#406 | Now You're Here, Now You're Away

42:23And I was like, wow, this is fucking amazing. You know, like, and then you start skipping the commercials. Then you start getting access to VOD, which happened really before streaming. And then, and then you're like, why am I sitting here waiting for, for appointment television? And then Netflix streaming starts, Hulu comes in, all these others, and then it's over. And then you go fast forward 15 or 20 years and you're like, oh, I just have a new cable bill great yeah and by the way everything i just got i don't ever i never really have any streaming services for tv and movies unless i want something so i got hulu a few days ago because i i want to re-watch the handmaid's tale there's like a new handmaid's tale series out so i've been doing that and i'm like dude it's like 20 bucks a month it's absurd i'm like what like wasn't hulu like six bucks or something like what like for hulu all right i mean i guess i'm gonna watch this shit at light speed and be gone in a month.

43:16But if that the other thing is that if you just kept your prices normal, you'd probably ultimately get more money out of me because I would just let it go. That's the other thing where like there's a tension that they've created. That's why I think this, I mean, not to give too deep of a peek behind the curtain, but like low pricing on Patreon is beneficial for us. And why we've never raised prices is because like we want it to be inconsequential. Like, right there. I want there to be no financial tension where it's like, I got to I can't afford this. It's like, well, you can't afford five bucks a month.

43:44you most likely can and so we but like 20 25 i think netflix 4k is like 30 bucks a month or something something it's like you're out of your mind you're out of your mind 4k streaming in

43:56Colin Moriarty:general is what do you the fuck are you doing i don't know you're not getting that you're not like and what would be the benefit like i don't know man that's that's see he asked how we're doing now i'm just fucking yeah now we're upset i'm not we just spent like so much taxes yeah it all stems from that dude taxes oh my god yeah it's just this time this time of year is the most republican i'll ever be yeah yeah i uh i bet yeah this is the time of republicans um right april i i can't i've been very blessed in my life I can't believe how much money I pay in taxes it makes me want to um die and so because I don't mind state local taxes that never bothered me um I bitch about my property tax because I own my house and I'm like why am I paying property tax on something I own but I get it it's a social contract I'm totally fine with that the federal government man I fucking hate the federal government i really do and they just so my money will pay for a fraction of a fucking tomahawk missile and um they'll bomb some fucking bridge with it and then it's like okay cool and we're gonna charge you a lot of money to to let iran make millions of dollars off the straight of hormones i hope it was worth it it's really great god and i just uh god help us i just can't i can't i with the tech like when i get my because i pay myself once a year and uh so everything's done in lump sums right and i'm like what you know like you'll see like the like the like i don't get it i get whatever it is a w2 for my my from adp or whatever and i'm like what like for what what are you doing for me are you out of your fucking minds and then i and then i look around my neighborhood i look around my town or i just multiply these numbers and you're like jesus christ you know and then and then they'll run up a deficit right that's the best part by the way it wouldn't be so it wouldn't be so bad if i didn't hear about how like oh hey yeah we lost like two billion dollars oh my god that would be like oh it's like well and it's like well what you need you need my 10 grand i'm pretty sure i'm pretty sure the federal government is spending something like seven trillion dollars a year cool it's like and by the way they'll be like all right so we collected 5.5 trillion um so we're gonna just add all of this money to the deficit every year they do it and it's like damn dude this is this this is the least partisan shit ever in my opinion this is like so it's like medical care it's like there's nothing partisan about it what are you doing like both sides both sides of the of the on the on the field can come together and be like the refs are fucking crazy you know like that's come on man come on man i can't do this come on so i'm doing bad thank you for writing in jonathan it's yeah the government doesn't even ask you for taxes anymore they just they just look at you like this yeah and it's that image of fucking fredden fraser from the whale did i tell you that like my friends took me to see the whale for my birthday no that's awesome they're like happy birthday chris let's go see the whale didn't you get like a 20 minute standing ovation at like con or something like that for for yes and it is a good movie but like the standing ovation thing is kind of like a joke at this point i'd be so embarrassed if it went on for more than a couple of minutes yeah all right like all right enough all right crazy it's crazy

47:55great thanks jonathan you really fucked up the entire show yeah professor of logic at the University of Science wrote in and said Dustin hit his his trophies not a real gamer yeah I can't

48:07Colin Moriarty:I don't want you guys seeing the type of shit that I play anymore I've had enough but we addressed this calling on streaming on Monday I had to hide my trophies because I got to check out roller coaster tycoon for PlayStation before it was announced and I didn't want to be the one that blew the secrecy on it. Xbox did the very next day. Apparently chill. Yeah, but that's the reason and I just haven't unhid them. I just keep forgetting. So chill. I will unhide them soon. Oh, I'm looking at I was looking at trophies here. Power Wash Simulator 2's first DLC trophies for Adventure Time have gone alive.

48:52I guess I'll have to go back to to the old grind, you know yeah i'm just doing what the customers need stepping into worlds you have no context for at all i don't have any questions yeah adventure time is another thing where i'm like i don't know

49:06Colin Moriarty:i'm just here to do i'm just here to do a job yeah the funniest thing about that is like it is technically it is technically if you care more immersive to not know anything about anything about these dlc spaces just like a real employee would exactly theoretically this is me role-playing to the maximum degree right it's it's uh what is it uh ludonarrative cohesion yeah there you go very good very good very sophisticated yes chris hendricks wrote in said hey cdc the weather is getting nicer outside and taco tuesday is becoming a real thing again so what should you prefer tacos or burritos and if burritos handled or wet oh wet burrito no tacos here's the thing about tacos i love a good taco the street street taco whatever i just don't understand why you'd rather have tacos than a burrito like the burrito is such a superior like the burrito is one of the great foods period and so yeah you can choose them both and there's a place for both but like i feel like the the taco is a little lighter obviously but you got to eat a few of them um the hard shell taco i feel like is a fucking abomination and and i really don't i don't like the hard shell taco it breaks what's the point what are we doing the soft shell taco the corn tortilla i can do with that yeah i i know what you mean i do like a hard shell taco but i i am often frustrated with it i i don't know burritos are way better burritos are like burritos clear tacos in my opinion and i didn't have a burrito until like like a real proper burrito until like i was kind of an adult really because it's not really i don't know mexican food's just not really a thing over where where i was growing up it was it was more about like pretty much everything else and you didn't really have a you didn't really have a desire or a need for it and taco bell you weren't really getting taco bell out there either so even fast food burritos weren't really a big thing so like when i moved out here i think i had like my first burrito and i think it was like a place called taco is take a which is like funny but but uh and it blew my mind i was like oh this is a fucking great this is a great invention whatever the fuck this is tacos they're fine i used to what the fuck is that chicken place in santa monica i used to order from all the time it was like a mexican chicken place and what you would do they would they would have like half or whole rotisserie chickens and then and then you would just order like tortillas on the side and make your own and you'd like just rip it off the oh god it was so good i you're right though in new york i mean it's new york's very hispanic but there's there's something what's not mexican right exactly and there was like you know a burrito place that i would go to on like or a mexican place but like you had to go out of your way it wasn't one of those things where you in my experience where you fell over and there was a place in boston i used to go to when I was in college.

52:03That was really good. But yeah, not until living in California that you really imbibe the burrito. And it is the California burrito is my favorite. That's the one with like the French fries in it. It's such an it's so good. It's so good as no business.

52:17Colin Moriarty:The burrito is the New York slice of California. Yeah, like it is. It's like it's like it's the thing. I love it. I love the burrito. I mean, Mexican food generally is just really kind of on point. The flavors and all that. There's things I don't like. Like they have some of the stinky cheeses and shit, like the cojito or whatever they call it. I'm like, ugh, like that's shit's gross as hell. But what's the chocolate? Oh, my God. Mole. Oh, mole. Yeah, mole. But that was what I told you. Remember, I told you the story about how I ate mole for years without knowing that it was chocolate. Then when I found out I couldn't eat it anymore.

52:49That's so crazy.

52:50Colin Moriarty:It doesn't make any sense. It's so good. I had mole for the first time at a cigar lounge in downtown L.A. Some dude in the back of the cigar lounge is like making food. And he was like, yo, what do you want? And I was like, oh, just give me a taco or whatever. he's like you want mole and I was like I don't know what the fuck that is and he goes like trust me you'll like it he didn't tell me it was chocolate but like it was it was bomb it makes no sense that it's as good as it is it is really good like it was just a mental hurdle like I funny enough I discovered it from Kadoba when I was in Boston like that was an option and I thought it was like I didn't know what I thought it was I don't know if I thought it was like emulsified beans or something like I don't know what I thought it was but but then like but then like i ate it like dozens of times and then i went once with someone and they're like you don't like i thought you didn't like chocolate and i'm like i don't and like mole is chocolate and that was the end of that i've never had it it's very good poco i guess technically i don't want to make it seem like you're like it doesn't taste like chocolate though it's really like there's no hint of like oh this is hershey's it just tastes like a different i don't i don't even know how to describe it really it's been a while since i've had it too so i i don't even know if I'm really even remembering correctly all I remember was that it was fucking delicious yeah um and I was sad I never saw that guy again one thing I will say is like the street tacos the street Mexican food is actually significantly I don't know what it is but like you said even in California you sit down in a restaurant a Mexican restaurant and sometimes it's like what the fuck are these people doing um it's kind of inconsistent um often kind of not that great but like the street the street vendors are so good all the fucking time i don't know what it is maybe maybe they're on the street so it's like they they have to be it's like survival of the fittest or something i gotta i don't know i don't know what it is they don't have an they don't have like a break room or something that they could like uh seek refuge from the hostile world but that's funny so good yeah street tacos uh like with the onion and the cilantro on top yeah corn tortilla you like cilantro rice yes i love it i get like i can kind of see where people are like oh it tastes like soap like i can i understand that but i don't know it doesn't i think it's delicious dude i'm fascinated by it by it having some sort of quality that is so divisive yeah yeah it's like olives yeah like yeah oh yeah totally i grew up with olives so like i didn't realize that they were an acquired taste and when i grew up and like i would i would eat olives at i would literally spoon a bunch of olives into a fucking mug and eat like olives out of the mug and like my friends are like what the fuck are you doing I was like what I didn't know I really did not know until like the last like couple years like maybe the last three years that they were an acquired taste because I've been eating them my entire fucking life my parents would just mix it in rice and like sauces and all sorts of shit bring out the olives the manzanilla olives with the red pimento in it fucking delicious yeah you like that yeah that brand they make like really good they're going hard like uh you know cured whatever it would be that pickled vegetables i remember goya got in the a big thing was like that they like the ceo uh was like a big trump guy yeah i remember that he was telling me it's like so you're gonna not eat goya anymore i was like no shot like that shit is so good like i don't care i saw i said this a long time ago like if there was like a pizza if my favorite pizza shop was like we hate puerto regans and we want every puerto regans ever i was like i would maybe i would maybe go there slightly less i'm the same like i'll go i'll cut it down from three times a week to once but i'm going like i want that i want my slice yeah the goya guy what was funny about him was like he was like one of the very first trump supporters and it was i remember that being very very interesting to people um we we buy goya black beans i want to say uh we we enjoy those yeah they're yeah they are good they're good god bless Mr.

56:45Goya and his enterprise. Senor Goya. Corey Ramon wrote in with one last thing, kind of more of an inquiry, maybe a correction, something of this nature, and then we'll get into the news. He says, hi, Colin. Will you admit to being wrong about PlayStation's PC push now that they're scrapping it all? Or do we do we not do that here? Corey, are you fucking deaf? Yeah, we've definitely done this, right?

57:10Colin Moriarty:Are you deaf? Are you fucking deaf? Thank you for writing in. All right, let's get into the news. Let's. There's a there's not too much big stuff this week, but a culmination of some smaller items that I think we can get into here. The first one comes from a posting via ResetEra on Instagram. ResetEra, of course, is a gaming forum. It's trash. But of course, we have we don't we have to cite who we cite. It's where things come from, because I would have never seen this otherwise. And this person on Reset Era found an Instagram post from Sean Eskag. Sean Eskag is the director of Uncharted The Lost Legacy and the director of The Last of Us Part One.

57:58So like, remember when they remade it on PS4, redid it on PS5 and released it in 2022. And in between The Lost legacy in the last of us he actually went to crystal dynamics you guys might remember and was the director the creative director of avengers so thanks for that but he came back and he did the last of us and now he's working on something else he's an animator by trade actually i was reading a little bit about him chris his first project was as an animator on prototype so that that was oh look at that fairly interesting the gift that keeps on giving so on instagram he posted this interesting thing where, and it's interesting only by context, and it was posted back in February, by the way, so this person just saw this in April, which is why I thought it was only fair to cite it, because I would have never seen it.

58:42It's a picture of a cannon overlooking a bay, somewhere maybe tropical or subtropical. I mean, there's a palm tree in the picture, and it just says, research, dot, dot, dot.

58:57Dustin, what do you make of this? I mean, this is clearly some sort of reference to Uncharted. I don't know what else you would think. Like, what would Naughty Dog? I think it's the exact opposite. Oh, really? I don't think there's anything clear about it being Uncharted. Well, I mean, like, for sure. Well, let me put it this way, because you're right. Yeah. Why? So let's put it this way instead. Why would Naughty Dog make a game that would look indistinguishable from Uncharted? So they're going to have another tropical setting with like ancient cannons overlooking. I mean, that is Uncharted. like you're going for the same aesthetic the same i don't know i think it's weird and he is the director of an uncharted of an uncharted game so i i do think from all of those there is something to it in my opinion but i understand what you're saying what do you think yeah we need that geo guesser guy uh to find out where this is yeah true but i i definitely get it like the the canon

59:53Colin Moriarty:the location all of that feels very uncharted but at the same time i could see him you know maybe he's there for researching a different location and this is the picture that he happened to take it's not necessarily he's researching this spot but maybe or it could be something completely different. I guess I don't know. It seems weird because we always thought that maybe a different team was working on an Uncharted game. It feels a little I guess it's not weird that a naughty dog would make another Uncharted game. But to me, it's like I wouldn't want to do that anymore. I'd be like we kind of done we've made four basically five of these games if you include Lost Legacy.

1:00:47do we really need to like keep doing this so it could be it certainly could be but at the same

1:00:53Colin Moriarty:time i'm just i don't read too much into it personally what do you think chris i don't know man this if it wasn't for the research tag i wouldn't think much of it you know what i mean if it was just this photo and there is just like hey i'm in trinidad i'm in trinidad and tobago or whatever you know what i mean because that's i think this where it was i think it's where this is um but it it the fact that it says research it does kind of lead me to believe that like i mean this well yeah this is clearly i mean not clearly i should say but like i mean it's it it's hinting it's at least something related to uncharted i don't know if he so here's the thing he's the he's a he's the creative director of a of a naughty dog game or not of a naughty dog game but like of an uncharted game right yeah lost legacy um so it doesn't would it be unreasonable to say that like oh he directed a he directed an uncharted game maybe naughty dog isn't doing it but he's he's involved in some way yeah they could be consulting maybe you're doing you know like consulting like yeah i i don't know this this screams uncharted to me um i just don't know what else it could be really and if it is not uncharted then it's something else that's like so adjacent and so so similar as to be insane to pursue if they were just like oh we're making an island adventure game that has nothing to do with uncharted it's like really why that's what i'm saying that's my problem too is like i just don't think so i don't know i'm a little bit more i'm leaning towards your inclination where it's just like yeah this is definitely something it's that research tag like that kind of says it to me if it was just this is oh he's on vacation yeah exactly like taking pictures of stuff but like the fact that he went out of the way to say like, oh, research.

1:02:57Colin Moriarty:Like it's it's definitely a tease of something. Yeah, I agree. And if not Uncharted, then what is it? And I also think it's interesting just that. I mean, deleting it would strike would try sand it, although no one really realized what it was at the time. So he could have maybe still gotten away with it. But I just don't think I love the idea of of things being kind of intentionally leaked or intentionally hinted at. And they're so buttoned up that they don't do things kind of the director of the game wouldn't make mistakes like that i understand what dustin is saying but that it could be anything but i just don't know how you can't read that as uncharted i mean that looks like an uncharted screenshot like it does kind of yeah like i actually when i first saw it i was like is that a render because specifically because of the stone it's not but specifically because of the stones like the thin stones underneath the canon it kind of looks fake and i was like oh what is it yeah even the rust on on top of the like that bright blue paint on the canon looks kind of like it almost looks like a game design thing it's like look a canon is here for you to you know what i mean it feels very gamey it's really the background that kind of gives it away like the um or yeah the like the the distant kind of horizon it's like oh that's that looks so realistic that it looks as bland as it should but everything in the foreground looks like it does look like a video game or it looks like uncharted i should say and you're right about it being trinidad and bago by the way i didn't see that so yeah we know that that's where they were go ahead dustin i was gonna say here's an idea uncharted prequel about francis drake that'd be pretty cool that would actually be fucking awesome something about like where the origin of one of the treasures from the games come yeah that's a great idea dustin the yeah to like do something even even an interplay where you play half of it as in the past and half of it in the present, you know, would be kind of interesting.

