be over the years become so used to it that you just kind of do your thing right it's like yeah but i like this like when 311 day was yesterday and i posted my thing on 311 you think the only thing i know people are gonna make fun of me it's like yeah at some point you kind of you kind of get used to and you're immune to it but i also try to think of the norm and i know this is a little silly but i also try to think of the normal person out there who's like on social media wants to be liked maybe a fringe player in the YouTube space or a podcast space or something and they don't want to like they don't want to go down that road and be the guy that likes the game that no one likes they don't want to be the guy that streams that game or whatever and I'm like that has some sort of detrimental effect it's unquantifiable but it has some sort of detrimental effect on the space and I think it's worth noting you know yeah no for sure like I mean there was that I think I saw a clip recently of like what is it I don't remember who the streamer was but it was I think burnt peanut was on his call and the thing was like burnt peanut doesn't stream has to play marathon off stream because people like bitch in the chat about it geez but he's but but he's still playing it you know what I mean like there's like that's kind of like I don't know man I think I really have a strong belief and I understand that I have a I have a bias towards Bundy Bungie but like it's also one of those things where like if they just if they made a game i didn't like i would just like it'd be over i'm actually surprised that it hasn't happened already like mathematically like i would have assumed that like by now it's like yeah this is i mean this it's it's about that time and it hasn't happened yet maybe the next one's gotta suck because like that's kind of crazy but i do think this is this strikes me as one of those games that it's like there's such a deceptive amount of depth in in this where like there's going to be articles about this in like years like if this dies or whatever or if you know however it goes there's going to be articles about it it's going to be like how we how like this is like it was like a misunderstood like modern masterpiece especially when the ai slop starts coming in oh buddy yeah in like in like six or seven years when like we've got like ai so when tongue tongue tongue sahur comes to fucking fortnite right right you've got all this like and uh and there's no more triple a games anymore you're going to be looking back at marathon being like oh fuck we didn't know that we tied and fall to that hard um i will say this i think it's exceptional i will say this though, Chris, that I will say what I said before the game came out and before we knew that what it was going to do is that I think Marathon is going to be fine.

3:24:30I don't think they're pulling the plug on Marathon. I don't think Marathon is going away in the years to come. I think it's still going to be played. And I think it can be played with a base of tens of thousands of concurrents that are equivalent to hundreds of thousands of players as they try to figure it out. I don't think that's a plan for long-term Warframe style success, but I think it's not going away it's in my opinion these numbers don't show a game that's dead or dying it shows a game that's struggling to find an audience that will give it a chance or enjoy it but i think there's something kind of there so i stay i stand by the original prognosis of it which is that like i think it's gonna be fine um it was never gonna be concord it was no like and it was never gonna be high guard um it was never gonna be arc raiders either no i also agree with that because i think and it's not an insult towards our creators i don't play these games but as i understand it that's just a more accessible game you know like so of course more people are going to play it it's like saying it's more people go to the britney spears concert than the fucking death metal concert down the street it's like yeah no shit you know yeah it's it's it's more yeah it's like that game's more uh it's more accessible it's more pve focused and it's a lot easier to kind of like digest like jumping into a game where you're just going to be fighting ai with your friends primarily like there's going to be fights with other people but like it's primarily a pve game marathons it's shoot on site pretty much pretty much the entire time and if it's not shoot on site it's like if people see you first they're stalking you to kill you later and it's like really like bloodthirsty so it's like i it's inherently like it's a very different thing yeah i think that's what i'm taking into account yeah but i think yeah it's i don't know i don't know what their internal expectations are um i look at the numbers and i see a little bit softer than i than I would have assumed that they would have assumed um but I also feel like this is the strongest live service game that they've ever made and by the way like I I don't include hell hell divers purely because like they don't own like hell divers is obviously like their big breakout life service success but they don't own that you know they don't own arrowhead they don't really have a lot of control and so like this is one that they're like kind of in on the ground floor they're getting a lot of people early in early and the people who are in are hardcore in and I think they would be dumb to throw that out after all of the investment that they've made into this space even if it's softer than they then they might have initially expected like I said earlier I think this has rainbow six siege level kind of like growth ahead of it if they're if they manage it well if cryo archive is as interesting as they say maybe even like maybe even retooling things and making certain maybe making a more accessible play space maybe maybe that'll get more people and I really don't know but I think it's I think it's great I'm pretty happy with it I'm happier with it than I expected to be and you know I don't know if I'll have much more to say about it I guess like by this time next week that map will be maybe out I think it's really all dependent on how far the community gets in unlocking it as far as I'm aware so there's no like set date but I would imagine by this time next week I'll have more to say about it on that regard and then after that I don't know if I'll really talk about it too much because it's just like it's going to you know you can just assume yeah we'll be playing marathon pretty pretty regularly well we'll we'll stream it and then i would like to i don't know who else is playing it like deeply but it would be cool to get a spoiler cast going in a couple weeks to like a review discussion like get deep into it for those who are playing and then we can let it go for now yeah i think uh also to be clear number one i made a britney spears reference so very timely uh the second thing is is that um i don't even think i caught it just to be clear Chris was noting like Sony owns Helldivers but doesn't own Arrowhead and so like having so the long term success of that game and what they did is really not Sony's because they're going to either have to pay a premium to keep them or they're going to move on and you're not going to be able to kind of replicate that success they're very lucky that they had Helldivers yeah I should have clarified that thank you Dustin do you have anything you want to say about any of this we've been going for a while yeah I want to put more time into Marathon I just haven't yet.