1:04:52Assassin's Creed. Yeah, yeah. It could be cool. A few people wrote in about this, but I went with Nashville Nibbler says, what's up, sacred fellas? Are we finally about to see the return of our favorite mass murdering retriever of antiquities? Sean SK, creative director at Naughty Dog, dropped a cryptic Instagram post that has the Internet convinced that a new Uncharted is in development, which lines up perfectly with that Cassie Drake live from PS5 ad we saw in early 23. My question for you, gentlemen, with Intergalactic hopefully launching next year, when do you think Uncharted might make its comeback?

1:05:23I am the audience knows. I mean, I'm doubling down on and tripling and quadrupling down. Like, I'm convinced that an Uncharted game is in development. I don't think the Cassie Drake thing is a coincidence. And even the timing of Sean Eskig's directorial stuff indicates that 23 would have been so early 23 with the Cassie Drake stuff could have been the time at which it's like, yeah, let's tease that. We're really going to start doing something like this now, because again, as I said, you know, the last legacy is what 2018 or something. And then maybe even 2017. And then the last of us part one is 2022.

1:06:01So he would be free to do the next thing. I also, I think, I think the commonality, well, I don't want to speak for everyone, but it doesn't seem like people don't want more uncharted i don't think they i don't think they beat it into the ground quite as bad as they could have and when you really think about most of the uncharted games like if you even if you take into account golden abyss from bend all of these games like golden abyss came out right after uncharted 3 you guys might recall like a few months later so drake's fortune among thieves drake's deception golden abyss all come out by early 2012 then you have one uncharted game in 2016 and then it's expansion basically in 2017 it's really not that much comparable to like what it could be and so like i don't think i don't think it's crazy that they would make it i don't think it's crazy that it's going to be about cassie drake and i don't think it's crazy that it's probably been in development for years and in fact i feel like with the success of the uncharted film especially there's more juice to get out of this thing and they would be kind of stupid not to do it uncharted is fucking awesome i mean it's like really like one of the great flawless franchises like like what is wrong with it nothing it's it's excellent even the shit where people people like oh uncharted 3 is kind of the day like uncharted 3 is better than like 99.99 of games ever made it's you're comparing it to like uncharted 2 sure so to me I'm like there's the one thing that I think would be interesting is this would be really the first time that it would be totally undertaken from the floor without Amy Hennig because obviously Uncharted 4 the way it was delivered was not her vision and not her story but a lot of that stuff was from her game and they reworked it into the new game and I know that as I've said because I saw the whole layout of her game on a wall once of all the locations and everything and those locations are in the uncharted four that we know so i don't think it's that crazy and i i think if i i remember my theory was that they might have had a secret external team doing this like a team that we're going to announce whatever but seems like it's them and i don't hate it especially if the rumors are true that they have three games going because then it's like well it's like inner inner galactic uncharted something else that's new um yeah pre-production on something else

1:08:28Colin Moriarty:i don't know i um i i agree generally like i think i think there's an they've they've been pretty good about restraint with uncharted you know it's been nine years 10 actually yeah be 10 it will be yeah because it's a spring game actually i think i think it was spring 2016 uncharted 2017 technically with lost legacy but so like nine years still since but that's a long ass time to go without anything and i think i think that's it that's just enough time maybe even more than just enough time for people to be like yeah that would be cool to see again um so yeah i think uh i think it's a no-brainer to do an uncharted i just i do wonder what it would be and how they'll evolve it i also do think it you're right like it must be them right because like every other studio that's available to do it is closed or uh or busy or sold or whatever uh blue point ain't doing it yeah and well you ain't doing it that's the other thing chris is that some people are wondering is it even a remake of the original uncharted which is also possible and i think that that would be cool too i think that though like the god of war games at santa monica the greek games it's a waste of their time like i'm really annoyed that santa monica's making those games because it's like what do you like that's so fucking whack that you guys are there was a studio that could have done it yeah only if only and yeah it's the same thing with like uncharted one i think could be remade it's an old we we talked about this a week or two ago it's 20 years old almost it's 19 years old um and it's a great game the first uncharted is awesome but it's uh it's old and 20 years is by the time by the time i mean even imagining getting it out for the 20th anniversary that makes perfect sense to me too and hopefully you can do maybe even both of those things but i know people are are a little puzzled by my my adherence to this theory but i just do not believe that that 2023 ad was a coincidence or nothing i don't believe it like i don't believe it that doesn't make sense it's pattern it's a basic pattern recognition like and to be fair it could be that there was something planned or in development that was scrapped that's also a possibility sure where like maybe the game existed and then they were like and it went far enough along into development that they were like yeah we're gonna do this and then i don't know whatever something fell apart or that's possible but even that assumption operates on the that operates under the con under the expectation that at the the game existed in some form so they were doing it every other vignette in that trailer is something that you can point to that exists except for that and so yeah that's weird that's not like a normal you don't have like a random thing that doesn't amount to anything in like a in a in a in a huge ad campaign for your entire ip portfolio yeah and everything else in there is identified as something so right so also this live action whatever it was would be the only thing in there that wasn't a game it's like the thing that bought like uncharted 4 ends clearly making cassie like the the receiver of the drake legacy and that's obvious then you combine it with the ad and i'm I don't know, man.

1:12:02I don't know why that's such a far flung theory. And I would want to see that we talk about the feminization of PlayStation Studios, which I agree. So now we're going to get another fucking female protagonist. But this is the one that I like, I think this is cool. Especially if I said this before, like my story for it would be she like goes on an adventure and Drake and Sully basically have to go and help her or rescue her in some way. So like, and you and it's a young drake moment where like you don't really know that you're gonna play as drake nathan drake it's something that maybe they keep hidden and then chapter 11 or something you're suddenly playing as a gray nathan drake or an older with an older elena he's like a he's like a sully kind of figure right exactly and like and and cassie like gets into a shitload of trouble and so like he has to kind of like go back into the field and help her or whatever i think that that would be yeah super fun yeah i do think uh yeah i just think it makes sense i think

1:13:00Colin Moriarty:they've been building to something or not been building but like they they left it they left a cliffhanger not a cliffhanger but they left it open to explore in that direction and i think um yeah they would be dumb not to do it i think the ending of uncharted 4 is super cool like i don't want to spoil it like b for b but it's like a really cool idea i wonder i gotta replay it yeah like oh i i played it a couple years ago i want to say i replayed it and i played the lost legacy actually for the first time and it's so good like it's it is just that naughty dog magic of it's what i say about rockstar and grand theft auto like you spend enough time and money that you should have expectations that things respond like this and i play that game and i'm like this is a crazy crazy game it's so much better than almost everything else and it's not like an intrinsic naughty dog talent though that's there it's like just money and time if you if you believe and scope things in a very certain way and give people enough space that they can create a made they can hang themselves but typically they'll create something pretty amazing um and uncharted 4 is a really extraordinary game so i'm i i want more uncharted i think it's time it is certainly not a franchise that's been beaten into the ground in any way shape or form and i think it's fairly obvious in my opinion so dustin and i guess i disagree with it on that on that front i think it would be so weird if they did something where that was like a research photo of like something where I'm like so you're in the Caribbean with an antique canon yeah it's for it's for Jack and Daxter yeah exactly or it's like some some new IP and I'm like so you like I don't know that would be that would actually be a little more disappointing it's like that's what's so cool about intergalactic is it's so distinct from what they've done and I would hope that if they continue to do new things which I'll take all day keep going in different directions I'd like to see something oh I'm sorry go no no I was just gonna say like it's been so long like it's it's I I love this restraint in general like I wish more franchises did it where they just went a long time without doing something or hinting at doing something you know it gives you a chance to miss it I think that's why honestly like even Gears E-Day like that Gears of War game is like there's a lot more positive buzz around that or like positive sentiment around that game than I would expect it's purely because it's been like 2019 was the last Gears game that wasn't like a you know a remaster or something people are excited to revisit these places because they're fucking good and Uncharted is like Uncharted 1 even is like very charming oh it's super charming it's super good Uncharted was a franchise that was at ground zero of the turnaround of Playstation and it was really Uncharted 2 that did it but I remember that fall of 2007 when Uncharted 1 came out there was good feelings around it I remember that very well and people were like oh because there was a lot of skepticism that Naughty Dog could do something like that they're obviously a great studio, but that was a sea change for Naughty Dog, to go from Crash and Jack to something like Uncharted and then The Last of Us.

1:16:00And remember too that Neil Druckmann had acknowledged he's producing another internal game. So we know there are at least two games internal, and that's not a huge surprise. So why wouldn't he produce a he would be perfect to produce an Uncharted game. He helped write Uncharted and obviously directed and designed a lot of it. So anyway, we'll see what happens. the rumors right now are that there's going to be a state of play next week and that's going to be third party and then there's going to that's what the rumor is i don't know and then that and that sony will go again with the first party in june i assume that's when we'll see wolverine gameplay and i would imagine intergal like real like you know uninterrupted gameplay and intergalactic gameplay because obviously that's what you want to show next with that game shut everyone up it's the only it's the only choice right uh you gotta show the game so we have these two shows hopefully coming up and maybe we'll get some clarity in there i mean i don't think it's beyond possible the possibility that we get an a late generation salvo of games not unlike what happened with both PS3 and PS4.

1:17:19And it's too bad that Naughty Dog wasted all that time on the nearly complete Last of Us online game because it interrupted their ability to get these games out even quicker. And so we might, with different use of resources, have this game already. But I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not going to be I'm not going to be surprised. I'm sticking by this. I'm going down with the ship, which is a good metaphor for Uncharted. All right. This comes from Push Square. I thought this was interesting. This was discovered by people online, but people that have access, I guess, to various little hidden things on the PSN, not unlike scraping for trophies and all the rest.

1:17:54You guys might remember and I shout out to Push Square for reminding us of this, that there are all these symbols on the back end, like icons that you can find that are used. So like the little leaf icon that have you guys been noticing this appearing on games? yeah um the saint slayer has the leaf next to it actually this means that it's like a power saver game the theory behind this by the way and i don't know this from a developer's point of view but i think um moore's law has been saying this is that like this is basically to this is for the ps6 handheld as i understand like to like the and again it's the reference i always use of the hotel not washing your sheets and saying it's to be green it's the it's the similar thing here where they're like, yeah, this is a power saver mode for the environment, you know, and it's like, yeah, okay.

1:18:39So that icon still exists and they have all these other icons like the information icon and so on and so forth. But there were these two icons that were never used, but they were in the library of icons in PlayStation's backend as relayed by push square. One of them said cross by, which we had never seen deployed and cross by is a long time thing from PS3, Vita, PS4, all the rest. but this was associated with a ps5 slash pc icon and these icons are gone from the back end now

1:19:09Colin Moriarty:dustin maybe the rumors are true yeah well it seemed like for a while there were rumors percolating there was going to be a playstation pc launcher and that would make a lot of sense where take a game like marathon where instead of buying it on steam you buy it from the playstation launcher or on your PlayStation and then you have access to a copy there and on your PC and PlayStation would love this because then they don't have to give a cut to Steam but it never came out and then over the last you know month or two we've been talking about the behind the scenes PlayStation stepping away from PC and now we have these removed so So my theory is that there at one point was a PlayStation launcher that was being designed for PC with the idea of cross by for I don't know if it would be all first party games, but at least the live service games that they are doing.

1:20:10Colin Moriarty:And it seems like it's been scrapped in favor of the return to console. So interesting to see these go away. They didn't they didn't even get to really see, you know, any use any light of day. So it's so fascinating, right? Like they made they're making they're turning the ship and things now are incoherent for a little while because a lot of people are saying to like, well, what about the hardware? Like you made a monitor and like these headsets that are only that are for PC. And it's like, yeah. Yeah, we did. and the ship is now turning in a different direction. I wonder, Chris, before I kick it over to you, there's more to this.

1:20:52So we have the Bloomberg article, right, from a few weeks ago saying they're moving away from PC. Then we have the disappearance of the cross-buy and PC icons, which I agree with you, Dustin, were probably for a launcher for PC that's never going to come to fruition. By the way, a lot of this seems to be guided by the fact that they're not making enough money on PC. So what probably happened behind the scenes is you have all sorts of different people with different opinions around the round table, as it were. and they made a few hundred million dollars on the pc games and there were people internally saying like this is wildly insufficient and so there was probably some sort of tug and pull and tug and struggle and they made this new decision and they've gone in this new direction but it doesn't stop here there's another article actually i i didn't put it in the uh i didn't i'll put it here in the chat because i didn't put it in the um in the article itself that we use or the document we use is that on the official website for first party they also made a bunch of edits of course they removed bluepoint and all that kind of stuff but valkyrie for instance we bring up valkyrie every once in a while this is like a support studio and it used to say a well respect quote a well-respected studio for producing high quality work on a range of platforms from console to pc now it reads quote providing top tier co-development expertise to several playstation studios most iconic and award-winning franchises including astrobot hell divers and god of war xdev which is the external development initiative that used to run out of santa monica in japan as well they now run out of europe it says it used to say quote collaborating with ambitious external studios across the globe now it says quote partnering with talented independent studios to publish exciting exclusive titles for playstation players worldwide end quote um and nix is by the way it still talks about pc because that's what they're there for and i i worry about nix is kind of but as i've said before i don't worry so much about them because the multiplayer games are still going to come to PC.

1:22:36And so there's going to be a place for mixes to help with that. Yeah. So Chris, what do you think here? I mean, I think this, all of this taken in the culmination seems to be that, and Jason Schreier is very reliable journalist. So you didn't really even need any of this to know that what he was saying was true, but this seems to be pretty much a, the death knell, the true death knell of the PC initiative.

1:22:56Colin Moriarty:Yeah. I mean, I think it's, I think it's pretty clear. I don't know if there's really that much more to say about it. Like, I mean, it's the cross-buy icons. Like, all of this seems to, I mean, outside of them just outright saying it. You know, like, they've kind of outright said it already. But, yeah, it looks like they're stepping back. And I've said before that I just think, I think they understand that it's not just about the small chunks of change that they're making on PC. I do think it is the idea that like there's not that much of a hunger for these new machines in comparison to previous generations even even PS5 was you know it was teetering you know on the edge of like people were like do I want it do I not it was ultimately exciting enough you know it probably the SSD was promising you know and and that that was materially important now we're in a place where like the economy is fucked your dollar doesn't go nearly as far as it used to consoles are going to be more expensive even this this new ps6 that's going to be cheaper than whatever previous consoles that they made like the ps5 or whatever it's still going to be a chunk of change you know like this is not a cheap thing that you're asking somebody to buy especially in the current economic climate so i think they understand that there's some level of writing on the wall here where like we've got a we've kind of got to make more of a case for our machine now than more so now than we used to um they had the inertia from ps4 and they're going to have inertia from ps5 still as well but i do think more and more people are probably going to look at pc as a realistic alternative now that prices are kind of skyrocketing towards that higher end place um i mean even you think as like a parent right like even even as a even as like a parent buying something for their kid you think like well a computer is really useful it's useful for school it's useful for like the world is online now so like you kind of have to have like some facet of of a comp of a place on on computer anyway it's a different world than like when i was like a kid where like you would never you know generally speaking like it wasn't even a remote thought like oh yeah i'm gonna buy my child of desktop computer um i just think the world is different now and you you got to make a case to buy your machine and if if you are if your titles are eventually going to move to pc that's a pretty big thing like i i heard from people interpersonally who like weren't console people who are uh pc people a friend of mine derek on the show he's like he doesn't have a console right he just bought a ps5 because of the because he wanted to get in before the price hike and he wanted to play gta right i mean and that's not coming to pc so he's like yeah i guess i'll i'm not paying 900 fucking dollars but i'll like i guess i'll buy it now and you know invest since it's not going to come to pc quickly enough but like i have to imagine a lot of people are in that position too where they're like yeah well why buy a console if i can just play it on pc for for cheaper or for if i'm just patient you've got to whittle that away if you're going to make a case for a machine that no one's really hungry for and that's how you make it now the big question for me is like are there even going to be ps6 exclusive games at all yeah it's hard for me to conceptualize this because i i yeah like i'm sure maybe i'm sure maybe one or two right like you do kind of have to do that I think but also like I question like I wonder if you do because like even PS4 is still operating PS5 is like remarkably cross generation in comparison to previous console generations so like I wonder if like the money that it would cost to make a true PS6 game would make sense limiting it to PS6 where the install base will obviously be significantly smaller than PS4 and PS5 it's a different world now.

1:27:09Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I agree. So if you can't, so if you can't rely, right, if you can't rely on, oh, day one PS6 games that you can only get on PS6, the next best thing is, well, you got to be on PlayStation. At least. And you have to be in our ecosystem. At least you can't be on PC and get our stuff. And so I think that's, I don't know, it's kind of like a messy way to put it all together. But that's kind of the big picture of like what I think is going on here. I think you're absolutely right. It's very well said. It, the tension on the market from multiple perspectives is really interesting because I don't think we've ever been in a situation quite like this before where we haven't.

1:27:53The hardware obviously is getting more expensive. There's this latent last gen player base of tens of millions of people. Actually, I didn't, it's not an interesting story, but Genshin Impact is no longer playable on PS4 as of this week. So like big games are starting to move on. I don't know if Sony's trying to like influence this. And we had no problem bringing, for instance, Saint Slayer to PS4. That was a no brainer.