3:28:43As far as like the wishing for the downfall of the game, I think that in some ways it is a bubble problem that only exists in our bubble, but I do think it has influence to some degree. It's very easy for content creators to say the thing that everything is saying, everyone's saying and get it out and be negative as quickly as possible. but it's much more difficult for someone like Chris to go and make an in-depth video on why like Marathon is actually a masterpiece you know so I think that as time goes on we're you know if and I'm not speaking from my own experience but from from Chris's like if Marathon really is this like great thing that you know is just being hated on for the hype then I think that eventually will start to trickle out and the tune will change on this game as we've been saying it's like it's not immediately approachable like these other games uh like arc raiders or whatever and i think that that that does have it going against it i think there's an element too that some people don't have i don't know if empathy is the right word but they there's something missing in the conversation i see a lot where people are like i i don't like this therefore why would anyone like it right yeah and that's one of the things that bothers me deeply it's like oh you know i don't want sony making multiplayer games even though i play multiplayer games you know something like that and it's like oh well i don't like it and actually those people it doesn't even matter what it is i think some sony fans in particular have a bone to pick with bungie because of all of the stuff where there was the rumors about them uh being the point team behind canceling the last of us online um and they're kind of been at the core of this live service initiative so i think there's some rooting for it to fail on that point but i i don't know the idea that it's like i don't like this therefore everyone should not like it is just stupid to me but it's like i said it's so easy to make a youtube video talking about the most you know the common take that's negative yeah it's so boring it's so boring too it's like i'm not saying people are right or wrong i just think yeah where's the bravery to say things the way like for like the differentiation of opinion and all the rest i think it's being this one track mind towards rooting against things and i also think you're right, Dustin, that you made a good point about there's some sort of aggravation with Bungie and the Sony ecosystem, which I totally understand.

3:31:29Like I'm aggravated with them too, but I'm more aggravated with Sony. Like it's not really Bungie's fault that they got got. Like Sony should have never made this investment to begin with, and we wouldn't be in this position. But like rooting for Bungie to fail now is cutting off your nose to spite your face, because if you care about the PlayStation ecosystem, writing down, Sony has already written down some of the costs of Bungie, understanding that they're never going to get the money back. So we've already seen that in the financials, but not all of it, not nearly all of it. And if that happens, that's going to be bad news.

3:31:59I mean, that's going to that's going to trickle out far beyond Bungie. And so, yeah, be angry, be upset. That's a Jim Ryan thing, a Herman Hulse thing. We've already lost Jim Ryan. Herman Hulse shouldn't be in his job either. We've been saying that for a long time. But like Bungie is one of ours now. And so like just for the overall health of the studio ecosystem that Sony has, it's like even if the games are not for you and even if you disagree with the direction or whatever like it like wishing for them to just blow it is gonna be really bad um for playstation studios and so like from that perspective just i don't really get it either i i mean i understand it viscerally but i don't under it's like think about it for just a minute they're the biggest studio so i think the most expensive studio sony has you think that that's not gonna have some sort of crazy cascade um it's not gonna be good so but i think they've bought themselves time i wouldn't be surprised if bungie had more layoffs because I think the studio is still way too big.

3:32:53But I think the next game, whatever that might be, Destiny 3 or whatever, will be the one that makes or breaks the team. And who knows if and when they even get to that, you know, or if they do something else new entirely. But I think the obvious move is to make a Destiny 3. I think, yeah, I think they should. I mean, I don't know. Destiny 3 is like the obvious thing to do. If I were there, I would be pitching that. I'd be like, we should. We should have been doing this earlier. Hopefully it's going already. Hopefully. But it's arguably, it's arguably maybe a little bit better that we waited because now there's like some more tech to take advantage of we can we've had some time away so people kind of I've said this before where it's just like I do wish there was like a bit of a break you know like more like that there were more breaks between almost like the way that Naughty Dog did Uncharted 3 and then they did Last of Us and then they did Uncharted 4 again like if if Bungie wanted to do Destiny, Destiny 2 Marathon, Destiny 3 I think that'd be pretty welcome I think that'd be nice and that would be a good because a lot of the frustration too with Marathon comes from Destiny players who are just like well where's our attention you know what are you doing to our game I've been playing this game for 12 years I can't imagine I was playing Destiny for a long ass time I was more than happy to be like when they finished the story in a fucking definitive way I was more than happy to be like alright wait for the next thing I don't know man It was very clear to me that the next time that Destiny would be even remotely enticing, it would have been a Destiny 3 anyway.

3:34:26So just wait for it. You're not going to get Destiny 3 if you want Marathon to fail. Like, that's what I'll tell you that much. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know what you're expecting. Yeah, I mean, if Marathon fails, it's over. Yeah, like, what are you talking about? But yeah, I don't know. Totally agree there. Yeah, that is the definitionally cutting off your nose to spite your face. You better hope that Marathon makes enough money for them to survive it through that game. Yeah. you might even get a better destiny 3 out of this because now all the people i i said this i think on summon sign or whatever but like i think like this game feels like the pvp people like like at bungie who who weren't really doing much at destiny being we're just like we gotta make we gotta do a pvp thing right now like it's we got blue balls from not doing good pvp for a long ass time so maybe that maybe that can be the focus you know they'll have all their pvp guys on this thing and uh focus destiny on what what really what really draws people to destiny which is the PVE and the raids and that kind of thing.

3:35:17Like that might be a smart way to divvy it up. All right. Dust, do you have anything else you want to say about this before we? Nope. Okay, cool. I'll go quick. I platinum Resident Evil Requiem. That's platinum to 203. I beat the game four times. I, I really love the game. I think it's just a phenomenal game. And I highly recommend it. I'll be so eager to see what you think, Chris, when you get home. Yeah, I'm thinking I haven't looked at. I was I was going to after this look up like how the performances on Steam Deck, because I think I'm just kind of like I'm tired of waiting at this point. I think I might just like play it.

3:35:54It'll probably be pretty good on the plane or something. Maybe if it's not too bad, if it's if it's bad on Steam Deck, I'll just I'll wait. That's fine. But like, I am getting antsy about it where I'm just like, I'm I just like the other day I narrowly avoided a spoiler and I was like, OK, it's getting OK. Yeah, it's going to be a little dicey out there. There's so many millions of people. You know, so you'll find that I thought this was interesting. So we have five million sales of the game. It's probably more like six or 6.5 at this point since they but let's let's keep it at five when I platinum the game.

3:36:26And I want to make sure to see if the number even went up. It did. So the number was 5.0 percent even platinum the game. It's 5.3 percent now. That's 250 ,000 people. If you just counted across all the sales copy and assume they're all PlayStation games, which are not but like the equivalent of getting all the achievements or whatever i'm like that's a fucking residenable fans are so hardcore it's like it's so interesting because you have to beat the game multiple times and do a lot of unlocking and a lot of very specific gameplay style things so i won't get too deep into it here we've talked about it extensively the spoiler cast and review discussion will be on patreon tomorrow from when we're publishing this on patreon so please look forward to it it's been recorded and sitting there so you'll enjoy that patreon.com slash last stand media and uh so all right so do i have an inquiry here about this uh yeah we've been going on i don't be three though so i bought scott pilgrim ex oh now i was a little confused about this so that's a tribute game there's a lot of confusion about this game and i understand it because i too was confused about it up until after I bought it.

3:37:36So people know that in 2010, Ubisoft created Scott Pilgrim versus the world, the game. Right. And this was created by Ubi Montreal. So they're like their home team. It was a surprising game to come from them. They were into smaller games at that time, of course, but it was really good. And it came out to PS3 that summer. In fact, people might remember it was like for a short time a PS3 exclusive, which was especially weird at that time. And it was later re-released for PS4 in 2021. I thought up until after I bought this game Scott Pilgrim EX I was like oh it's the old Scott Pilgrim beat him up just like a redone they redid it maybe it's the original people I didn't really think twice about it I thought it was a little weird that it was$28.99 I was like that's kind of expensive but alright and I saw guys at Tribute talking about how it's not selling very well because or like implying that it's not because I think of a lot of this confusion but Scott Pilgrim EX is a totally different game now I understand they're calling it Scott Pilgrim EX X all of that i should also be clear i don't give a shit about scott pilgrim never saw the movie never read the comics uh it's about like a slutty girl isn't it that like is with all these dudes and the guys like it's like it's like i don't i'm good like i know it's not exactly that i mean there's an aspect of it i guess i know i'm just i'm just sure but it's like he has to go fight all of her ex-boyfriends or whatever like that or like yeah it's a cute idea i know it was like really popular, but I don't care about the IP.

3:38:59I really did like the game because I like beat them ups and they were a little more scarce at that time. That was what was so enticing about when Castle Crashers came out, as we talk about all the time. It's like this isn't very now these games are more common these days. But when I saw Scott Pilgrim EX, I was like, oh, I like I don't know. I just thought it was the same thing, but it's a totally different new game. Now I was so I bought it and I was going to sit down and play with Micah. We even charged the second dual sense. And then she told me to her credit. She's like, I read online that the trophies are broken.

3:39:28And I went and looked it up and I'm like, you're right, they are. So we're waiting on that. So I went and bought another game that a lot of people have been recommending to me. And a lot of people wrote in about it this week. I didn't use any of your inquiries because I didn't know I was going to play it when I had written the show, but mini shoot adventures. And I bought it last night and I played it for two or three hours. It's a really great game. People had described it to me or someone specifically at some point was like it's like old school Zelda if you're playing a twin stick shooter and it is that that is what it is uh there's an overworld and you're fighting enemies and you're going into dungeons and you're finding heart pieces and keys and items and weapons you're upgrading things and it's really really cool but you play as like a spaceship it doesn't make any sense there's no dialogue like it's it's just it's quite good and it came out in 2024 on pc so a lot of people have played it there already, but it was recently migrated to console and a lot of people were recommending it to me.

3:40:21So yeah, you're right on. I really, really enjoy that game. So that's what I'm playing now. And I don't know what I'll be going on to from there. I mean, Crimson Desert's coming. I'm going to wait to see what people think of it. I'm looking forward to it. I think it's going to be great, but I'm not going to buy it day one or anything like that. And so I think I'll spend a little time with these games moving forward. Many shoot adventures and hopefully Scott Pilgrim EX will get a patch and fix the Broken Trophy so we can get into that as well. So I'm really looking forward to playing those. But were you guys confused about Scott pilgrim tour were you in the know on that uh i did i didn't know but i i also kind of was like i didn't to be fair i didn't look into it because i wasn't that curious i liked the scott pilgrim beat him up just fine but i i too i like scott pilgrim i liked i i remember going to see the movie uh and coming out pretty high on it i like i'd go write stuff um i know a little bit about the con i was never that into it i enjoyed it well enough so when i saw this i did kind of assume that it was like maybe like a redux well it's like the same kind of game that's what's so confusing about it they're both the same game like in terms of like they're both just yeah it's the same pixel art i'm pretty sure like and they're both yeah they're brought like depth brought like double dragon brawlers uh it's yeah it's just weird that they're the same genre i don't really quite understand all of it but yeah yeah i knew it was a new game just because i bought when they re-released it finally the complete edition on it but I was confused like what it's a new I didn't know there was new Scott Pilgrim stuff to make a game out of but I'm I love the movie I've seen it many many times but I'm not connected with like the graphic novel or whatever yeah me neither I don't know anything about it it's Canadian right yeah I think so yeah yeah they've got a good uh they got a good Seinfeld bit in the movie Colin that I'm oh really I think you I mean it's like a I don't know it's very weird I remember I said I laughed out loud at the theater I was just like what the fuck is going on oh interesting I'm on steam right now looking at it and Castle Crashers is one of the recommendations smart good what a game 44 ,425 reviews overwhelmingly positive I love that era of of just indie game just on the store was so good do you remember again do you remember n plus yeah of course i played the shit and then there was like n plus plus right or something like that and like yeah there's n plus plus uh that was a game where like i what i remember viscerally about that that game is like it had a really good physics engine because there was a lot of like floaty like platforms that would like you could use to propel yourself upward but also there was a button dedicated to killing yourself right and i and i identified with that very heavily yeah definitely this is my kind of game there were so many good games back then like so many good downloadable deliberate like i always think of um geometry wars and shit like that and um yeah and shadow complex comes from that era yeah xbox especially was really i never i never played shadow complex oh i love that game you should play that on your steam deck i should that is like a weird gap because i played a lot of those like because that was xbox live arcade or like that was the summer arcade yeah i think it was 08 or 09 yeah summer yeah i should play shadow complex that's a good one that might be a that might be a thing I'll do.