1:28:14Colin Moriarty:It's not it's not it's not playable at all. Or is it like are they stopping updates? No, you have to you have to move on to a different console, apparently, or a different piece of hardware. Interesting. So because it's as I understand with that game, I'm not really a Genshin person, obviously, but a mihoyo person. But apparently it's like holding back the entire game. like that makes this last gen version so i think that's why they want to move on but um to me i i so i'm fascinated by like the increasing prices the cross-gen like stickiness of a console that is 13 years old now and people are still playing on regularly and at lilymo and i don't know how many developers feel like this like we would still put games on vita and maybe even ps3 not for any other reason than we would want to if we were able to.

1:29:03So there would still be support in some tangential way for old platforms if possible. So there's also that, but then the expense is growing and it's like I said earlier, Chris, and I just feel this way. Like you're right, there has to be some sort of PS6 exclusive something. And yet I just can't conceptualize it because I don't know what people want anymore. It doesn't seem like I've been doing this for a long time. We've all been playing games for a long time. It's just there's no desire for a new console.

1:29:38Colin Moriarty:Yeah, if if if they're willing to make a PS5 Pro, right, where there's no exclusives for the PS5 Pro, there's just better performance and they understand that they can rely on a portion of their audience to upgrade on the basis of performance alone. I wonder if that's maybe the approach, right, where it's just like, well, we could just price this thing at a more boutique you know point and make some money get people on board for like whatever the next generation is and then eventually do the same thing that we we're doing now where eventually we do get ps6 games um maybe the importance of an exclusive isn't isn't as necessary as it used to be but we still need exclusives on our on our platform on our ecosystem.

1:30:23Colin Moriarty:That is important. I don't know. I just don't see a world where there's$500 million video games that are then exclusive to a machine that has to hit such a crazy amount of saturation to even see a return on investment with a fraction of the audience buy-in. I think you need the wide pool of at least PS5 to justify the cost of development for something that's that boutique or luxury. I agree. And I also say in a more aggressive time with Horizon and God of War, they refuse to move. So why are they going to move now? Right. It makes even less sense. As annoying as that was, it was very annoying.

1:31:12But great for people with the old consoles. But annoying for those of us with the newer hardware. There's a lot in the air about all this. I'm going to be so interested to see how this all plays out, because I think the one thing we've realized from from reliable leakers is that there's nothing stopping the strain like this thing's coming. And we'll see. Again, I'll buy it. Of course, I'm going to buy it. I want the handheld. Bad. But but yeah, I don't think there's any real purpose for this. I want to see the price is going to be fascinating. The people's interest in it's going to be fascinating.

1:31:44access is going to be fascinating where the global economy is going to be how they're going to try to move this thing into new places and try to seize new markets like china which we're going to talk about in a minute we'll see anything left to say dustin before we move on of course not nope there's nothing left to say we've said it all that's crazy oh no i didn't mean

1:32:00Colin Moriarty:i could see why that would come up as an insult no no time at all like do you have anything to say of course not that's so fucking that was awesome so the follow-up to the sentence was i was gonna say of course not we've covered it all is what i was trying to say but yeah right right but it did sound mean i didn't mean it came across as like you never has anything to say well well well well uh we stick with our friends at push square who write the next story that we'll chronicle here. Hiroki Tatoki, CEO of Sony, a little bit of an elusive young man. He's not really young, he's old. He gave a rare English language interview with Bloomberg, which they transcribed.

1:32:47And they talked a lot about things that have nothing to do with games. But thanks to Push Square and some users on Twitter as well, we have the interesting information that Hiroki Tatoki was talking about in regards to our industry. First of all, I say this over and over again. I mean, this is confirmation. audiences the audience of sacred symbols should well know this by now is that he talks about how much of the revenue of sony modern sony comes from entertainment and it's now more than 60 percent of their money comes from entertainment this is a major sea change for them and he says the following and and i thought this was interesting in regards to this because obviously sony is known for their electronics especially their boutique high quality electronics first and he says, quote, it's difficult to differentiate the products in the area of consumer electronics and that environment invited new entrants into the industry, first from Korea, followed by China.

1:33:39China, as you understand, has an enormous domestic market and so backed by that market, they export their products. The consumer electronics market needs massive scale and the competition comes down to volume and price. Unfortunately, it's very hard to maintain that volume in Sony, end quote. So this is, I think, a decent explanation as to why they spun off bravia to tcl and started a new company with them for their tvs which will still be branded sony but why i said over and over again that the disappearance of like the dynamic sony electronics like the weird shit we've seen for many years if you follow um obscure so what what um is it

1:34:12Colin Moriarty:obscure sony what that's not right uh i'm trying to why can't i why can't i um remember maybe it is obscure oh it's obsolete obsolete sony i'm like that wasn't right that's not right now obsolete sony and some of the other great history and historical minded social media and magazines that like our friend sandy bride does and all the rest is a lot of cool old shit both in and outside of entertainment but sony was an electronics company a very well respected company i think even when you guys were younger certainly and still people feel this way like sony electronics were like the pinnacle i remember when my dad got like a sony a whole sony audio setup for like the home stereo and we got a sony tv and we got and that's what people wanted But what he's basically saying here is that things are different.

1:34:51It's hard to compete. And Sony no longer has that economy of scale and most hardware that they once enjoyed, which I think is pretty interesting. Now, they link out in this story to a tweet from a user called Reforge Gaming. I feel like I've heard of this person before. I think this person might have tweeted to me a few times, but I don't know. I don't know who he is. Or yeah, I think it's he. But he says, Hiroki to Tokyo on gaming to Bloomberg. More than 60 % of Sony revenue is entertainment. the largest portion of that is gaming they want playstation to be quote the best play place to play from the user's perspective and the best place to publish so not a huge surprise the reason i didn't want to get too much deeper into this interview is that it's he doesn't say very much sony is incredibly well media trained um especially these days they they only talk when they have something to gain from it but i guess dustin the thing we can focus on here is uh sony has really truly become an entertainment company and again as we said this has been going since the late 70s slowly they've been they were incredibly canny operators at a time when it wasn't obvious this was going to happen to them the acquisition of cbs music the acquisition of columbia pictures and tri-star in the 80s um so they had a music catalog they had a they have a movie catalog and all the presence and then gaming is the last one to come the third leg of the stool and now sony is no longer an electronics company they are a secondary or tertiary electronics company with a powerful entertainment brand and playstation's at the center of all of it very interesting stuff what do you think yeah i would imagine that

1:36:23Colin Moriarty:it would be harder to be electronics company now for a lot of reasons he mentions uh new players from korea and china as well for these things that they probably are also making things a lot cheaper as well um and sony i mean they were known for having high quality stuff that you hopefully buy it for life and i also think like consumer trends have changed away from that when it's like dude you can buy a hundred dollar tv at walmart dude i couldn't believe the other day i walked into sam's club and i saw like a hundred inch tv and it was under a thousand dollars i was it's crazy i mean 100 oh no under a thousand 100 that's crazy it was either it was close to 100 it might have been like in the 90s i don't remember yeah it was insane and i'm like the picture quality on this thing is probably ass but the novelty like if i had a much bigger house where i was like yeah fuck it i'll put 100 inch tv it doesn't need to be amazing i'll do it why not but that's awesome but yeah even but like on the lower end too like you can you can get 100 tv a tv for 100 bucks and i could see it being harder to compete when electronics now it's like you can get something that's good enough for much cheaper so playstation's one of those things where it's like someone can't come along and build a cheaper good enough playstation because of them owning the entire environment around it that you have to get a PlayStation if you want to play PlayStation games.

1:38:07Colin Moriarty:And so then dominating that and the content on it, of course, and there's also movies and TV and music, of course, as well. This goes into why I feel so strongly about games as a service is because for them is because they're becoming so much more mono reliant on their own product that they're going to be left holding the bag at some point if they don't figure this out just based on the trend the trend lines chris sony entertainment company not a huge surprise we've been talking about this for years but some new information here anything to say no i mean it's it makes sense to me like it just this seems to be the direction and i i get it um i do lament a little bit that they're straying away from this just because like i do have like nostalgia for sony electronics like i had uh um like i have a tape recorder i have a sony tape recorder right right now that i use to uh because i love the audio quality that you get out of it it's like just something about it but i take notes on it um and so like seeing that they're kind of stepping away from that in some way and they're focusing more on you know entertainment I don't know if I feel like that negatively about it I just kind of like oh it was it was nice while we had it you know it was kind of it's a fun thing to be a part of but like it makes sense that it's going this way yeah it's it is sad there is something interesting about it it's a different time I love the old Sony that made all those things and were a dynamo in that space and yet like you said Dustin too it's it's just not they can't compete with these these cheaper items and people there always be a a high-end market but i i just don't think you can make too much money there and again i i just think sony deserves a lot of credit for they didn't stumble into this entertainment thing they did they made those moves when it was much less obvious that they should be doing what they those things in fact if you go back and read about some of their acquisitions in the 70s in the late 70s and into the 80s like people are like what are you guys doing um you're why do you why and it's like well who's fucking smart now i mean this was this sony might be in on its deathbed without these entertainment items and it's funny too about again just that ces 1991 the nintendo uh sony phillips kind of thing yeah being left at the altar changed the entire trajectory of the company such a an amazing butterfly effect not only for the gaming industry but for sony itself wherein that brand that they basically created to get something out of their investment when nintendo ended up becoming the dominant part of the company it's an incredible story yeah all right uh we won't stick on this too much this comes from a portuguese user on twitter uh using a video but it's obviously real it's and we've heard more about this since so it seems like it might be rolling out to other people but there is a new ps5 interface that appears to be being tested it's not radically different you would have to really be on the PS5 a lot to notice the difference, but he has a video here, and it does show some of the interface differences with you would basically have different access to games and PS Store and stuff on this top bar, and it looks a little tighter, I guess.

1:41:22Colin Moriarty:Oh. Yeah, I don't know if I would have... I kind of looked at this earlier, and I was like, I don't know if I'd see it. You used to have to go to... It basically is, I think, separating out... Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, no, it's obvious now looking at the video like, oh, yeah, the place it's there's like a top kind of bar above the icons. And that bar, I think, was it's always been there, but now the icons are different or whatever. We'll see what happens. I don't know. It doesn't really matter. But I just wanted to share that because I'm sure people are going to be interested in it. And if it's in beta, I'm sure we'll see it roll out.

1:41:55I like that it's a video of him launching the PS4 version of Blair Witch. Yeah, I thought that I thought that, too. I'm like, why are you launching Blair Witch of all the games? Strange.

1:42:04Colin Moriarty:that's a blooper game isn't it ironically uh i think so i think you're right yeah it was okay i played a little bit of it i like the blair witch project movie like i think that movie is fucking awesome i i've never played the game it is something that i should try at some point all right um wanted to move on to this next story here the great delisting continues my friends delistedgames.com writes sony wipes more questionable publisher catalogs from the PlayStation store. They write, quote, Sony has apparently targeted another handful of publishers following the sweeping delistings of titles from Nostra Games and CGI lab just two weeks ago.

1:42:40First noted earlier this morning on the PSN profiles forums, it looks like all titles from Go Game Console publisher, BRC Forge Studios and Welding Byte, previously operating as random spin games, were removed from the PlayStation store on April 2nd. The roster includes titles like Jesus Simulator, Card Shop Game Store, Six Seven Nights, Tune My Car, Cat Life Simulator, I Am Busy Digging a hole and dozens more similar to previous publisher strikes from the playstation store many of these games were made available on steam and nintendo switch i'm loving this dustin loving it now what's the commonality between the games they listed there slop right but but based on real games right oh yeah so it seemed like the first round was going after like true shovelware trophy games this now seems to be going after games that are obviously designed to replicate the success of a steam game and trick people into buying it you know so the card ship game store um i am busy digging a hole jesus simulator these are all version bootleg versions of real games so they're getting more serious yeah yeah i at one point i

1:43:49Colin Moriarty:was researching for a video that i don't know if i'll ever make but i found there's a youtuber that discovered that like really went in depth on some of these companies and basically a lot of these shovelware slop ai games are like created by shell companies and there's like a networking web that it's all down to like two companies that are releasing these it's uh there's some kind of crazy network conspiracy with these uh but i'm glad sony's finally doing something about it i mean we've talked about this so many times on the show that's like what are you doing what are you doing well i i email i'm emailing with them now because sony because um i'm trying to do an interview about um saros and we're gonna see if we can work that out either before or after the game comes out um with someone from house mark but i had written a postscript in the email to the pr people being like keep it up i'm like people are loving this you know like this they've deleted a couple thousand games that's good and yeah it's like it's it's great yeah what do you think chris no i love it keep doing it keep it up keep it up this is this is summon sign now keep it up keep uh wolf yeah i'm looking at some of these get wolf wolf simulator rpg survival animal battle rolls off the tongue really nicely it's cop police escape racing zone clash beat them up street fight band simulator so good i love it god christ oh my yeah i'm not good i'm happy about it i uh i've been wanting them to do this forever i just don't understand what the point of having a you know a curated uh uh storefront is if you're not going to protect the the sanctity of it you know like if you were just gonna have all this shit anyway you might as well just be as open as steam is and just let random people you know what i mean like i just it never really made sense to me because it was the one thing about consoles that i really that i appreciated not the lack of variety or whatever but like or the lack oh i can't play this game on this but like every time i went on the store i knew that like it was at least at some bare minimum quality standard and that's kind of gone from most console spaces now um and so to see them taking an actual step and that it's materially affecting the stores like it's a good thing ultimately i think they could use some work still not even necessarily i i've had this hang up i don't even know if most people agree with me but like i hate that under new releases it shows stuff that's not out yet that's just like available for pre-order yeah don't what do we because it's like 17 pages it's like stuff that you can't buy there really should be a separate thing that's a nitpick or whatever but like this is a good start to uh kind of clearing up the clutter on the store i gotta say i think it's more than i think you're right on it's more than a nitpick it really matters like i'm telling you from from personal experience like that that level of discoverability being buried by shit and people making assumptions that nothing you're going to see there is worthwhile so you just search for what you're looking for go to like promoted paid for advertisements like starfield is promoted right now on psn and so there'll be a big icon there and you'll see it that shit sucks it it stops there being the organic discovery that xbox live arcade in the early psn experienced and that's why a lot of games on both of those platforms actually did extraordinarily well there are very few games that sell as well as games used to back in the day on um like the digital games because there was more care taken to give the good games attention and to give them space um i love what's happening here i'll reiterate what i said on the stream because most people didn't obviously see that and watch that.

1:47:37It's worth saying here is that it seems like they're getting serious behind the scenes. I'd love to know more about the personnel behind what's going on here and why changes are being made because I was making fun of that game that I think we brought up last week, Gran Charismo. They changed the name of it, right? Yeah, they changed the name, which is like... I think I said on the show, right, Dustin, I was like if I was the person in charge and I had all these people working underneath me that ingested all the games to PSN because you have to work with all these liaisons. I know from personal experience and they someone ingested grand charisma i would have been like you're fired are you fucking out of your mind grand charisma you actually like typed that into a field do you know where you are like what are like what our ip is and you didn't like you didn't say anything to anyone you didn't go back to them be like you can't name your game Gran Charisma.

1:48:34Yeah. Because we can, because it is so close to our trademark from the mid 90s that it's like little things like that. So it's even crazy. It's like all this garbage. It's what was being said. It's not just appearing. Right. People are putting it there and that is embarrassing. It's fucking really embarrassing and that no one, it's like not your job to discern. and we go open your fucking eyes you're doing yourself a disservice and frankly if these games are the funny thing about this too chris is a lot of these games exist for trophies everyone knows that achievements why are people buying them on switch that's the thing i was thinking about when i was writing this yesterday i'm like so these games they're like they're still available on switch and i'm like why are they like who is buying them there for what end to what end are you even buying any of this shit over there are you crazy i wonder how much money they make on that platform like because don't i'm pretty i could be wrong about this although i don't think

1:49:36Colin Moriarty:i am nintendo is a weird space where like it's mostly first party that you know like people aren't really buying i can't imagine that someone buy is buying like sushi flip on the switch right that's that's the whole point it's like so what like and these games are 50 cents or a dollar everyone knows wink at a nod why they exist on xbox and playstation and to a lesser degree steam i guess because people care about achievements there too but the nintendo thing there is so weird to me but i i think the the company that figures out that curation is key i think will not only win the long-term fight but will engender positivity from publishers and developers that are being washed out um by right bullshit games and for people that don't know the difference between the games i'm talking about the games i'm not i don't think you're quite familiar enough with what's going on on psn it's why i enjoyed that episode dustin we haven't done it again but we should where we just went through the psn and started looking at random games that are coming out and it's like it's a very eye-opening experience if you've never done it about what you're dealing with out there on the play opening experience especially if you remember doing it years and years ago and it was like not this not even close to this bad not at all not at all because it took there's a lot it's what i say i don't want to get into the ai thing but it's like it's what i say about ai are it where it's like the the effort is part of the part of the skill still being able to do that jumping through hoops that kept the places clean it's it's the lesson nintendo learned post atari and i don't want to like reduce it just to that but like their whole thing was like oh no like you can't publish too many games you have to we're gonna limit you so much that you have to decide what you want to publish and that's kind of a ballsy thing to do and i don't know if you have to be that hardcore but maybe you should be it's like you have five that was the brilliance of the NES thing is that you have five slots every calendar year have fun you know and yeah and I should still be that and I love that and obviously companies like blatantly got around it ultra the biggest one of course but yeah there's something nice about that being at least pretending you give a shit it's the same thing of like the Nintendo seal quality that means really nothing there were games with Nintendo seal quality some of the worst games you ever played in your life but at least they were trying to like signal to the market that we give a shit that you can have some sort of confidence that you're buying something good here and so good for sony they're way late but good for them and i'm happy that they're doing this guys i'm curious what you think of this over on the playstation blog the official mouthpiece of playstation they write introducing the player base bringing playstation's biggest fans into blockbuster playstation studios games this is exactly what we all wanted they write starting today, fans can apply for an opportunity to step into Gran Turismo 7, Gran Charismo 7.