3:43:31All right. That's it for what we're playing along with what we're playing section this week. But that's OK. That's nothing wrong with that. All right. Let's finish with six questions, comments, concerns, thoughts and ideas from the audience over on Patreon, patreon.com slash last day media. You submit your inquiries on the thread on the news feed each week. We publish them on Wednesdays, delete them on Thursdays for this show. There are threads for all of our shows in our network, of course. So you can take advantage as much as you want, as if you support us over there on Patreon at the appropriate levels.

3:43:56We begin with Jambi says hello, SS crew. I hope you're doing well. In a recent episode of Summon Sign, a listener wrote in about the struggle of avoiding pre-orders to wait for reviews only to have the physical copies sell out in stores for days or even weeks. Wouldn't it make more sense to pre-order the game anyway? If the reviews turn out bad or you change your mind, you could simply pick up the pre-order and return it on the spot. Just a thought or a big brain move. I'm going down with the physical ship. Also, Colin, word has been acknowledged by Nintendo after all these years. Anything is possible.

3:44:24Stay safe, gents. Now I'll cut my life into pieces and listen. A little Papa Roach reference. hmm um i saw the wart appearance on like the poster or something too small so i'm still upset he's in the movie i know but i'm saying like why is he like a bit character like he's the same size as mauser oh come on the fuck is wart what is he was the bad guy from super mario 2 that i always complain like oh you guys know a fun fact oh man uh i wrote wart too because my brain got crossed while i was like talking and you don't want this you don't want to see what this is not great it's not a great that's not a great page to pull up wart mario uh this is even worse oh okay oh yeah i do remember like the bad guy in the dream world or whatever yeah he doesn't even look he's awesome he doesn't look he doesn't spoilers spoilers um spoilers for doki doki panic literature club did you see by the way that that there was that thing for doki doki where like suddenly did you guys oh where was that it was in like it's like lebanon or something yeah and like they what they like one of these like middle eastern countries released like an alert about the game i think they might have banned it or something being like it's because it's like it's deceptive and and it's it's startling whatever i'm like the game is like 10 years old dude where have you been plus i think bigger things are going on around you right now worry about that later um i wanted to uh dustin ask you about this specifically this this question from jambi caught my eye because i was just talking to micah about this micah is obviously a pre-order uh or i'm sorry a physical gamer and she often pre-orders things and she actually pre-ordered the pokedopia from the pokemon company itself i think because it became or like one of those things because it came with a special stuffed animal yeah and uh it took it like wasn't available on time and i i said that exact thing i'm like what's stopping you from just pre-ordering games and returning them if you don't want them is that something that you do because it does seem like physical games are becoming more scarce i know a lot of things are being underprinted and reasonably so people don't want to sit on this stock and then you and then suddenly you have this big hit that you might not have been able to either pre-buy or get a a requisite amount of copies and so you're a kind of shit out of luck so it kind of forces you to pre-order in other words it's kind of a bummer that if you're if you're a physical gamer you kind of still have to rely on that you really can't go into stores and buy shit reliably yeah yeah it's uh it's become a lot more annoying i'm glad he said this is a big brain move though because i've done this before it was long before the true downfall of physical games but uh it was mass effect andromeda i pre-ordered that game the copy came on release day and i was like you know what this was at a time when i was uh holly and i were just recently married living in an apartment and uh i could still buy games but i had to be a lot more choosy and I was like nope and I returned it to Best Buy because like I don't I don't want this I would I would rather save my money or buy a different game so that is definitely an option depending on where you pre-order particularly if you pre-order from a place that has brick and mortar locations where you can easily do a return that's a great way to do it I still if it's a more niche game then i will pre-order it and i guess that could be a situation i haven't had to do that since then um but a lot of times with certain games i'll just make sure to go buy it in store on release day i did that with pocopia and then i was really glad i did because clearly nintendo nintendo didn't know what they had with this one because people it's selling out everywhere and it's funny because it's a game key card as well which just goes to show that i'm surprised for their own games they don't do like the normal thing they have this is a weird anomaly that is confusing so i'm not sure why this one in particular is a game key card but so yeah i i think this is a good option for for some people if you know you want to make sure you have the game my problem with pre-ordering games and then getting them shipped is that they no longer arrive on release day almost ever in my case that i've noticed so so that's why yeah i'll just with bigger games i will go out on launch day and find it somewhere luckily you can still do that most of the time but certain other games like it was like lunar i had to buy an order online some other things too that Croc physical edition which I recently cancelled fuck them did you see that thing with Chained Echoes suing their publisher I did see that good for them and it seems like they're taking care of their people too yeah it's crazy especially because I just I know how we're going to St.