1:52:21With additional games to be announced in the future. They write, we're introducing the player base, a unique opportunity for PlayStation's biggest fans to step into some of the biggest game worlds by having their likeness scanned and appear within a PlayStation game. The player base will start with Gran Turismo 7 and will be looking to expand and include fans in additional PlayStation Studio titles in the future. The community program will be available in select markets in the Americas, Europe, Asia, South Africa, and Australia. For more details including the official rules, and to submit an application for the player base.

1:52:47You can visit playstation.com slash the dash player base, playstation.com slash the dash player base, and it's available now. You'll be asked to answer a few questions about your experience with PlayStation. You will also be required to sign in with your PSN ID, possibly because they obviously want to connect you to that, and they probably can see if you're really hardcore enough. Do you really belong in Gran Turismo 7? After reviewing applications, they write, we'll select a limited number of finalists to participate in video interviews to learn about them and their connection to PlayStation.

1:53:14from there one PlayStation fan will be selected to be featured in Gran Turismo 7 as part of the player base where they will have a special limited time appearance as an in-game character portrait similar to how characters are presented throughout the game the selected fan will also help design a custom fantasy logo and a one-of-a-kind vehicle livery which will be added permanently to the showcase menu they will be invited to a visual art studio in Los Angeles for a scanning day and collaborate with a designer to create their fantasy logo and vehicle liberty and they will have more information about the other games in the future.

1:53:43I don't know. It's fine. That's cool. I mean, if that's what you're into, I just this level of marketing is not necessary. I don't think when you have so many other problems, but here it is. Nonetheless, Dustin, what do you think?

1:53:58Colin Moriarty:I think they should just select us to be in Gran Turismo and you have to race against the three of our ghost players. Yeah. And and people like the hardcore grand turismo players they don't know who we are and they're like why the fuck this guy keeps ramming into the side i'm just gonna ride the wall all the way around yeah usually doing grand turismo this is a i mean it's a fun cute idea but i agree with you colin that i think that your time and effort and money for marketing could probably be better spent elsewhere because I mean this is this is really cool for the few people that win right but are you really interested in seeing some random guy in Gran Turismo for a special event I don't want to I don't want to be such a hater like it's a cool idea but it but I agree with you it's like how does this move the needle like this is like something you come up with in a in a boardroom you get you know several million dollars to pursue this idea and Dr Bose I don't think Sony really quite understands what time it is with their own fan base at this point.

1:55:07I don't think they get it. There's a disconnect between what people expect and what they're getting. And this is neat. But yeah, let me read this inquiry from Silence Do Good. The pen name, of course, of Benjamin Franklin. Howdy, Sacred Trio, writing in from the Artemis 2, which is an Xbox. To ask your thoughts on the new PlayStation initiative, the player base, which is an opportunity for PlayStation fans to be scanned in as an NPC in a game after applying and going through an interview process. Being rolled out first for GT7 with the winner being flown out to the visual arts studio for the 3D scanning process.

1:55:39The funny thing about that, by the way, is they don't even meet anyone from Polyphony. You literally go to the visual arts studio in LA, totally unassociated. And all that data is going to be delivered to some fucking chump at Polyphony to ingest into the game. If they continue to roll out this opportunity for future games, what game would each of you like to be an NPC in? Dustin would fit right in with the post-apocalyptic world of The Last of Us Part III, for instance. Maybe as a purveyor of bigot sandwiches in Jackson, Wyoming. Chris, what game would you want to be in? First party game? Where do you belong?

1:56:10I don't know, man.

1:56:12Colin Moriarty:I do want to say I hate this idea. I just think it's I think it's I think it's among the lamest things that are because when I first saw it, I was like, oh, are they doing like a PlayStation home thing? Like, what's that's interesting. Curious. And then I clicked it. It was just it was this fucking weird shit. but I don't know what first party game would I be would I make sense in I was going to say it would be cool to be in Gran Turismo but as somebody that you have to run over I'd be okay with that you gotta run over Chris to get the platinum in Gran Turismo I really don't know maybe I like Uncharted you can shoot me in Uncharted that's good that would be cool yeah i don't mind i like the idea of being like in a game just to die in it it's like what about hell divers oh a hell diver three of us as hell divers characters together yeah that could be fun i don't know i think uh i know whatever i whatever i'm in i want to be like an enemy i want to be like a mob like an ad i want to i want to be like something that you gotta clear out i can have little lines dude ow they take that read take that mp3 clip that mp3 use it in the game yeah there you go for free yeah you can have that for free don't worry i know i know my my talents are highly sought after but in marathon chris you are one of the ai like uh you know quest givers oh yeah whatever one of the companies what what are you asking people to do on Tal Setti 4.

1:57:48Colin Moriarty:Collect glass Snapple bottles. Yeah. You have to take them to the box at the edge of the map, whatever that's called. Yeah, you have to take them to Decon. You gotta warp them into space. I want them full. And it'll be just like a perfectly realistic Unreal Engine 3D render of me, completely unstylized like every single other character. Yeah, I don't mind that. I don't know what I would be in. I do like the idea of being a villain. I think that would be that would be funny. I like Lenny Kravitz in First Light. Yes. But I feel like. The thing that I was reading some of the commentary about this, like on websites and even on the PlayStation blog itself.

1:58:37And some people be like, you should never let a corporation use your likeness without paying you and all these kinds of things. I'm like, you're not fucking Tom Cruise, dude. like it's it's an opportunity for a fan of the game to get like find themselves in the game it's not a money-making opportunity for you and no one knows who you are it gives a shit so there's no money for you to be made i just think i like the don't work for free mantra i generally agree with that but i'm like this is supposed like i think some people are misinterpreting what it is it's like yeah sony's gonna scan you they're gonna fly to visual arts and scan you and pay you

1:59:06Colin Moriarty:it's like okay yeah it's a little silly so silly it's not this is it's not palantir guys fucking it's grant to reason it's like we got fred smith from you know youngstown ohio works at the local uh cbd dispensary and uh we invite and he's a big grand turismo fan we're inviting him out we're gonna pay him 50 000 to be in our it's like shut up the thing that i don't like the thing that i don't like about this is like i don't know what i don't know why you would open yourself up to this at all because like what happens when that guy's like on on a chris hansen show right right or something you know what i mean just like that old executive right it's just like i don't know i i think i think subway learned a long time ago that like it's better to just invent a character you know you don't you don't got to get a real guy yeah i don't really get it but but like whatever if people are i'm sure that people are excited about it if that's what you want to do it'll be a cool opportunity to get motion captured which is neat early scanned all right do you think they'll do the full body kojima scan yeah we gotta get your feet in there yeah oh god god help that person kojima's gonna do something like this soon he's gonna scan you into yeah into death strand I'd like to get Margaret Qualey in the studio and scan her feet for 10 hours make sure she wears sandals make sure she wears scan sandals

2:00:36good shit all right a couple for us here dustin and this one especially for you i thought this was really interesting because when i first clicked on this article we're using push square a lot today i appreciate those guys as always um i was like probably not because the article says rumor persona one and two re-release hinted at by new merchandise i'm like i'll be the judge of that but i think it's being i think i think they are teasing it they right here oh no atlas is doing that thing again where it gets everyone's hopes up with weirdly vague naming conventions. As you probably already know, 2026 marks the 30th anniversary of Persona as a series with the developer Atlas having already teased a number of updates that will be shared throughout the year.

2:01:10The hope is that one such update will feature the original Persona and Persona 2, or more specifically, the re-release and remastering of those two games. Basically, there's an official Persona 3 30th anniversary clothing range now available on Amazon, and multiple products are based on the first two Persona titles. Anything to do with the original Persona is called Persona one origins while anything related to persona two is called persona two duality suspicions are on the rise because atlas has never used either of these subtitles in the past so the reasoning here is that persona one origins and persona two duality are the leaked names of the yet to be announced remaster remake or even re-release or re-release or even remake dustin i gotta i gotta

2:01:44Colin Moriarty:say i think there's something to this now yeah oh good it's the it's the you know the duality and the origins thing that I think is the giveaway. Right. It's going to be very interesting, particularly for Persona 2. There's two of them, right? There's two versions of it. There, I think so. Well, I honestly can't remember. I think, let me tell you what I found out or whatever, and then you can tell me if this sounds about right. So Persona, or Revelations colon Persona is the first Persona game that comes out in 1996. Actually, it comes out in 96 in Japan and the West, which is interesting. And then in 2000, Persona 2 Eternal Punishment comes out in Japan and in the West, a late PS1 release.

2:02:28But there was a Persona 2 only in Japan the year before called Persona 2 Innocent Sin. Apparently, I don't know if it's kind of like what they ended up doing later and what they've been widely criticized for since and why they think metaphor didn't do very well is because they always do this like new version of the game, which is maybe a mistake. Like, I don't know exactly what the story is between those two games. But when I was reading that, Dustin, I was like, oh, duality. There's two games and it'll probably be both of them. And I don't know if one is like a 1.5 version or whatever. As I understand it, I think one is from a different perspective.

2:03:06If I'm getting that right. But people out there will know better than me. I didn't play them. And Revelations Persona, of course, Origins, number one. I don't think there's any question that that's. I mean, of course, there's a question. But like what? That's not nothing. and atlas has never used that terminology so i think that's exactly what you're getting

2:03:22Colin Moriarty:in my opinion yeah my question i haven't played either one of these games but i've watched videos about it hitler is a character in persona 2 i'm just telling you straight up hitler is a character they changed him i don't know if it's just for the american release or i think one persona 2 innocent sin came to the psp right they changed it from being hitler to the fuhrer and they gave him sunglasses sick so they made him cooler is what you're saying yeah yeah they they just changed him a little bit and it's dude it's so funny it's like is this supposed to be not identifiable as hitler because it's just hit with sunglasses that's all they did was add sunglasses and change his name he's looks maxing i hope i mean if they're gonna do it i would hope that it's not modified like just do just do like what hbo does or whatever that's like this is a you know some some people may find things in this offense or whatever uh maybe you get a toggle on and off for the hitler sunglasses or something like that story do you want an accurate hitler or a stylized hitler it's under the dlss settings yeah uh i would love to check these out i know that what people understand is the modern persona really began with persona 3 and these games are uh while there's you know core similarities to them they are very different i don't know if i would even like these games very much but i would at least like to check them out for, you know, historical context and a little bit of history with the Hitler stuff too.

2:05:07So, yeah. So there's, I'm, it's funny, man. Like I have no recollection of revelations persona being on the shelf of like a game store, you know, like I was like in up that those game stores ass at 12 or 13 years old, you know, it's funny. And then persona too, I remember PSM covered it. And I was like, I don't even know what this is or whatever. It just didn't it didn't seem. But then I was looking at screenshots of Persona 3, which I own, but I've never played. And it looks just like Persona 4. So at some point, they they find like a new look that I think becomes more static or whatever. But it's so interesting.

2:05:47I don't do you know the story of why it took them so long to make Persona 3? I have to go look into that. Like there's a seven year gap, I think, between Persona 2 and Persona 3, which is unheard of back then. I don't know if they the games maybe just didn't sell well or something were they not making other stuff in between or something I'm sure they I'm sure they were yeah I don't know well Persona team doesn't it doesn't exist at that point though right right because the first three Persona games

2:06:11Colin Moriarty:and even I guess four on its PS2 release were labeled as Shin Megami Tensei Persona so at that time Persona was still a sub series of SMT right yeah like yeah right that's exactly right right Right. It's so interesting how Atlas has that with Shin Megami Tensei. And then, of course, Neon Falcom has that with Dragon Slayer, which begets Xanadu, which begets Legend of Heroes, which begets Trails. Trails. So it's kind of cool. I think that if you have time to be a full time Trails player, for instance, for the rest of your life, it's pretty cool that there's all those options that all feed into each other.

2:06:52I don't dislike that. It's just a lot to ask. is all. It's extraordinary about to ask of a person. But they're out there. And then, yeah, they would have East going at the same time. Anyway, Chris, I won't even ask you about this. And I won't ask you about this next one either, but I didn't want to throw this out there. Right. Just that the tail and it's nothing. This comes from Automaton Media Automaton dash media dot com, which we cite every once in a while. It's a website that has a lot of Japanese English language, Japanese coverage, which is really good and they're they're just relaying word that tails um it's the 30th anniversary of tails and bandai namco basically has nothing for it and they announced basically like new artwork that's like literally what they announced is like new art done for like all the different games to like show different scenes from the game i don't know man i i don't have much to say about this other than i don't know what they're doing with tails it's actually incredibly frustrating there There has been a single Tales game in the last 10 years.

2:07:56You have to understand that if you're a Tales fan, and I've been a Tales fan since the PS1, that's completely out of control. The series was virtually annualized until the end of the PS3 era, and then they have released a couple in the PS4 era really right on top of each other with Zisteria and Berseria, and then Arise in 21 and nothing else. There were guys, there were 16 Tales games between 1995 and 2016. 16. And there has been one Tales game from 2016 to 2026. So. I always say I'm a noticer. And something's going on with Tales. So I don't know what they should have never broke. I don't know how much you care about this, Dustin, but they broke down the whole.

2:08:47It's actually the antithesis of what Atlas did, where they kind of made P studio and And then they like focus them on this one thing. You might remember that Tales was made by a team called Wolf Team at first. And then it was made by the Tales of Studio, which was run by Hideo Baba. And those guys were, I understand the expectations were different. And a lot of the stuff wasn't like the most beloved. Like they're not Final Fantasy or something like that or Dragon Quest. But they had a nice little cadence going on. People liked those games. I'm one of them. And they just stopped. and I wonder if it's like they just kind of mismanaged like they shouldn't have gotten rid of that team and and ingested it or I've been using that word a lot today um took it in in house or whatever I don't know it's just frustrating just wanted to throw that out there I know you're not much of a tails guy but I am it's my probably greatest connection to anime weeb culture actually true like my most singular connection to it you should have seen some of the posters I had of the Tales games back in the day I used to get them from like obscure comic conventions yeah fucking nerdiest shit I've ever seen you I'm the only person in all the United States that had a Tales of Destiny poster on his wall tell you right now we want Tales back help us not Tales the not Tales from Sonic miles per hour miles Tales miles per hour did we talk about how that that tweet was going around about how someone was saw Mario Galaxy movie which I saw it by the and they were like Star Fox appears and someone had screamed out it's tails.

2:10:22It's tails. That's awesome. By the way, just a quick note on the Super Mario Galaxy movie. Why do they spoil so much of it? I don't know. I wanted the same thing. Like the whole wart scene is awesome. And with Mouser and Fry Guy and all those guys and it's like, why did you tease this? and the star Fox thing. Yeah. It's like, why did you, and it might have made a good point. It's true. It's like, this is going to be spoiled immediately, but I'm like, there are big things you can't operate in that world where it's like, well, this is, shouldn't be cool because it's going to be spoiled. It's like, well, it should still be cool for those that are willing to experience it that way.

2:11:02Yeah. I was so confused by that. Cause I, when they're, when they find, you know, the R wing and stuff and it's like, that would've been crazy. That would've been like a whole, a huge pop moment for people, I think, but everyone knew. You were waiting to encounter Star Fox instead of being like, wait, what? Like, that's crazy. Or and Wart is obviously an obscure character. I was making fun of and I think we talked about it on the stream about how people thought it was like King Cruel or whatever King Cool, whatever the fuck the Donkey Kong. K. Rool. K. Rool, yeah. And I was like, that's embarrassing, but that's fine.