3:49:37Slayer would be our third physical publisher when we finally get to it later in the year but I know how it works now and so when I see things like that I'm like what happened because like it's not rocket science like what happened why aren't you we can do it we do it out of our house Chain Echoes is like this big game that's working with an established publisher and they just don't publish the games for two years it's like what and so they're suing those people I didn't include that because it's kind of insider baseball but people can go look into that that lawsuit's going to be interesting i think yeah for the for the croc stuff for the context for anyone who doesn't know because i think we talked about this on stream they partnered with a company called rocket games and it's been multiple years i think too long and to be fair they did do the whole platinum version of of croc which uh delayed it but their lack of communication around it has been unacceptable so if you i think rocket games has the pre-order for that marvel beat them up we played i would caution against it personally yeah i'm i'm waiting for my refund from them because they have to mail me a check because it's been so long that their shopify or whatever they use like can't do that anymore when did they i confirmed with them my address for the refund on february 24th so soon you'll probably get it i have not received anything i do it in matches when march 24th hits it's on if it's if i don't have a refund i'm going scorched earth on rocket games yeah you got to do it i mean that's that's it's funny too because you're saying like so they change the build of the game and whatever and that is a complicating factor but in in my experience getting the game published is the easiest part it's like it's it's sourcing all the other things that you have to do like all the special accoutrements that's difficult so like when you when you just it's the same thing with uh what happened to chained echoes i think because i think they got like the ps4 copies out or something but not any of the other builds and it's like but what like it a lot of the stuff happens at the same factory like what what is going on you often put the things in with the same order and i discovered again because i did look at switch games more earnestly for saintslayer and the minimum publish is 5 000 still like she can't do it no can't do it man sorry owen wilson and meet the parents wrote in and said hi y 'all i'll keep it pithy so colin won't ignore me anymore my question is for anyone who wants to answer recently a new trademark for quake has been filed by xenomax do you think a new single player quake in the same vein as the new doom games is a viable project to undertake and what could be done to differentiate it from the new doom trilogy thanks and have a fucked day see i don't appreciate that oh because like why maybe he wants you to get fucked in a good way that's fine i might you never know i never know what happened what might happen in this house i know you don't know what's going on with me because holly hasn't brought in my coffee for quite a while right exactly well we get it i've been signaling sorry about that we understand that yeah we understand and she's pregnant you have sex great you you you don't shoot blanks great we're so happy for you

3:53:01are you guys are either of you quake fans chris this might be something more up your alley but i don't know because you love doom um quake is obviously the game they made after doom 2 so i did i have limited experience with quake uh i remember playing a fair bit of it at like at school at catholic school weirdly enough it was i think it was on the computers uh and so i would play i i which is it's all that is very funny but yeah like i played a fair bit of quake but i only played i only played quake multiplayer from my memory i didn't interact too deeply with it but i remember liking it i remember i just i'd never it never got its hooks into me but uh i've always been curious about it on a deeper level it would be cool to see them like take a crack at quake i don't really know what it entails in a single player context though like i know what is being like a really really heavily movement oriented arena shooter like that's kind of my context for for quake is like running around and rocket jumping and i love all that shit um but i i yeah i don't know i i think a pure i don't man it's tricky i love arena shooters so much but like it's very it's like clear that that's not the zeitgeist anymore and like or that's not you know what i mean that's not the meta these days uh because what's that game the portal one um split gate oh split gate is very good and like i remember playing split gate quite a bit and i remember being like this is this is good this is like a really solid arena shooter like i dig it like it's got some issues or whatever but like this is this is really solid and people liked it for a hot minute but like they kind of just gave up a little bit quick with it um i think there was another arena shit like i don't far scape or something scape it was like a something scape i i can't remember what the fuck it was called um but that was another arena shooter that people really really liked and it just kind of didn't hit so i don't know it would be cool to see them like commit to like a multiplayer arena shooter um with maybe a single player tacked on campaign i don't i don't really know what you would do but i would i'm interested I'm curious about a quake and I would be I would be totally into it if they decided to do it I think if they could do to quake what they did for doom that would be fucking I mean that'd be like a no-brainer the only difference is like doom to me like I recognize as a single player first so I know I know on some level what that looks like quake I'm it's way more alien to me yeah it's funny like I I was a little bit familiar with quake as a kid because I had pc gamer friends especially specifically the first one I remember the box art that was when you bought pc games in person of course and it had that that it was very gritty like the dark logo the logo the circle logo with like the slash through it and it just said wake it almost looked like a like a like an ancient book or something like a tome right right right it's cool and i always knew there was a multiplayer component to it i think quake one and two had had campaigns i don't know that they continued onward from there um i could be wrong but i think quake was also like when like doom and doom 2 are 3d games but they're not really 3d games like that like oh like the there's actually like sprites and it's 2d it's 2d illusion stuff right what happened you got real quiet chris oh it's 2d illusion stuff right like sorry my dad's like hammering something in upstairs um yeah right exactly so i think i think quake was a real 3d game with like 3d models and stuff which was kind of cool too.

3:56:29And then they, they made Quake. I wrote it down here cause I want to be sure like Quake 1996 that came to Saturn in the 97 and there was an N64 port in 98. As far as I know, it never came to PS1, which is interesting, but it did come to PS4 and PS5 in 2021. And then Quake two came to PC in 97 and then it got ports to N64 and PS1 in 99. And that came to PS4 and PS5 in 2023. So you can familiarize yourself with those games. Then there's Quake three arena, which came out in 1999 that came the dreamcast in 2000 i remember that i'd nps2 actually in 2001 i never played that that might be the one that i'm familiar with and then i think and that so those were all it i think and then so what i think happened was quake had like some publisher i don't know who it was and then i think activision published quake two and three then i think somehow they licensed quake and gave it to raven so you might remember when raven when quake quake four came to 360 and you might remember this Chris I think Quake four was a 360 launch game wasn't it and then one of the ones I had at launch right very close to it and then Quake champions was the like the true multiplayer game that came out back in 2022 PC only so Raven worked on them for a while and I don't so I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know Quake I don't know the the ethos of Quake like the story of Quake I remember being very dark and gritty and brown and and gray so could Quake live again?

3:57:54I don't know. Dustin, do you want to see Quake again? I think it would be awesome. I played, as I mentioned a minute ago, Quake 4 for the 360 and that was my main experience with it. I don't know how Quake fans feel about that game, but I thought it was really cool. There's like a scene from that game that sticks out to me where there's like a body horror where you get transformed into an alien and you're on like a conveyor belt and I got like buzz saws ripping you open and shit. I remember thinking it was awesome, but I was also in sixth grade. So I don't know if it holds up, but if I remember right in the lineage of Quake games, the first one is much more like Lovecraftian horror.