2:11:36That's okay. But it would have been cool to just be like, are you serious that that's fucking Wart and Mauser? like that is so that is so and they did such a nice job with them truly i'm like what a bummer but i knew they were there there was really no there was no surprise in the movie in my opinion i don't know why they did that anyway nintendo porn for those that are interested in watching it though that's all it is it's nonsense it's complete nonsense the first one was nonsense too but not in a bad way it's fine they're fine they're fine i don't know that i could have made a better mario movie i don't know that you could really make a mario movie

2:12:15Colin Moriarty:any better than this no i yeah i don't that's kind of the thing is that like you can't really like what are you gonna what are you gonna do realistically are you gonna have like a real thespian as as mario you're gonna have I love the word I can't imagine so much yeah but yeah Alan Rickman is Mario like I just like you're not you're not there for that Luigi Bowser our newest celebrity celebrity wahoo

2:12:50Colin Moriarty:it's um me garbage it was I will say this uh incredibly high quality animation like unreal but they spend a lot of money on them they make a lot of money so good for them it better be fucking good the tease at the end I thought was a little anticlimactic the secret scene at the end did he's doki doki panic yeah that's yeah I won't say I don't want to spoil for people but it's I was like that's fine that's cool could have been anything really this is kind of a weird thing to choose but okay fair enough oh yeah I know you're talking about all right a couple more things that we can get into what we're playing there's going to be a new DualSense controller for an upcoming game that you can begin to pre-order on April 17th the controller it's for 007 First Light this limited edition DualSense wireless controller will cost$85 or your local equivalent so pretty steep but that's what controllers cost now it's great are there third party DualSense controllers I was thinking about that the other day there must be right I think there are because they're becoming so much more sophisticated it's not like remaking it's not like making a custom fucking or a third-party snes controller it's a much more complicated thing you know yeah but you have to imagine that even i mean the ps5 technology is how old you know it must be fairly trivial for people who know what they're doing now to to at least like emulate it on some level i think there are third party but specifically for the high end like razor oh like nice as a ps5 controller that is 219 why wouldn't you just get the edge at that point the it's funny because i've always been a first party peripheral person like i've i've not had good experiences with third party things i had a third party memory card on ps1 that failed like after that failure of that memory card i never bought another third party anything ever um i know these things are expensive but i don't know why you wouldn't just buy a playstation controller oh if given i well i see it i see what i see well i see what this is um oh no it isn't because i was gonna say like i would i would i wouldn't not buy a third party um controller for ps5 if it was um if it had like an offset stick layout you know what i mean oh yeah yeah true does the edge allow you to do that can you like move the d-pad and see that would be kind of cool if you could switch the d-pad and the the left stick there is a controller that does that yeah the net nan net nakon controller i'm looking at does it i don't know what it's called i just know i've seen one that has modules that lets you flip it anyway back to the double oh i'm sorry go ahead chris no i was gonna say that would be that would be cool i would i would buy something like that like an offset stick uh playstation controller i don't think i could i mean i could obviously play with offset sticks i do when i on the occasion i play on xbox but it is weird to me like it's just about what you're used to i think and xbox 360 i think indoctrinated a lot of people into um not indoctrinated i mean it's it's a legitimate way to play and i want to see the sony said i mean they told me when i was at japan studio once there are there are dual shock for prototypes with offset sticks and i would love to see that like see what that was like what you know what they should really release is a boomerang controller as like a novel that would be pretty pretty dope that would be really cool because they've been doing that with the xbox controllers like i i use i use like a 360 like a pc controller yeah this isn't like the original like it's like some some remake thing i love the button colors that's so iconic you know yeah i miss colors man i miss colors on the buttons yeah they muted all of it over time even we talked about the white and black buttons on the original xbox like i thought those were cool yeah like i would just rub them you know like sometimes i like the texture of it's a little it's a little sexual oh hickory dickory doc oh um all right so the 007 first light controller comes out may 27th you can pre-order on playstation direct april 17th it's 85 bucks or your local equivalent or i i don't love 007 enough anywhere near enough to at all actually to buy this controller i think i know you want to brand it i think it would have been cooler without the 007 logo but then but then i don't know what would have been 007 about it necessarily so uh any interest in this for you guys no i think it's ugly get out of here also i don't really like gold stuff that much gold so gold for whatever gold reminds me of pokemon gold so i get like a weird bit of i get a weird bit of dopamine when i see gold peripherals because It reminds me of that, like the cartridge.

2:17:42Colin Moriarty:Yeah, sure. But yeah, I don't know. I'm not really. I actually don't think it's gold enough. I kind of think the black buttons are a lot. Like it would have been cool if they went more gold with it or like gold sticks or something. But like, whatever. It's it's fine.

2:18:01Colin Moriarty:Again, I'm like you guys where I'm just like, I'm not. Not that big of a double set. like this is really like this game is probably like the deepest into 007 i'm probably going to get really yeah it'll be the deepest i've gone since golden eye yeah exactly well i i barely even remember what the story of golden eye was like that was like a oh i don't know that was a pvp game yeah for for us there is a there is a campaign but i don't i don't remember what it's about i actually it was quite nostalgic because they were showing that guy that everyone makes fun of that doesn't know how to play video games very well but he's a streamer um oh dsp dsp right and which actually Barry did you see Barry put DSP into the into Saints layer as a code which I think is so funny it starts you with 99 lives that's crazy but I saw I saw him playing gold and he famously died against the first enemy in gold and I recently and I saw that video and it was very nostalgic I was like I remember I remember I love this game and I'm like yeah I don't know how you died on the first enemy my theory to his credit is I don't think he knows how to use an N64 controller i i think i don't think he was holding it like this i think he was holding it like this playing it on original hardware i assumed well i oh maybe not i don't know because that was like my benefit of the doubt thing because he couldn't shoot the gun and i'm like because you're not holding the center of the control you're holding the edge you don't have access to the z button so you can't shoot the gun won't shoot there's there's bug but the game's bugged it's a bugged mechanic i i saw i saw lock mort playing that game samson last night um and he put out that video of him just quit like rate like not even rage quitting but just be like all right i'm done uh and just like and quitting quitting out yeah it's by the it's by the studio liquid swords that split off from avalanche what the fuck they're like the just cause team or some of the just cause guys it's like some it's supposed to be some sort of like gta like game that focuses on like the chase i think specifically okay and it's supposed to be pretty sir yeah i'm sorry no i was gonna say gta likes are doing really well right now but it's supposed to be pretty busted up and not ready for prime time um like many games released these days many such cases many yeah many mind's eye such cases exactly uh what a bummer everyone's trying to out mind's eye each other which is distressing the the final uh story of the week my friends is uh also from the playstation blog top downloads from PlayStation Store for March 2026.

2:20:23I don't think there's any huge surprises here except for one, which is that the top PS5 game in the US and Canada for the month was not Crimson Desert, but MLB The Show 26. America's game holding in strong, but Crimson Desert was the biggest game in Europe. Resident Evil Requiem holding in at three. Marathon at six. Now, I don't know. PlayStation is much less transparent than Serkana about the counting of if this is based on revenue or downloads. if it's a revenue that's quite impressive if it's downloads it's still good but it is what we were saying about god wars sons of sparta being on cercana that month where it's like that's a 30 game that's crazy uh so good for them and above arc raiders which is at number seven so at least doing better on playstation and by the way i feel like everyone's focused on the steam charts i know and and uh we have some data i think maybe from alinea and others saying like the console heart fan base isn't as big as you would think or not as big as the pc fan base but something must be keeping this game going and i wonder if the stickiness is more prominent over time on console

2:21:30Colin Moriarty:um i don't know i don't know i have no theory on that yeah i don't know i will say anecdotally i've noticed more of my friends get on as time like who weren't initially like they didn't play the server slam or anything they didn't know anything about it i've seen like many many people jump on over the last like week i think out of curiosity maybe they saw the reviews or whatever and they were like oh um anecdotally i will say like i'm running into a lot of people in games with purchased skins oh yeah you've been saying that so people are spending money which which again is crazy to me like i mean like i i i i have a couple just because i'm like i like this game a lot like i've put in like 200 hours like it's fine uh but that to me is interesting like if they can get if they can get like better it's so funny because it's like it's one of those games where it's just like people have been asking for a game like that right where it's just like oh it's not really the skins aren't really the point it's not about nickel and diming you for skins and it's just like now people want better skins it's like right i don't know i don't really understand what people want i don't either but people people are paying so like i'm i'm curious my i'm also curious about daily active users because i have been playing less also just because like time and like i wonder if like daily active users are like relatively the same i'm sure it's down a little bit but like i wonder if it's like as down as the time and like the steam player charts i'm still convinced that is not the game's not going away i just i just don't yeah i don't think i just don't i don't know man it just seemed there's a we'll see this is well it is the epitome chris of opportunity or not opportunity cost of um diminishing not diminishing returns all these different terms we use it is not the epitome of either of those things it's the epitome of um some cost it's like do you remember they already wrote down a part of the of the bungee acquisition on their you know financials right so they don't they can't write the they can write the rest of it down they would have to shut the studio down i i just feel like i don't know i like my my analogy of the beachhead in in this very competitive crazy market you have a game that's not being played by as many nearly as many people as you want to but people really like it that's not common games that people don't like don't get played it's uncommon to have a game that is very well received critically and has a hardcore fan base with a dwindling number of people playing it it's an unusual situation to be in i think you should try um and by the way they can still flip the free-to-play switch at any time i don't know if that's something they want to do or will do but that's an op i think marathon is good enough and big enough where that's what you would do first and so even then it's like i don't i'm not worried they have like if they have like a proper because again the skins are very secondary and you can feel that which i think is good it means it's it's a game design first kind of game instead of like a spend money kind of game but if they really wanted to overhaul and like get some some cool skins in there stuff that like demands attention i could see that working fairly well if they if they did free to play because it is just a fucking good loop um i don't know we'll see if it means putting darth vader as a marathon to make it survive yeah i don't want that they're not no i don't think i don't want that either but if it would if it means that it would save the game i just mean i yeah that's tricky i think yeah it won't i think a big i mean you said i mean destiny like the star wars thing with destiny is kind of killing it right now and i was like a fart in the wind dude that thing like like i don't even yeah i played the first mission of it i played the first mission i was like yes it's good i mean it plays well like i mean the game underneath it is great so that's not surprising but like this kind of detracts from something i think the visual style of marathon is what's is is part of the secret sauce that makes it so cool but i do think they could stand to have the skins be a little bit more distinct they could they could stand to have a little bit more oomph put into them i think they they were scared to do that because they know the criticism that destiny gets we're like oh all the coolest skins are behind you know or all the coolest armor sets or the armor ornaments are behind paywalls and it's like well yeah okay we won't do that now now we'll give you kind of base skins which is just colors and it's like no we want more we want to buy more cool things and it's like what do you want dude it's a rock and a hard place i think they should just like put cool stuff and like who cares everything i hear about current destiny fans sounds absolutely insufferable sorry annoying yeah they're annoying it's annoying like we got i say that as somebody who is still technically a destiny fan i just like they ended the game brother that's like they had a fucking narrative conclusion that's more than you're gonna get out of any live service game like they they want to perpetually keep these things alive it's business smart to do that but like it's it's artistically really like cool that they did that they gave you a narrative conclusion to something that should be technically on paper kept alive for as long as possible they should have from a money perspective kept you kept you stringing along for like years and years but they gave you like a really a really great finale i thought uh that was really like that was really that they landed that plane i don't know what more you want out of it like i get that it's a good game and you want to keep playing it and you want new things to keep keep you coming back but like for me that was it i was like okay cool i'm done if destiny 3 happens like i'm down to check it out if it's like a new complete reset and you know a nice brand new jumping off point where like parts of the game aren't going to be taken out and inaccessible hopefully you learn from that because that is the worst thing about destiny it is that that content vault but i just don't understand the desire to keep like brother the story's been over for like two years yeah i i don't i don't get it but whatever teach their own let's see is there anything else in here interesting um john carpenter's toxic commando is at 14 that game seems to be doing okay i'm curious about it because it's a lot of people say this about a lot of games that come out but I kind of more believe it with this where it's like it's kind of hitting a Left 4 Dead vibe for people that I've heard which is interesting I am curious maybe 4 loop will hit that for people when that comes out I really I've got a bad feeling about that game man well I know that I don't want to have that bad feeling by the way people people always accuse me of being like cynical and liking it but like I swear to god I don't I just don't know about that game well I have a bad feeling about it specifically because

2:28:17no one seems to like it. So it just seems like one of those games where it's like you got an uphill battle, man. Because I'm surprised by how disinterested and even hostile people are about Forlou. So yeah, that game's got an uphill battle, no doubt. Let's see. Ghost of Yotei holding on at 16. It looks like Re-Animal 17. Ready or Not at 19. Monster Hunter Stories 3 at 20. That just came out, didn't it?

2:28:43Colin Moriarty:so it didn't right around yeah something like this recent right it's not very good yeah something came out around it it might have been around when marathon came out because i remember talking to jimmy about it and he i was really crimson desert came out because he's like dude i'm playing monster stories instead there is something to note dustin on free to play number one game seven deadly sins origin uh you know how much i love seven deadly sins huge fan so this is i mean that's why i hid my trophies you don't want anyone to know i didn't want people to know i already have the platinum so um and knocked fortnight to two and roblox at three but everything else is pretty much as you would expect it here fall guys creeping back in at number nine marvel rivals at eight apex at seven so nothing too crazy here but that's all we have for the news this week all right my friends let's get into what we're playing this week let's see uh dust let's start with you you're hanging out with this uh what was it uh what was that one game we were making for my eyes oh swag man right swag man yeah uh so i've mostly been playing marathon which i know the audience has heard us talk about endlessly so i will not talk about that but something else that i thought would be interesting and relevant to you guys as playstation fans is i got this in the mail it is the super station one uh it's from a company called retro remake and what this is is a fpga console it's it's inside it's a mr fpga if you've heard of that but it's been packaged up nicely it has analog ports on it um it's got hdmi of course s video stuff like that and it's a little fpga playstation console fpga for those who don't know what that is basically when you emulate a game on like your pc or steam deck or something like that it's using software emulation so it's using a software environment to emulate the hardware in fbga actually emulates the chip from whatever device or core that you're using so it's super accurate emulation it's basically the same as playing something on a playstation and uh yeah this thing is freaking awesome i love this thing uh it's takes a little bit of getting like figuring it out like this isn't a plug and play device like uh like a super nintendo classic or something like that um you're still gonna have to figure out a little bit on how it works uh there's a lot of guides because it is a mr fpga so what i've been doing is just checking out like all the different games that can run i talked about you know swag man earlier and uh people say like oh dustin you you just went and downloaded the ROM for that bitch I got the cd drive out and I actually ripped my games to put it on the system which was uh kind of cool and there is a disk drive coming out for it it's not quite done yet but I think it's going to be here in a few weeks and so from then you'll actually just be able to play your actual ps1 games on it um it also can do it can basically do anything up to playstation one so it can do super nintendo uh it can do nintendo 64 can do sega genesis sega cd turbo graphics any basically anything arcade pc early pc stuff all of it runs on this and that's why i wanted is is that it's like a this is now my go-to all-in-one retro device and what i really appreciate is that maybe you've seen videos before online about like here's how crazy you can make this ps1 game look by you upscale it to 4k and do a texture replacement pack and do all this stuff i think that's cool it's not really that appealing to me overall because i like the way those things looked in that era and so what this does it's like kind of a happy medium where you are able to it's not an up res but upscale things to look much nicer on your 4k tv or whatever you can add scan lines and there's even filters for CRTs that actually look excellent on it and uh yeah I am absolutely loving this thing like I said not necessarily plug and play uh you will need to if you don't have the disk drive or a way to rip you will need to source your own ROMs in whatever way you deem best but it's really cool I really like it um so i think it's i got this for an early adopter price of 150 but i think it's now 200 which seems like a fair price for all the things they can do yeah dude i love that retro gray man that gray yeah man i i love it they had multiple colors i don't know if they're still available they had like a a clear blue and a black as well but to my understanding the dock was gray so I'm like dude I want it to match when the doc comes out to be the same and it just you know it's clean the gray so for the retro enthusiasts out there take a look the Superstation one cool man can't do it man can't do it I guess I'll go next and then we can come together on Starfield here proud dad simulator wrote into us and said hey guys I also jumped back into Returnal to prepare for Saros, but I deleted my save and started from the beginning.

2:34:29After 70 hours, I never beat it last time. I had a late run heartbreak that I never recovered from. Well, I just beat it using the Globber. I had a large health pack and kept my astronaut. The astronaut, of course, revives you. Could have killed him three times. I was ready for another fight. This time it took me only 23 hours, probably my favorite true PS5 game. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for the Globber pro tip. The Lobber is the king of weapons in the game. I want to do a I know I've played now Returnal for 140 hours it actually entered you know when you go into your profile we were talking about this recently you go in your profile and then it shows the three games you've played the most and mine are the Witcher 3 which is nonsense but that's what it says and then it it says something else and then and then there were like Far Cry 4 was on there and Returnal is now bumped in there which is interesting so it's a game I've definitely played a lot of.

2:35:23I platinumed it. So I got that's platinum 205 and I got 100 % of the trophies on the Tower of Sisyphus as well. What a game, dude. We all know this from when it came out. Everyone has their own story with it, their own little adventure with it. And I know exactly what you're saying, Proud Dad Simulator, when you just have your crestfallen after you're having this amazing run because you have to inspire, you have to dedicate rather so much time into it. And that's what they were saying about Sauros runs being shorter. I don't know that I necessarily want that. I like the high stakes personally, kind of like the high stakes of your of your um stream the other day chris what when i tweeted at you and you were like everyone's gonna die a whole generation will die and i was like uh unreal

2:36:03Colin Moriarty:stakes right right i forgot i said that um i usually delete those when i'm done but i like that tweet so much yeah it's okay um so if you haven't played returnal yet you still have time i mean you have you can play whenever you want you played after saros comes out but you have really enjoyed the process. I didn't delete my save. I think I talked on the stream, right? Dustin, how I was like considering deleting my save because I was so lost on what I was supposed to be doing, but I just kind of collected myself and figured out exactly what I was missing. And that was obviously the right move because it would have been quite the heavy lift from there if I did it otherwise.

2:36:40But so that's Platinum's a way I'm very, very proud of that Platinum because that was a that's definitely a get good Platinum. And then Starfield, I bought Starfield. Dustin, I might have you make a light edit to introduce the world to Dennis. Oh my God,

2:36:55Colin Moriarty:dude, I, the character Dennis Starfield. Yeah. And I named him fucking heinous. Like, I really, I forgot that you could make characters that ugly. Cause usually with the, I know that, I know that you could do that with oblivion, but Skyrim turned it down way hard to the point where like, I just kind of didn't try after that. Every time I play Starfield, I just like go with like a default feeling. I don't care. But like, this is fucking, rough dude yeah it's it's a i it's funny you say that chris because when i was in the character creator at first i didn't realize like it's like oh here's here's some head shapes here are skin tones here are eyebrows and i'm like oh like i can't make anything i was disappointed and i actually started backing out i'm like i guess i'll just make a real character and then i and mike is like wait there's like a thing in the corner where you can like go over one and then you can mess with all the different sliders right oh and then so i started just jacking up the sliders as one does either all the way up or all the way down for all these different things and uh this is what i came up with which is uh people are saying that this looks like the dude that in the biden administration that stole the luggage do you guys know i'm talking who i'm talking about i have there was like an administration official who was bald he was like a guy but he dressed like a woman people are saying it's always people are saying people say i know yeah they say sir they say sir dennis starfield has joined the department of war what a guy or girl or whatever or girl we love him anyway um so yeah that's my character that's so i i've only played for two or three hours i joined constellation basically which is like part of the main quest in the beginning um it's a little boring i mean that's kind of my first take but I've been reading and talking to people and they're like you gotta just stick with it until you get to Neon City I guess they're saying like just do the main quest and then when you get to Neon City then the game kind of opens up in a bigger way or you have more options and then you gotta go fuck off so I want to get to that point I want to get to that point I'm not putting it down by yet but I must say I got it I got it I pre-ordered it it came out Tuesday I played it that night and then I didn't feel like going back to it last night which is not a great sign yeah yeah it's funny man I can't I don't want to say I always overcome with the dread I don't kind of a little too dramatic but as I was playing it I'm like yeah damn there is something not right about like people aren't crazy there's something very on like the game just kind of starts it's kind of weird you know you have like these iconic skyrims openings iconic right you know um but in this it's like oh uh you're a miner and uh you found something and then like before you know it you're like in a ship and someone gives you a ship and then like you're on and i'm like i don't even know what's going on it's very quick um combat's okay space combat's kind of cool there's like a that system in space, which is neat.

2:39:57Yeah. But I certainly, it's very early. Who gives a fuck? It's like the people I say, I make fun of when it's like, you go on Steam and it's like, 0.3 hours. It's like, who gives a shit? Who gives a fuck what you have to say about this game right now? I'm kind of in a similar position. But just from my own perspective, I don't find it very compelling, but I've barely seen any of it and I want to give it a chance. So that's where I am on it. What about you, Chris?

2:40:25Colin Moriarty:yeah i jumped back into it just out of curiosity i know there was like all these updates that they did i gotta be honest i don't know what the fuck the updates did i don't remember starfield that well i don't remember the the the moment to moment like i don't remember what's better first now versus when i played it i'm sure there's something i'm sure there's like maybe like minor quality of life changes i just i don't recall them um i did the free lanes so there's like a free lanes update that like affects space but like i couldn't figure out exactly i think you can go from like planet to planet now right or something like you don't have to fast travel it's more like star wars yeah sure but it's also kind of one of those things where it's just like i i get why that's cool in theory and i get why that's cool in um in no man's sky but in a game like this that's so based on like being on the ground and combat and rpg and story it's just like yeah i even if i could fly to different planets and in relative real time i'm gonna fast travel anyway that's kind of the thing that like i didn't really get about the criticism and immediately like i get that there's a lot of loading screens and a lot of fast traveling but like that's kind of i don't know i it's kind of the points like i don't know i don't want to sit in space for six hours in real time you know it's flying in one singular direction i did two things when i booted up starfield again i started a new character just to remember what the beginning was like and it does kind of quickly start i think it's like a response to a lot of criticism of just like man everything starts so slow and it's like well this game doesn't start slow like it kind of throws you into it um with arguably no uh prep time and no like way to like there's no grounding time which is technically good but also for for the game for the type of game this is trying to be arguably not the right way i don't know it's either either choice would have probably been good or bad in some ways but so i started the beginning i did i did everything up until you land in the first like city and then i was like okay i'm familiar with the mechanics again And then I loaded up a previous save and was dicking around.

2:42:41Colin Moriarty:Yeah, it's it is. It's an understated game. It's a lot more muted than like something like Fallout, which is a little bit more. I want to say whimsical, but like. I don't know, there's like a high energy, like fantastical kind of thing going on. You could argue Elder Scrolls is pretty muted, too, but there's like there's precedent for that because a lot of a lot of fantasy is pretty muted. it's like there's there's there's there's white walkers to the north you know everything's like very serious so it's like it kind of lends itself starfield is very muted sci-fi it's like very understated there's not like grandiose alien stuff going on at least not right away you do end up in places after enough time and after enough exploration where like what the fuck this is actually kind of crazy that they put this nonsense in the game there's one thing i'm curious if you'll ever get to it Colin that I know for a fact will tickle you quite about quite a bit I'll I'll save it for like when you give up on it no just then I'll spoil it okay fair enough or if you make it through like I don't know because I didn't I didn't even I didn't I didn't experience it personally like I actually heard a friend of mine told me about it and then I looked it up I was like I can't believe this is in the game but it's weird like the main quest ends up in areas where i think you as like somebody who appreciates like nasa and like contemporary space travel like it it does get to a place where it's like this is cool that i can be here and that i can see this and i can do these things in this location and and it looks pretty good you know like it's not like a generational like graphical you know powerhouse but sometimes the scenery does like sometimes it hits well and uh you get that in like the soul system quite a bit because it's so familiar right right but it's slow it's a slower game than most most bethesda bethesda games typically are and it's less whimsical it's less out there it's a lot it's dry it's kind of british like i don't know how else to describe it it does feel dry that's a great way of putting it dry is a very good way of putting it.

2:44:53But again, it's so preliminary. Like I've barely seen anything. I don't want to judge it. I will say some things I did like. I really like this just sitting at your spaces, your cockpit of your spaceship is pretty cool. All the different controls and buttons. And I like the whole system of like having a power differential where you have like shields and lasers and missiles and all these things. And you're just constantly on the fly dumping power and all the different things you think you need. I think it's kind of cool. very sophisticated I didn't when I was like oh you're going to learn how to dog fight I guess I'm like you dog fight I didn't even know that you did that kind of thing in the game and at first I was like and then I was like oh this is kind of cool because again you have that that system and you like and then you like zoom in and you can like just go after their engines or their guns or disable the ship and something this is kind of neat it's got a quality of this is a weird reference but I really love the Star Wars role-playing game the paper and pencil role-playing game in the 90s I used to play it with my friends.

2:45:50And in that game, you could be like anything like a smuggler or starship pilot or whatever. And this kind of gave me that feel of like, oh, yeah, like I'm I'm just a dude. I'm like a smuggler or whatever. And I'm just dealing with other dudes. And you're kind of a guy in the universe. You're not really important. There's something neat about that or your importance throughout the game is kind of happenstance. Like you've you stumble upon a certain something or whatever. So. I like the whole idea and set up. I'm going to go back to it probably tonight and continue with it but yeah I was like it's a little boring actually when I was tired last night Micah said to me we ended up we're I said earlier we're rewatching the Handmaid's Tale she's never seen it and she's like if you play Starfield you're going to fall asleep and I'm like yeah you're probably right so it's fine but I will say there is no revision on this game like the scores on PlayStation are not good I don't know if you guys have seen like they're not good no I haven't a lot of people were like oh now that's on PlayStation everyone's gonna say Starfield is a classic and I'm like I'm not seeing any evidence of that at all people are not giving a good scores Starfield was never brilliant

2:47:01Colin Moriarty:you know I think it's good I think it's like it's one of those things where it's just like the beginning is kind of like I think I even told you this like a couple like episodes ago it's like the beginning of it's kind of like it's it is kind of whatever um but yeah like the ship system i i really liked the the ship combat in it and i like the flipping between like it kind of gives you the feeling of like flipping flipping through like various like switches and stuff when you're fighting my favorite thing about it is like disabling like a shield or like a or like an engine or something and then docking on the ship and then running in with a fucking knife and being like it's like this the fact that you can do that to just like any random enemy is is really cool because it kind of implies that like every every enemy in space has their own like living space that you're kind of invading and you could do whatever you want like i would go in there like with like a knife that like did like concussive damage i would just like i'd be poking there's like a stab animation too that's hysterically like nonchalant that i think is like hilarious to be in like a game like this where it's like it reminds me of like a pathways into darkness like like jpeg game kind of but yeah it's it's a charming game i think i think it's I think it's reasonably good I think like I think I remember it's settling or maybe I'm not maybe it didn't settle in the 70s or like 75 but like I think that's where I would put it like it's entertaining and there's parts of it like if you're a NASA guy that like really resonate but the main quest is kind of like I don't know it's like most Bethesda games where like the main quest is never the the smuggler uh faction or the smuggler storyline I remember being like this is fucking cool like this is pretty sick but that happens late you gotta play quite a bit so I'm definitely trying to as I like to do I like to use persuasion so it was very satisfying the first I ran into these pirates and was able to persuade my way out of even fighting them at all and stuff and right I like that kind of shit so like I'll get into the role playing systems and all the rest I also think the game I'm not a hardcore but as the game studios fan as people know but I think fallout 3's intro is so iconic that it's always going to be hard to like you're in the vault and it's like your birthday and all this weird shit and you're growing up and taking tests and doing it's like super cool and then you walk out of the vault and you're in this world it's never gonna be matched and i think people's expectations the hardest part is probably onboarding people to like what the game actually is and yeah they decided that they were like oh you're just like on a mine you're in a mine somewhere and then you find something and then you go go to the planet yeah it's just a very like it's a very flimsy setup i think but dude i remember when fallout 3 came out i hated that intro because I was in what 2008 was sophomore year probably yeah right 10th grade so like I remember just being kind of like why am I in school in this fucking video game I'm out of school right now like I don't want to be back in school I'm playing this to escape and I just remember being like this isn't shooting things I don't want to play this eventually I ended up liking it but I don't know well it's weird starfield well more to say about you i'm sure dennis dennis starfield dennis starfield will be reporting for duty very soon the bounty hunter dennis starfield i love i i love looking at his third person um model as well like in a space suit he's got his helmet on he's fucking hideous it's awesome did he uh is his head clipping through the helmet because you made it so fucking bulbous yeah it is bulbous yeah i jacked up that the head of the chin it's it's uh ridiculous i also i will say because i remember people making fun of that guy that did that video when starfield came out i was like pronouns or whatever it was like the british you know i'm talking about the british yeah i will say it is a little awkward i don't care about it asking like if you want to be here she or whatever it's just like just they have i think it's type it's dragon quest style type one type two and like it's like walk style type one or type two and one is a man and one is a woman.

2:51:04It's like, just say it. Right. Like, what is the big deal? I don't understand that. It's like, why are you making it such a big deal? It almost draws more attention to it as like a signal than just saying like male or female, male walking style, female walk. And give a third option if you want. Have an androgynous option. I don't even care about that, especially in a futuristic game where there probably will be a lot of that

2:51:31Colin Moriarty:kind of weird shit yeah so well i think the androgyny comes from the mixing and matching of the types right like so you could be like a like a fat man and have the female walk cycle and then it's and if you wanted to do that you know like just say like like it's a customizable game so give yourself the female walk cycle like sure i guess i i did that yeah i don't know it never because i remember playing games a long ass time ago and i remember i remember when i was a kid seeing type one and type two in something i can't remember what the fuck game it was it definitely wasn't the common thing but i remember saying it's like oh i guess that's like something that some games do so that whole argument never really like resonated with me i was like oh what was the it's a weird thing to scream it's a weird thing to scream into a camera about it but like it's like yeah it's weird but it's like the first like it's like 0.01 percent of the game and then yeah it's certainly not it i i actually didn't think in some way based on the the game and the style of the game that the dragon quest type one type to thing was actually more conspicuous and offensive even where it's like what are you doing come on man come on man come on all right that's all we have for what we're playing let's get into by the way and we're gonna talk about one of the games but there's a lot of shit coming out mouse pi from spi uh pragmata saros these are all games weeks away at most very exciting time foreskin warrior wrote in jesus said hello gents it feels like almost a daily occurrence where we remark upon the industry on a sort of collision course towards a world where our dollar is taking us significantly less far than it used to in terms of quality of games budgets for games in the west are ballooning and it makes sense inflation is staggeringly high and the wages in these high cost areas of employment need to stay competitive with the significant high cost of living etc etc to stick strictly to video games it seems that this dollar to quality ratio worsening is impacting creative choices, live service pushes from executives, and a general feeling of playing it safe.

2:53:29I've been a listener of LSM since the beginning, and it's interesting to hear the tune of capitalism changing, and that this laissez-faire approach may no longer be viable. I understand everyone's ideologies are different, Colin more outspokenly capitalist, while others perhaps more critical, yet all of you seem to agree that guardrails are necessary. My question is, what sort of guardrails could help these, what I would consider intrinsic problems of capitalism, in the video game industry? Isn't this just capitalism working as intended? Maximizing profit and shareholder value at the expense of all else.

2:53:56It's not business, it's personal. These are the core Western American values bludgeoned into our brains since childhood. What sorts of economic policies could foster creativity of studios, preserve economic prosperity and proper wages, while also having a free market of competition that drives quality up? Colin, I loved your quick ideas past semi-often on a sort of trade-like unionization from creatives in the industry. I'll sit back and listen. I also like that idea. The problem is that it requires an internationalization of the industry that is simply not possible and might even be illegal, depending on what country you're in in terms of like having these cartels that control the workforce across international boundaries or whatever.

2:54:32It's why like SAG-AFTRA has no power outside of the borders of the United States and why, you know, people often do films overseas and all the rest to avoid them. So it would be easy enough to circumvent that. Here's what I was thinking about when I saw Foreskin Warriors question and why I wanted to bring it up. I always found the... Well, let me back up. Games are like not necessary. they're not a necessity. They're a product of excess. And that's good. Books are a product of excess as well. Movies, like anything fun, right? Like when the division of labor allowed our cavemen brethren to split up tasks and people discovered that someone was good at art and someone could be a shaman and all the rest.

2:55:17And you had all these things that were not important anymore. these things work outside of like the capitalist framework in the way that you said it's capitalism as is as it's designed and that's true but because these things aren't necessities i don't think people take the financial and economic and labor realities around them very seriously it's actually not quite unlike what happens in sports or movies where these people make an enormous amount of money and we're all kind of like perplexed by it we're happy for them cool. This guy got signed for$25 million to play this position on this team.

2:55:51Yet that is the representation of a part of the capitalist system that is doing really well for itself, that is detached and is in fact not necessary. I say all of this because I feel like video games have an economic problem that is therefore unfixable. There's always going to be this tension between profit and investment over and getting your money out of it and making a profit, which is good. But since you're not farming or you're not, it's not oil or housing or medical care, I don't think you're going to make anyone give a shit. And in fact, I'm not entirely sure the budgets are really the problem because I think the budgets are flattening a little bit, which is good, comparable to inflation, but rather what people are willing to pay for games and the buy-in on the enthusiast the enthusiasm i saw when tom what was that new switch game dust and tomodachi life or whatever i saw tomodachi life that's a switch one game and i saw the excitement on the on a reddit of of it being dumped and available to download like before it even came out or whatever and it's like there are just so many weird economic tensions that i don't think the the gaming market will ever quite represent what it should i don't know if that makes sense i it's i don't know i'll say i've said enough what do you think chris

2:57:16Colin Moriarty:i don't know i i think um i think you're right that like because it's a it's a luxury industry it's like it's not a necessity it is an optional thing that like you're gonna have a hard time getting people to care and arguably arguably it is like one of the least important areas of focus that we objectively like i think like yeah i would like the games industry to be a lot better and a lot less focused on like Green Line Go Up all every quarter forever. But that requires like, I don't know, that's going to require a stem to stern, like almost re-engineering of like what people find important. Like I think, I don't know, there's areas that are just more demand, like that demand more focus and more attention that are a lot more important for the survivability of your average person.