3:58:36And then the second one, it becomes a little, a lot more sci-fi. And so to see them do something more in line with the original Quake, which also if i if i remember right trent reznor involved in the soundtrack on either quake one or two oh cool so i think it would be an amazing ip to tap into both from a single player and multiplayer perspective they did that quake champions game in like 20 22 20 22 i'm trying to maybe that's when the release that was a hero shooter i think yeah or something like that and i think that's still live it looks like it's pretty dead at this point but by the way it was quake one credited for a trend yeah credited as nine inch nails yeah okay nine inch nails because there's like some nine inch nails easter egg in the first quake game i think so i think it would be awesome and a really interesting direction for it to go in to go back to to quake if i would rather them either i'd rather see them go back to quake or do something totally new than to do another Doom game.

3:59:45I think we're good on Doom. As amazing as all three of those games are, I feel like we've kind of reached the... Like, put Doom down for a little bit. Let us miss it. Yeah, I think Doom... I think they wrapped up everything with the trilogy and go away for a while. I loved those games. But yeah, embrace Quake. And see what you can do with it. It was never as big as Doom. Because I remember at the time people being mad at Quake because it felt like that was why doom went away because it's hard for people to imagine at the time but like there was 10 years or so between doom 2 and doom 3 and so it did feel like there it was like a really long time coming at that at that point and i dude i love doom 3 i haven't played it in years but i loved it that was one of my favorite xbox games um back in the day there were so many interesting xbox exclusives like uh doom 3 the riddick game was awesome chronicles that was butcher bay yeah I think that was the first one right and then or was that the second one return to butcher bay might have been the second one yeah return to butcher bay might be the second one but I remember that was that was a big one Xbox had cool like some pretty cool shit going on it felt like a more adult kind of machine at that time especially because I was playing Gamecube so much at that point and PS2 of course but PS2 is as I say over and over again my least favorite console that generation probably all right Ryback's shoulder wrote in.

4:01:11It's a good day to you all. Are people really going to leave established live service games for whatever random title Sony releases? I've invested too much time and money into Fortnite to spend money on another free to play game. I also find it difficult to trust them following the recent Highgarden Concord fiascos. Even if I were to play these new games, I wouldn't spend any money on them. Is this a major problem for the future of live service games? Or are we all just waiting for the next Fortnite? You guys are great. Thank you for writing. And it's a great point. Something I just wanted to acknowledge is like.

4:01:38if you don't trust that anything will exist, then you can't spend them. Then you won't spend the money on things like microtransactions that might go away. You won't get a refund or whatever, stopping the game from becoming financially successful because you are gun shy. That is an interesting point. It serves me a little bit. I understand Fortnite a lot. I do understand like why people like Fortnite, but like that, it's just it's self-reinforcing because if it's all you're playing, then it's all you're spending money on, then it's all you're going to play and then it's all you're going to spend money on.

4:02:10It's kind of why I feel like things are never going to, like that it'll, it's a permanent game. Like it'll just always exist because of the nostalgia and how much people played and spend and all the memories and all the rest and the same thing with Roblox and all the rest. So there is an, there is a, we talk about the time puzzle, but I wanted to say that, yeah, that is a good point that even games that have more promise might never be able to achieve that promise because of people's resistance towards spending money in something they don't know if it'll exist. And by the time they have a focus on if it exists or not, it might be too late.

4:02:39And that money might have saved the game. So I don't know, something I want to bring up. I don't know if you guys have anything you want to say about it. I'm writing my notes down here. I think there's some element that this isn't exactly tied to the question, but can Sony make a game that will make people leave established live service games? I think certainly. I think it's much harder. But a lot of there's been a take of like, oh, there's there can't be another big live service game when literally Ark Raiders was and pulled people away. Maybe not totally, but certainly people feel a lot better about Ark Raiders right now than they do Battlefield, which is what we were talking about earlier.

4:03:22So it's like, yeah, newcomers definitely can come along, but they actually need to be really good. and Sony has not been able to fully pull that off outside of Helldivers so far. Yeah, it's an interesting component to the puzzle that I never considered actually too deeply, which is... good money after or you know good money after bad kind of mentality of like well like yeah like what did if people spent money in high guard and they did they don't get anything to show for it after just a few weeks and so concord was a little different because you got your money back and i think you're right arc raider's success was so startling in a good way it's startling is not even the right word it was stunning because it does show it i hate to say it for people that i hate this games as a service push but like people at sony probably saw that and said like, see, like, it's not a dead end at all.

4:04:19Like, we had it with Helldivers, obviously, but this isn't a dead end. If we continue to invest in this, it is possible to breach the precipice and fucking get the money, like Ark Raiders and Embark have done. I mean, it is a good point. Battlefield's a little less of a good point because from my perspective, not that you're saying this, but just it's an established IP. So it had had a chance. People like Battlefield. Anyway, Greg K wrote in today, fellas. Do the inmates run in the asylum at Sony? By this, by this, I mean, do Sony's top studios, Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Sony Santa Monica, Sucker Punch, Gorilla, have too much say when it comes to deciding what the studio is working on and what happens when they're with their old IP?

4:05:01Do these studios lead to the closure of Bluepoint? Did Bluepoint not remake a first party title from PS2 or PS3 because the studios wouldn't give up control? Sony didn't want to want to upset from with a Bloodborne remake. Sucker Punch said no one else could work on Sly. Sony Santa Monica is wasting our time with the God of War remake. And it believed a terrible idea for a Freya game. Is it Freya? I thought it was. Yeah. No, it's Faye. Is it the wife? Is it crazy to think Sony management is scared of upsetting the top studios? Having a premiere remake studio was a sound plan, especially considering all the titles stranded on PS3.

4:05:33Something doesn't seem to add up. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I do. I've been kind of of the mind that I think the idea it's like we. let the studios build what they want to build and I'm like I don't know if you should be doing that like I don't know if that's a good idea you obviously want to have them have creative buy-in but you bought them and they're part of a team they're a family everyone has to bring like different ingredients everything has to do pull their weight do their chores right and you don't want two people cooking dinner you don't want three people mowing the lawn like that kind of shit like you need to have a father figure Herman Holst in there somewhere saying this is like hey little Billy we know you're good at action adventure games like what are some action adventure games you want to make okay that looks good you guide them and you shepherd them I did get the vibe from the from the Bloomer piece that was written specifically about Bloodborne that I mean they said it I don't know what explicitly was said verbatim but it was said that studios that were being pitched spinoffs or sequels to their studio for their games don't want to cut away their own team members to focus on this outside game because they themselves are under increasing financial pressure from Sony.

4:06:45So I think you have to find a balance of the creativity and like the business sense. I think a lot of studios would hang themselves with all the rope they got if you gave them all the power. I also think you have to earn that power. and I think some studios in Sony are kind of a little too empowered and then some studios are probably not empowered enough it's it's clear that what happened with Bluepoint and the Bloodborne reporting and all the rest is going to haunt people for a long time and actually this brings us to the I'll read this one next I'm going to skip this one up ahead of time because I loved this this message and i totally forgot about this simon wrote in and said hi sacred squad with the upcoming closure of blue point i have only one question what was the point with that cryptic tweet they did six years ago was it supposed to just tease demon souls here's the tweet in question and he sent it to us and here i'll put in the chat but it's in the document as well if you need it um on october 31st so halloween 2019 and we reported on it at the time a long time ago they wrote so calm this spooky night a symphony of rumors not one but two return from shadow a resistance to dart home as black monsters escape twisted hills to wander lands and siphon souls filter your candy collections soft from solid and be eco-friendly have a metal halloween go fuck yourselves how's that dude i love it this is to me this is just purely trolling it seems like it we liked it we like to do a little trolling that's what they were saying at blue point with that one like how it's like to looking back on this now i have no idea what i said about it then and it's irrelevant looking back on it now i don't know how you could look at this and not view it as anything other than trolling where it's like you got what was it the i just had it up a second ago from from solid to soft from solid dart home like symphony of Rumors and souls.

4:08:46Yeah. Return from shadow resistance, dart, escape, twisted hills, wander, siphon souls, soft to solid, eco-friendly metal. These are all references to games, some of which they didn't work on, which is why it was so confusing. It's like, why are you referencing Castlevania? Why? Why are you referencing resistance? Why are you referencing Legend of Dragoon? I mean, to be fair, it's like it was kind of a shitty thing to do. you know this was also three years before sony bought them and a year before demon souls came out and probably before demon souls was even revealed so it is it is a funny thing simon i don't know and i remember chris and i just going over this and it's haunted people since but i did forget about it it like left my mind until i read that message and i had to bring it back up again i totally forgot go fuck yourselves how's that well they're not around anymore that's true that's true it'd still be around if they didn't tweet that i know i wonder i wonder what the whole point of that was they don't seem to have they don't really seem to tweet at all they last tweeted on the 20 and 2024 anyway i mean that they don't exist anymore obviously now but all right finally agamemnon's erection wrote in to colin let's talk about starfield i feel like as a long-time listener if someone asked me to recommend you a game and I know you're not a fan of having games recommended.

4:10:10I would suggest Starfield on last week's episode. You still sound indifferent to it, but given the space setting, the Mass Effect style exploration of planets, the Fallout 3 style of combat, the Borderlands 3 style mini worlds to explore, I'm not sure where you're on the fence about. Sounds like a game that was made for you as a starboard myself. I can attest to the fact that the game is, in fact, brilliant and would urge you to fall on the fence and embrace the stars and become starboard. um it is the way people reacted to it we were talking about it like the the um

4:10:41the contagion of the way games are talked about and how that can affect you I remember saying back in 2022 I might buy this game on Xbox you know my wife plays on Xbox I have access to an Xbox Series X no problem and then the more in the close and then it was like this game sucks and I hate this fucking game and all that I'm like I mean that was literally what did it to me and And so it is my hope that maybe I was wrong from the beginning, but that maybe what they've done to the game, which remains to be seen. I think I think Maddie, like people have seen it, right? Like, didn't Maddie say that he went and saw it?

4:11:10I mean, not even to us. I thought that they said people said that they went and saw it. It's like not a secret, like like months ago or something like that. I think I heard news about it, but I don't know if I heard it from anybody. Like, I can't remember if it was like a leak or whatever. Yeah, I don't know. Like, and again, I'm not saying anything that wouldn't like that was private conversation. I thought that that's what I read, but maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe it was not Maddie with someone else. but um i'm open to it i just want to see it again and yeah it is a little surprising that i wasn't into it but i was just like i felt like no one liked it and and when you see that game like that you're like well why would i like it yeah well i mean colin uh what are you gonna say we're talking about we're talking about you here i mean colin 7.0 moriarty respect respectfully respectfully this is a prime calling game in that reason yeah it's a lot of hate an underdog it's an underdog game i liked it quite a bit actually like i remember playing it and i i mean i put oh almost 100 hours i think into it um i think there's parts of it i don't know because sometimes i think about starfield and i'm like colin would vibe with a lot of this but i think the parts that you don't vibe with would be so apparent that they might get in the way of the things that you would like I think you would dig the vibe of it, like the aesthetic.

4:12:26I think you would dig the NASA punk kind of look of everything. I think you would enjoy the more small-scale approach to the environment. It's not just meandering long distances for nothing. It's just kind of they're very focused kind of areas. But also, dude, the thing that I remember being a problem for me, even as somebody who did like that game quite a bit was that like dude it just took you forever to level up in that game like it's like the the and the the skill points were cool and they were like meaningful and interesting but like it took you like hours to get skill points and it's like that is crazy you know and there's a lot of loading screens too it feels a little disjointed i don't know it's interesting i don't know how you would react to starfield i think you would like it more than I think than most people think you would.