2:58:08Colin Moriarty:So I don't begrudge people for not necessarily – I don't begrudge the situation not improving because I just kind of get it. But I do think – I don't know. There's corporations and companies that aren't publicly traded that do great. And I really do feel like the shareholder thing is the big problem. Like Valve does great. and you know you can make a shit ton of money more than you can ever imagine spending or doing anything with without being beholden to random people on the outside demanding you shift your focus consistently so that the green line always goes up no matter what because realistically that's an insane demand it also creates this weird this incredibly dumb problem where it's like oh we made 900 million dollars uh last quarter and this quarter we only made 800 million dollars everything's crumbling let's get rid of everything that we were doing let's like restructure everything it's like it's a colossal failure it's like it's not a fucking colossal failure what are we doing you're rich you've you've made so much money still i this this chase of like this consistent oh line must always go up is the problem i don't know how you do that i don't know how you fix that though because that's like that's deeply ingrained and i i just don't know what you do about it um i do know that the companies that don't worry about that tend to do pretty fucking well so it's going to require people to take note of that but like it's going to take a lot to take a company and be like yeah we're not publicly traded anymore it's like that's a big thing to ask yeah well you have to buy all that you have to buy shares back you have to buy it back which is like again you shouldn't have shouldn't have sold in the first place but i don't know i agree with you that you know i own and co-own one to two small privately owned companies and we don't have we have financial pressure but the but the financial pressure is not to investors so it's different like i do fundamentally economically capitalistically understand the line go up mantra when you're what you're saying when your company is public because what you've basically done is said like we have reached a point.

3:00:30There are two there are two things people want to cash out that invested in the company or own parts of the company. And then there's a drive to bring in capital from the outside to grow. And once you get those people on board, you always have to pay the piper forever. Until like you said, because they're not in to make their money back. When you when you invest in money, you're in to make money. right and everyone is on board so whatever money you put in double quadruple whatever treble that number and that's what you have to get back and it is why i respect the shit out of a valve i respect the shit out of an in-and-out burger i respect the shit out of some of these companies that could make i mean dude do you have any idea what someone would pay for in-and-out burger like or to go public and how much money they would make but it would destroy what it did the Shake Shack when they went public and they kind of fucked the company up.

3:01:26Like they.

3:01:28Colin Moriarty:It always does. Right. Exactly. Kind of thing. Like I can't think of an example of like companies do well, like they do fine. But like like when they go public and sometimes they crumble or whatever. Right. And there's certainly examples of like private companies failing, too. Right. But. There is something about that external, like, I'm not really involved. I don't really care. This is a successful thing and I want to get something out of it. It's the majority of interest that you're going to get. It's not people who care. It's not people who really care about the long-term viability of something.

3:02:00Colin Moriarty:It's like, how can I make as much money in as little time as possible and cash the fuck out? Because that's the smartest way to play it, really. Why would you want to sit there for 50 years investing in something? um i don't know i i think it's just too deeply i i really don't know what you do it's it's it's a core problem it's a core flaw in like the meta of the of the the system that exists yeah absolutely um but yeah dustin well let's get you on the record here how are you feeling about this you can take it however you'd like well i think to add to what you guys are saying about you know always needing to appeal and well and make money i guess for the shareholders it's interesting looking at we look in the last five to ten years of like playstation versus xbox where we've seen playstation continually do safer bets continually focus on live service uh whether you that or not but for the end benefit of the shareholders um sometimes successfully sometimes not and on the xbox side when we look at the phil spencer era you have like i don't want to say lack of care for shareholders because ultimately they were trying to make money and trying to build up that platform but uh clearly less of an attention to trying to make games that just make money like a game like south of midnight i don't think was ever going to be like oh man the shareholders are gonna love this you know and so when i think like the question that's bringing up like what what needs to be done to foster creativity in studios preserve economic prosperity and proper wages it's tough because herman holst and noshino their job is to make playstation as good as possible to make as much money as possible for the shareholders so those types of like preserving prosperity and proper wages comes from the top so in one sense you want developers to be able to do what they want to do and make these creative projects uh much like phil spencer which we've argued for that he was like two hands off on a lot of these projects and then you have the other side which is herman holst which not saying he's necessarily telling every studio what to do but definitely not being the right tastemaker and not necessarily guiding studios in the right direction to the point where all these studios have been shut down so what is the balance between that where you want someone at the top that can bring out the creativity of your studios but at the same time is beholden to those shareholders where it's like number go up you know green line up up up what and i don't no one's really been able to crack that balance quite well i mean you think about like the ps4 generation and maybe that was kind of the perfect balance where it's like the players were really happy we were getting creative new things from studios as well as reinventions of old ip and a lot of money for the teams so this is something we've talked about a lot but it's like the person at the top needs to be incredibly business savvy but also be an incredible tastemaker and i don't think we have that right now i think they're yeah Yeah, and you guys both make great points.

3:05:43There are wonderful things about publicly traded companies because of the amount of the ability to raise money and scale. It's like when people talk about the invention of the LLC. Like that is low key, one of the most important inventions in human history. Like all these low key things that allowed these amazing things to be able to limit your own liability, to borrow as an entity, right? To raise money and disassociate yourself from it, take risks. It's kind of like, it's a weird example, but it's, what do they call it? Qualified immunity for police officers where they're protected because they're acting on behalf of something or whatever.

3:06:22You can found a corporation and take risks that you otherwise wouldn't and do all these things. And it allowed for capitalist growth out of mercantilism and to grow into what we have today. But I think there's just no doubt it's out of control. and there's also no doubt that like we're all hypocrites or at least i am i own stock in companies a lot of it and i'm one of those shareholders in other companies that i don't really give a shit about and the only value they have to me is how much money they can make me and so people are going to use sony like that and they're going to use every company like that where they think they can make money and so we're all part of the problem and it's almost or i don't want to say we all are.

3:07:05If you have a 401k, you are. If you have investments in the market, you obviously are. And that's many people, most people, adults anyway. So I don't know, man. It's an unfortunate situation. I like you use this quote. It's not business, it's personal. It's funny because there is a difference. I've been in, I mean, as a business owner, I've been in positions where like, I feel that way where I'm like, it's not personal. You know, it's business and it sucks. And it's really, really tough. So to be willing to sell out to such a degree that you have so much money from these outside investors that are going to be on the board of directors and, and they'll crush you if you don't do what they want to.

3:07:53It's a, it's a tough one. And I don't know what the, I think it's like environmentalism. The best solution, I think, is like on the small scale of people taking individual responsibility for themselves when and where they can.

3:08:10And it's like that bottom up approach that I think is the only chance for anything to change. But I think it's capitalism is this runaway monster at this point. And I want to be clear. I am a capitalist and I believe in capitalism. I believe capitalism should and could and does and has made people rich. I think capitalism has been a net benefit for all of human society and has lifted most of human society out of abject poverty and all you have to do is look at the numbers like just look at them but doesn't mean that good things don't come with lots of downsides and that you have to kind of cut and trim and mow the lawn and do all these things and make it just so and if it grows out of control and starts to infringe on other people's property and other people's things it's fucked up And.

3:09:01To me, I think that what what true capitalists don't understand today, why some people look at me sideways are like you're you sound almost revolutionary or whatever. And I'm like, I don't think you get it, dude. You either fix capitalism. While you still can, or there are going to be major powerful forces that will try to destroy it. and you won't like what that looks like, and they won't not have a point either. So you just have to be careful. If you care about it, it's like having a child and letting it run amok. You got to guide it.

3:09:38Colin Moriarty:Well, yeah, I look at it like game design almost, where it's just like, bro, the meta's kind of been broken for a while, and it's been unpatched for a really fucking long time. Yeah, there's cheaters everywhere. Game's not really fair at this point. you gotta do something you gotta do something about this fucking OP you know item that you put in the game that only like two people have I don't know it's it's yeah it's management it's maintenance the core flaw really is that it like in order for us to do so well in order for us to have as much access as we do like we kind of do like every country in the world can't like can't be capitalist like it doesn't capitalism kind of doesn't allow for that like because you kind of need places to trample over quite frankly like it's like the ugly reality of it so i don't know man it's it's a monster man and so uh i do think there's a real possibility that we end up late stage capitalisming ourselves deeply into a into a very very different position because like eventually you're not gonna like how are you gonna justify like oh it's a 40 unemployment rate because all the jobs are AI and everything's robots.

3:10:45Colin Moriarty:It's like, okay. Yeah, that's my whole point. Good luck convincing people that that's how things should be. You're not going to work. If you have nothing to lose, why the fuck would you care about capitalism? Right. That's what I was saying. That's why I said earlier, I'm like, you would have a point if you tried to destroy a system, a late-stage capitalist system that doesn't serve the people, you would have a point. I know it gets bad from there. There is no solution to capitalism. the solution to capitalism is to fix capitalism like that there is no other opera there is no other system you got to do the seasonal wipe man yeah exactly exactly i'm so serious like not like that literally but like you know like there needs to be at least like every few years like you gotta you gotta put out you gotta put out a patch because like people figure out like oh i could do this and i can i can go i could make a shell company and like there's like the idea that there's any real like current like monopolistic uh safeguards is hilarious you know like the idea there's like oh there's no there's no way monopolies can it's like brother there's like shell companies upon shell companies upon shell companies upon shell companies upon shell companies it's like it's it's ridiculous like you gotta do something about it yeah and by the way it's not i want to be clear too to every you know to everyone of all political persuasions out there well i would say it's like it's not just capitalism the government is a major problem too half of government spending is probably fraudulent.

3:12:12Like I'm totally convinced of that. There's just like, how do you even spend that much money? You don't, you steal it, you grab from it, you distribute it amongst your friends. You do all those kinds of things. You, you, you buy bombs to drop on other countries and all that kind of stuff and grease wheels and grease skids and do all that. So it's like, there are problems everywhere, but like the, the major thing is, is that people in positions of power don't care about the balance that is required to keep the system in good health for all of us. And that to me is a concern. Capitalism create it's like you said, there's a trample thing.

3:12:46It's like capitalism creates losers. But that it actually has, it's as you said, it has to. But like we shouldn't have this many losers. Right. Yeah. Like it's not even close. Yeah. Not even close. I don't mean you're a loser for losing a job and having money. I'm saying like winners and losers. It's all betting.

3:13:08Colin Moriarty:There's no reason why someone should work three jobs and and and still have problems. You know, like it just doesn't it. I don't know. Like it is kind of. I don't know, man. Patch it. Patch it, please. Foreskin warrior. Thank you for the thoughtful question. I got a hernia in my Matt Booty wrote in. said hey CDC with the release of the OG Resident Evil trilogy on Steam where do you stand on playing the remakes versus the originals there seems to be a lot of gatekeeping from longtime fans that if you haven't played the originals you are a tourist as a newer RE fan I have a desire to go back and play the originals but the discourse around them has turned me off a bit are there any other franchises you consider essential to play every entry thanks and be well you know I wanted to talk about Resident Evil with you guys specifically because I don't the old Resident Evil games are rough, man.

3:14:00Now that we have... They're great games. I loved them at the time. Resident Evil 4 is where it becomes a little more modern and really you have to wait until 5 to get what I would consider a truly modern Resident Evil game that would actually be coherent today. But unlike Final Fantasy 7 where I always encourage people for obvious reasons to play the original Final Fantasy 7 because you don't know what you're missing because they're both... I've said this a million times. They both happen. So you need to play them both. You're talking about the remake of... Right. right exactly like final and in the continuity final fantasy 7 happens and so does final fantasy 7 remake there it's a whole meta thing it's unique to that so what i don't want people to be confused when i say like i i tried to say that for years without spoiling it and you guys eventually remember i was like all right i'm sick of getting so much heat over this here's why it's important with resident evil they're straight up remakes now i don't too i think was pretty straightforward They did change some things in three and four.

3:14:58They definitely made changes. So it's a matter of if you want the original experience or not, but they're not. They didn't all happen in the continuity. They are overlapping each other and giving you newer and better versions of them. And I'm not so offended by a quote unquote Resident Evil fan not having experience with the old games because the new ones are just way better. Why the fuck would you want to play the original Resident Evil 2? when you can play the Resident Evil 2 remake, which is extraordinarily good. And they're the same game. They're just retold. So I understand what you're saying, and I think there are series where that's true and series where it isn't true, but there is a lot of Resident Evil purism, I noticed.

3:15:47One of the common things we got with our Resident Evil Requiem spoiler cast and review discussion, and I was a little disappointed about this because people just don't listen, and I'm so sick of it, you know, but people were busting my ball saying like Colin got the bad ending and then just went with it. And I'm like, that's not what I did. What I did was I got the bad ending and then I'm like, I'm going to play the game again. So I'll just play it all the way through and do the good ending the next time. And people like that blew people's minds that I didn't just go in and immediately ruin the other ending for myself.

3:16:16And I'm like, no, I made my choice. That was the playthrough. I know I'm going to play through it again. And I did. I beat it four times. they platinumed it it's like people were like oh that's touristy and i'm like what how well that's the whole thing i'm like did you not hear what i said that like i'm gonna play it again so i'm just gonna leave it for like have a little have a little treat at the end of the of a playthrough of the playthrough like something new you know um right so you have to understand that resident evil fans are kind of annoying and i wouldn't take it too seriously from that perspective either

3:16:52Colin Moriarty:what chris where are you on this i mean look i have a really i have a really soft spot in my heart for the ps1 like i i love i really do have like this really deep love for that early 3d era i understand that it's janky i understand that it's like not particularly elegant i understand that it's in some cases pretty hard to look at um but i that was when i first kind of really fell in love with video games like i i really liked you know mario like i liked the 2d stuff i did um but there's something about the angular kind of weird look the shimmering textures that would like change based on the angle and how like how clearly like thrown together it was that was like deeply charming to me and i loved every aspect of it how um how sharp crash bandicoot's character model was um i loved all of it and so for me going back to the resident evil the early resident evil games is fairly enticing um especially now that i'm pretty deep into it i'm arguably a resident evil tourist like i didn't i never like loved the games when i was a kid even even resident evil 4 which i love now i didn't i didn't love it really and i didn't love until the remake really um because i just wasn't that involved like survival horror was not really my thing when i was a kid resident evil one i think famously scared the shit out of me because the first scene in that game like where you see the zombie eating the guy in the corner looked exactly that hallway looked exactly like the mezzany in my building when i was growing up so i was like i can't fucking i cannot play this um but i love that era and i love the weird aspects of it i i so from my perspective like i'm really enticed by it but if that kind of thing is off-putting to you and i understand why it would be if you've if you've only played games you know from ps2 ps3 onward like i get it um because they're hard i don't know for a fact for for sure that if i grew up after that that i would find the same appreciation of it like i really don't i don't know it's probably that it's probably true that i wouldn't so i don't care if people play the original stuff on ps1 i i do think i do think ps3 and 360 onward is like contemporary enough where like it's not really unplayable in a modern syntax but i also understand the perspective of people like you should familiarize yourself with where this comes from if you care like if you've played a lot of resident evil games like if you've played like seven resident evil games and you've not touched the original ones I think there's enough there at some point where you'd be like yeah you should probably maybe dabble at the very least they're cheap and they're very accessible there's you have enough familiarity with the lore and the narrative that like that's probably even enough to kind of pull you into the originals if you have the wherewithal to deal with a lot of the early jank like Halo like halo combat evolved i played after i played halo 2 and 3 because i i remember playing it originally and being like i like this but i don't i'm not sucked in quite yet and i needed i kind of needed in some cases like the narrative familiarity and context to be like okay you know what i'm gonna go back and play combat evolved and i ended up liking it because the stuff that i knew about the series ended up kind of pulling me through the first game and all of its kind of weird hiccups and the weird you know there's no melee lunge and how like a parked car will kill you sometimes and it's like a lot of the weird quirks of that game that kind of put me off of it originally so i think there's value in going back even afterwards and they're accessible so and they're cheap so i don't know give it a give it a shot if you're into resident evil but like i don't think it's like a necessity that you play them to be a fan um i just think a fan would naturally be curious what do you think yeah the the dick measuring in in video game fandom and i'm sure it applies to other fandoms is so annoying and me i don't know if it's i mean with just resable fans i don't know if they're more annoying than other ones i know that when i did my resident evil video i did get called a tourist because uh i haven't been a fan since the beginning because i was what three when the first one come out 96 96 because i was three i was three years old i wasn't playing resident evil you know i i've only i i got into it resident before on the wii so that was what 20 years ago that's a great port i love that port so i'm a tourist from that standpoint that's so stupid it's arguably so much cooler to be born after the fact and somehow be like you know what i mean it's so it's to be used to like a more modern design syntax and to be able to go back and appreciate a game like that despite never having had a nostalgic familiarity with it it's almost more impressive to me right that people exist like that if somebody born in like the 2000s is like oh i love mega man you know like that's cool because you know there's no like social kind of like oh this was the best that we had at the time so i love it i think that game you know this podcast is for gamers and we are gamers that we got to remember who the actual enemies are who are the actual Taurus.

3:22:12Colin Moriarty:I think about this isn't a gaming example, but it's the first one that came to mind for One Piece. Sorry. One Piece reference here. When I don't remember which one, Jake Paul, Logan Paul, they get mixed up in my head. The one that's into boxing and Pokemon cards. Yeah, I don't know the difference. He posted a video a few months ago where he bought multiple cases of One Piece cards and he was in it for the financial investment and he's like, yeah, you know, I like one piece. I watch the live action. Shout out to Luffy. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's tourism. That someone that is like, I am going to encroach upon this fandom for, I mean, it can either be financial gain or some kind of personal gain to do.

3:22:58Colin Moriarty:Just being that open about it as well. Those are the people that we should be made that need to be targeted, not targeted. That sounds really rough. Those are the people that should be called tourists, right? The idea that it's like, oh, well, this guy's only played four of the seven games. So how could he possibly speak on any kind of how could he give his opinion on this? He's only a tourist. Like, Chris, you said you're a tourist of Resident Evil. I totally disagree. You've played many of them. You have enjoyed them. You've played them thoroughly. It's like what? Everyone has their own difference.