4:13:19But I don't know if I don't know. We might find out. I'd be curious. I'd be curious to see what you think about it. It should be announced anytime now, I think. And for launch on April 7th, according to insiders that already have access to the you know, the SKU is loaded on PSN. Apparently, we just can't see it. So we'll find out. I mean, I don't know. I keep talking a big game and it's going to come out. I'm not going to play it. But I do want to keep an open mind about it. It just depends on what it comes out around. If it comes out April 7th, that will be 10 days before Pragmata and it is one of those games that will take a lot of time.

4:13:50So you can probably play other games in the background as you're playing it. We'll see what happens. And there'll be the expansion maybe. And some other things too. So I don't know. I don't know. I'm trying to be open-minded about it because it does sound intriguing, but I was just, I was, everyone's vulnerable at some point to group thinking. I was definitely, I was like, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't really want to play it. It's definitely like, even in my opinion, I think, I think it's fine. You know, well I dug it but it was definitely fun we're going to find out soon enough people really want me to play it though based on the some of the inquiries we get and so on and so forth I would like it a lot more if it just had vats in it yeah yeah but I think but vats is just cool like it's kind of cheating fallout cheats a lot because vats is well yeah vats is like a workaround to make bad shooting bad action manageable too you know and it works within the world of the pit boy and stuff which is cool um that's it so we have this episode is done it's time to go let's go around the horn say goodbye to everyone chris goodbye to you so you're heading out in the days to come yeah this weekend i think i'm gonna head out hopefully i won't get fucking drone striked out of the air yeah well yeah we'll see what happens how that goes um well okay good good you'll be back in california is anyone watching your place or you just no one's been there for weeks um i mean i have friends with spares i have a i have a ring camera that i kind of set up oh cool when i'm when i'm gone just because i have i always get anxiety not even necessarily that i think anybody's gonna break it and steal shit i'm always never worried about that i could give a fuck but like i don't know like sometimes like i remember one year i i went home and i flew and i just couldn't i couldn't remember if i left like a candle oh that's the worst and i couldn't remember if like it was around anything that might you know what i mean and so like for like hours i was like i don't even know my apartment is still there i might have i was like i was like sitting home in my parents living room being like i might have killed like 20 people today and i don't i don't even know and so like at that point i was like this is too anxiety inducing i'm just gonna get a camera just so i could like peek in and make sure everything's like at least still there um so like i'm i'm fine i got people stopping in and getting my mail and dude i feel that so much because when i used to travel all the time as a journalist i i would if i was if there were people still in my house i was living my girlfriend at the time greg was there like if they were around then i wouldn't give a shit but if i was like the last one leaving and people weren't going to be there for a while or like people were at work i would literally take pictures on my phone of like the stove the back door locked like all that kind of stuff yeah yeah and i would never look at it that was the funny thing it's like it's like i would just do it to know that i have proof that like the stove is not on like here's a picture of the right here's a picture of the back it's locked and just to know right just to know uh that you have that if you need it and then when you get home and everything's fine you know you know that you don't need it so you just don't care to like there's almost never a reason to look at it unless something's obviously absolutely that's the whole thing it just it's like a little little crutch to get you through it's not concerned and then dude i have every every blue moon because it's always like oh did i leave the garage door open never open did i did i lock the back door back doors lock but every so often like i'll be like holy shit the stove burner is on.

4:17:00Yeah, it's like when you think it's the times when you're so sure that nothing's wrong. Yeah, and I like look at it like, oh my God, like, you know, like I actually and then that reinforces all the fear and you're like, now I got to do another 10 years of this, you know, incredible overwrought concern for everything. Oh my God, it's funny. That speaks to me. Yeah. All right. Well, be safe. We'll see you when you get back. We'll see you on Monday for sacred streaming, of course, as well. Yeah, Dustin. Goodbye to you. Be well. Bye. Any plans this weekend? No plans this weekend, which is nice. I feel like I've been out and about this week because we had to pick up my parents from the airport on the day that we were already in Pittsburgh, which was nice.

4:17:42We just had to stay and hang out in Pittsburgh almost all day Tuesday. So, you know, we went out and had a nice dinner and stuff like that, but no plans right now. Other than I'm going to watch more of the one piece live action season two. And you know what? I like it. I'm enjoying it more than the first season. It's not bad. Good for you. I'm not saying it's great or I'm, you know, want it to. I am so happy for it, but there's been some cool parts so far. Oh, good. Good for you. Yeah, nothing happening this weekend. I got to. Well, Saturday, my mom's having like a St. Patrick's Day dinner, like corned beef and hash and corned beef and cabbage.

4:18:25I like corned beef hash. That's not what we're having. I don't really like corned beef and cabbage to be honest so I just go to be hanging out with the family I'll get drunk and then I'll probably get McDonald's on the way home drunk McDonald's dude nothing hits like drunk McDonald's in a while since I've had that but in a while yeah otherwise I'll just be playing games watching hockey hanging out working and that's basically it well it's good to be here with you guys and I hope everyone out there enjoyed our episode episode 402 of Sacred Symbols We'll see you next time. Patreon.com slash Last Stand Media for early free access.

4:19:01Last Stand Media dot store for merch. Until then, goodbye. See ya. Take care, guys. Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast, is a product and trademark of Last Stand Media and Colin's Last Stand LLC and is proudly recorded in the USA. The show is conceived by, is written by, and is directed by me, Colin Moriarty. My co-hosts are Chris Raygun Maldonado and Dustin Furman. The show is produced by executive producer Dustin Furman. All of Last Stand's theme music is by my best friend, Ramon Narvaez. As you know, all of Last Stand's shows, including Sacred Symbols, are fan-funded on Patreon at patreon.com slash laststandmedia.

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