3:23:32Colin Moriarty:It's like, oh, are you a real From Software fan unless you've played Kingsfield? you don't really understand the uh you don't understand where these games come from how can you really speak on them with any authority sure you know it's just like dude shut the fuck up i don't like that it's so annoying i only say that to be clear because like code veronica and resident evil zero like i've not i have no experience with those and i also kind of like don't necessarily have a deep curiosity to visit them like i like resident evil i think it's i i think a lot a lot of it i appreciate and vibe with but it's it's it was it was never my favorite thing like i love resident before and two but that's also like kind of a that's the popular opinion but which is true uh but yeah yeah that's that's all i meant really but i guess i know what you mean that means you i guess in a literal sense you are a tourist you show up you enjoy it and then you leave but i guess that's not the connotation that most people mean oh no people words are so valueless and meaningless now it's it's hysterical like it's just like i i was called a tourist because i liked marathon because like you it shits all over the original game and it's like you i guarantee you i know more about the original marathon trilogy than you could possibly hope whoever you are like i i promise you that like whoever left that comment you know what i mean it's just like so it's like it's completely meaningless but so i guess the the other part of this question is just like remakes versus remasters like just play what you want to play i think colin's right that you are going to get a lot more out of final fantasy 7 remake by playing the original but i think that's a unique situation it's a unique situation in my opinion it's a unique situation and honestly if you just want to play remake and then have someone explain because you're not that invested because maybe you are being a literal tourist to show up and enjoy a modern game and you're like ah i can't i don't want to do that yeah just watch a youtube video that's fine it's entertainment it's meant to be fun not not work and if that's going to be work to you then don't do it the thing too is that like that we forget is that like everyone starts as a tourist yeah that's that's a natural progression of like what it what it means like i didn't like i liked video games when i was a kid i played them forever but like i didn't I wasn't deeply curious about them until later and I I didn't I wasn't deeply invested in them until later and you know there were series that I there were there's entire games and and franchises that I that I played through and I was a kid that I couldn't tell you the first thing about at the time because I was just like ah whatever it's fun you know and then something something catches your eye and it becomes special and then you become like oh I'm curious about this I want to know more about it and then suddenly you kind of get whisked away and so like I I don't know I I just think it's like that's part of the progression is like you start as a tourist and then you end up being you know whatever label you want to put yourself in after that once you're more involved and more passionate or whatever whatever word you want to use it's weird though to levy that against people who are earnestly getting involved and in the thing like i understand having if you have an opinion on a game you haven't played like that's fucking stupid um that's insane like like like a thorough opinion like you're like oh i hate this game i haven't played it you know you can have an opinion about whether or not it appeals to you or whether or not you think like you you think you'd like it i have many games like that where it's like i like i suspect that i might like crimson desert i haven't touched it yet um i suspect that i wouldn't like i suspect that i wouldn't like um con what was that game like the that one actual woke trash oh dustborne dustborne yeah like i i have a i haven't played dustborne i have an inclination that i probably wouldn't like it but that's really as much as i could say about it like i don't i have no idea about what the that game's quality level is so i just wish more people were a little bit more honest on that front but yeah i think fandoms take themselves and their fandom too seriously right often like for great example calling you brought up my berserk shirt i've not read all of berserk i haven't but uh i saw this shirt uh when i was oddly at a hot topic in on clearance and holly wanted something else it was free i was like okay cool and i have other berserk merch too and it's like that's fine people you know it's like the joke that's like oh you someone's wearing an iron maiden shirt it's like you like iron maiden name every iron maiden song yeah you know it's like just chill out i'm literally i'm wearing a yankee hat right now i don't know a single fucking modern yankee i could not i could not name a single like i did derrick jeter this is the last one i remember good is that not is that yankees too or is that mets yeah that's definitely yankees yeah okay yeah those that's it he retired like 15 years ago i think but yeah that's about that's about the time i was paying attention yeah because my dad kept me hostage watching baseball games i love that too so my i guess the last thought and i kind of said this is keep keep your eyes out for the real tourists that are doing damage to the fandom you care about not the person that wants to play the remake over the original who cares i actually think that the idea of tourism in games is most pronounced not on an individual IP or even individual game front but rather on a platform front and those kinds of people do more damage to their brand, the brand they like than anyone else.

3:29:18Wasn't I saying it on the stream that on Monday someone wrote in about Xbox exclusivity and if they would go back to exclusives or whatever and I'm like I don't think they will but I want them to so badly because it'll make for the best episode of side quest ever because I'm going to have a lot go through all of these grifters and these tourists videos about how good that was and how excited they were about it and this was natural and all the rest people just say whatever they need to say and do whatever they need to do to kind of be accepted or not and I think the tourism is actually most pronounced there all right respawn delay wrote in and said hello plonkers did you guys catch the recent announcement of a minecraft theme park minecraft world is being built as a themed extension of Chessington world of adventures a popular theme park here in England.

3:30:03It's set to open next year and I believe plans have been announced for a second park to be opened in the United States at some point in the future. With Nintendo entering the attractions market, Super Nintendo World, Nintendo Museum, Poke Park, and Microsoft Gaming now throwing their hat in the ring, do you think there's a possibility that we see PlayStation do the same? Do they have IP popular enough to have its own entire section of a theme park or would they need to take a different approach? Thanks and keep jockeying that chicken. Thank you for writing in. I did see this and the only answer is what they're doing with Minecraft, which is to kind of attach yourself to an existing brand.

3:30:34And it would be kind of interesting, but I don't know. You know what came to mind for me? I think it's just because you and I both have a boner for the place, Dustin, but Cedar Point to have like some PlayStation branded because they don't really do IP there. Right. Still like they have peanuts characters. Oh, interesting. That's so kind of. But that's Sony. Sony owns peanuts. Remember we I think we went over. They bought it last year.

3:31:02Colin Moriarty:um it's interesting i didn't know that so does that mean they own uh that uh al roker that al roker image from uh when what do you remember when the good morning america team like dressed up as the penis character for halloween they had those like it was a really like really scary costumes with the fake ears that's a sony ip black charlie brown played by al roker yeah that's uh in hiroki tatoki's office oh yeah this is fucking horrifying horrifying yeah they do if anybody hasn't seen this they should look it up al roker peanuts it's it's it is haunted like it's something that you like if you saw in like a horror game it would it would chill you oh it would chill you to the bone like with the right with the right resident evil engine lighting oh my god fucking disgusting it's a disgusting thing um so yeah i think that maybe they do and they can do maybe some some exciting stuff at a universal studios like park where they can just get a little nook of it.

3:32:00I don't know if that's where they really want to be, though. And I don't know if any of their stuff really markets to that degree. Like, they're not Sony's not a very whimsical brand. I mean, they or PlayStation is obviously Astro Bot and Sackboy and stuff and Ratchet, but are more childlike. But I don't know. Dustin, where are you on this? Would you would you go to Cedar Point and ride on the God of War stand up coaster?

3:32:21Colin Moriarty:Oh, yeah. I mean, I think it would be awesome, but I would never see PlayStation do this. I mean, there's many steps that I think they would need to take or I guess to generate interest. Well, let me start there. There is not enough interest in PlayStation IP to facilitate a permanent park anywhere. No, definitely not. Yeah. Like you don't even see PlayStation doing something like a pop up merch store or something in the US. They do in Japan. But I just don't you know, there's not that kind of love for those characters. Though they have done the wasn't there a Halloween horror section of like Universal that was Last of Us.

3:33:04Colin Moriarty:Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's right. Good. Good. There's been a little bit. And I think that's kind of the thing that they could do. But I don't think a Horizon attraction somewhere, even if it as a temporary basis, would really be something that people would really care about. It's too bad because a lot of the iconography is super like Horizon. and if it's too bad that it's not huge because that would be super cool you know but it be like even a roller coaster or something like on the tall necks and like they kind of integrate the the big robots into the different parts of it or something like that like there's also but it's again yeah it's not just not relevant so chris do you want to go on the uh let's see what would you want to go on the tower of terror but i don't even know it's a marathon but it's a it's a it's a marathon ride where they just take all your shit and they don't give it back um no i i don't know i um i i you've said a lot of what i would have said i just think there's not that stickiness of ip that like would would facilitate like i could see like rides like i actually think a horizon ride makes sense like if they if they could do it um or like a you know the last of us thing at Halloween Horror Nights.

3:34:21Colin Moriarty:I actually went to it. I think I saw it. I don't remember it because I don't care about those things generally. Oh, Dustin's gone. Dustin disappeared. Hold on. But yeah, I think it could work for individual rides, but a full park, nah. I think even if you had a PlayStation-themed park with all of the IP, I don't know if there's really... It's just a different kind of thing. you know it's it's a very different thing than nintendo has where like it's it's more family oriented it's even minecraft i think is probably pretty good idea because it is it is this like monumentally popular like really flexible really easy to make stuff for i would imagine just because it's so angular and so like square like be really simple to to build in comparison to like something like a tall neck which is like the tall neck alone building that thing even remotely to scale.

3:35:18Colin Moriarty:I mean, you know what I mean? It'd be like the Eiffel tower or something. Even if it was just like, I don't know, 16 feet tall or something, it would be like, it's a lot to figure out. So I don't know. I don't, I just don't think PlayStation is really in that space. Landon Phipps wrote in, said sub CDC. I've recently been playing Chrono Trigger for the first time, and I've got to say that it lives up to the hype. The general consensus seems to be that this is one of the top JRPGs of all time, and I can definitely see that. Despite the constant praise and love that gamers show Chrono Trigger, the same can't be said for Square Enix.

3:35:51The game isn't on any modern console, and the latest iteration was a 2018 Steam release. What's going on with Chrono Trigger? Do you guys think a port or remake will be revealed at some point in the future? It's baffling to me that a game this beloved hasn't had a console port since the Nintendo DS, and it feels like Square, and that's not a console port, by the way, it's a handheld port. There hasn't been a console port since the PS1, which is crazy. It's baffling to me that a game this beloved hasn't had a console port since the Nintendo DS, and it feels like Square doesn't share the same love for the game that the community does.

3:36:17What are your thoughts on this classic game that is largely unplayable for the modern gaming audience? Dustin, what is your theory on this? Why are they not doing anything with it? I was wondering if there is some sort of, you know, Toriyama was heavily involved, right? I wonder if there's some sort of and before he died when he was alive. I wonder. Yeah, like I don't we don't really know the full nature of like who owned like obviously Squaresoft published the game and developed it. But is there some sort of stake in it? Some sort of first writer refusal? Some something? I don't I don't quite get it.

3:36:55I agree with Landon here.

3:36:58Colin Moriarty:So did Toriyama have any involvement with Chrono Cross? that's a good question because they did re-release that yeah let me look in the radical dreamers edition that's right I want to say no I don't think he did

3:37:19full production began Chrono Cross team reached the team felt pressure to live up to the work of Chrono Triggers Dream Team Development Group which included famous Japanese manga artist Akira Toriyama so no I don't think he was so yeah so that actually is a good call

3:37:33Colin Moriarty:um yeah now to be fair there was the as um the write-in mentions uh respond to oh not respond landon says that there was the steam port uh in 2018 so clear there may be some roadblocks but not fully because they were able to do that port so i don't know i've always felt that chrono trigger was perfect for the hd2d uh styling and just keep it exactly the same but do the graphics that way they don't even really need to do that they could just do a final fantasy pixel remaster style thing for it and release it i think uh maybe it was you calling the joke somebody joked that's like that's their emergency oh yeah it's like the break glass kind of thing break glass if you need money re-release chrono trigger on console but i really don't know i wish i had a better answer it seems very odd because it sounds like the easiest money ever but i think that square does understand even before and now especially post kiratoriana's death that they need to handle it with extreme care that's what i think too is that well there's only certain there's only a few possibilities one is that they just don't and probably the most unlikely is that they just don't feel like it's worth it like it's like well what why but to me that could only be a viable thing if you anticipate that you're going to do some sort of more expensive remake or remaster and you don't want to have this old digital version that would be cheaper available it's kind of what i assume they did with final fantasy tactics for a long time actually that's one possibility again the toriyama thing and the connections to other people might be a problem too radical dreamers i think which we never that was a teleview game we never got that here i think conceivably didn't involve him either because i think chrono cross was kind of a reimagining of radical dreamers and then they were going to do that third game chrono break which never came out that was announced like in the early 2000s or revealed at some point in the early 2000s so i don't know man it's it's kind of a strange one this is the 30th anniversary or actually last year was because it was 95 it came out summer 95 i remember that pretty well in the states anyway um i i think i've said this before this i think one of the more controversial things i feel is like i think chrono trigger is a really great game i don't quite understand why people think it's like the best thing ever in my opinion like i i i you're not talking to someone who's not, I played it when it came out.

3:40:08Like I owned it and have been in the DS is the last time I played it. And that was a great port because the PS one port of the game was fucking ass. Like really bad. And that's the other thing that I wasn't even sensitive to that shit. I was in high school. It was summer 2001 when it came to PS one. So it was even after the PS two came out and it was so bad. It would take like seconds for it to load the menu when you would just go to the menu and it was so annoying that you would kind of plan a bunch of things to do in the menu so that you could go into it less as opposed to the snappiness of an snes cartridge but um yeah so like i think chrono triggers if you were to say like the top 25 jrpgs of all time i think it would probably be in that list people talk about it like it's top one top three top five i'm like i don't think so but teach their own of course it's a beloved game the middle transformation on an Animorph cover, wrote in.

3:41:06Said, hey, gents, this podcast goes live one week before the release of Pragmata. Outside of a short demo, they haven't shown much outside of one or two scenes that they've been recycling in trailers. Maybe I should be seeing this as a warning sign, but it actually makes me more excited. What are the crew's final thoughts before release? Also, did you see that the Pragmata Twitter said Diana was reminding people of someone and then included a picture of her and Mega Man side by side? Capcom likes to do a bit of trolling. They did. They did it on April 1st. I loved the theory that Pragmata was a Mega Man game.

3:41:31I thought that was a cute and fun, although unfounded theory that I still believed in for some time. Pragmata soon got pushed up, as we know. It's the 17th, right? It was the 24th, as I recall. The rare push-up. Here's where I am. Capcom is killing it. And until I buy a Capcom game where I'm like, oh, this isn't very good, which hasn't happened in seemingly years at this point, I'm just going to go forward with the next thing. I mean, even the more obscure shit, like I went on and on about how good Kenitsugami was. Like that game was fucking sick. It's too bad more people didn't play. That game was so good.

3:42:15The Resident Evil games, even Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster was great. There's no reason to believe that Progmata is not going to be great, especially because it's pretty obvious it's not the original version of the game. and that they saw something promising in it and gave it a lot of time. Remember, this game was revealed at the PS5 reveal and was supposed to come out in 2022. So obviously something went seriously wrong. And since it's four years late, it's fair to assume that they basically started again. And I'm sure they used assets and all that. But I didn't play the demo. I've looked at very few trailers since it was announced and I think I saw a little gameplay and I'm good.

3:42:58and I'm mega optimistic about it and I frankly think the demo is a big dick move and I don't mean a dickhead I mean like you know you're swinging your dick around yeah a little bit because I don't think you do that with games you're not confident in Chris where are you are you going to play pragmata on the 17th yeah I think so I think I'm I don't know anything about

3:43:17Colin Moriarty:it which is cool like I kind of like that I don't really like I know I've seen gameplay of it but it's it's kind of washed it it's like in the back of my mind like I can't really even like summon imagery of it like i kind of know what it looks like sort of and so it's i feel like it's rare that i i know that little about a game that's this imminent i feel like so often things are advertised ad nauseum um so yeah i'm definitely curious about it i don't know i don't know if it's going to be a game that's going to work for me but i don't think it's going to be bad you know like i think these are two different things it looks to me it it reads extremely novel like it's not going to be conceptually it's different and thus i wonder right how people will take to it um yeah but i i don't doubt the quality of it so like i'm definitely going to be checking it out and i know there's a demo too i have not played the demo i'm just going to wait i'm just going to save it for the day yeah i'm not into demos really unless i like that a lot of demos connect to the final version of the game.

3:44:21I think that's really cool to do that. You're basically downloading the full package at that point, I think. And then they just lock you out with a timer. So that's a clever way to get people to try your game and you have a save and you have investment. And so you just buy it. That's cool. But yeah, to me, I'm like, I don't need a demo. I'm in. I think it looks great. Dustin, you played the demo, as I recall.

3:44:38Colin Moriarty:Yeah, I played the demo at Summer Game Fest and then the one that's out now on everything. and I think the demo is a really smart idea because as you were saying Colin it is very unique and I think I could see the reviews on this maybe being a little mixed but as you guys were saying not for quality but just that the main hook of the game is that you need to solve these quick rapid puzzles in order to attack enemies and I could see some people just not liking that um so check out the demo to see if that's something you're into but i i was saying this somewhere recently i don't remember but when you've been gaming your whole life and not that i'm super old at 32 but and i'm sure you can feel this colin is that it's like we've played the same type of things over and over and over again and so when something that's actually has a really unique spin on something that is becoming more and more intriguing to me it's like i can tell from even not even playing the demo just from looking at the trailer it's like i've never played a game like that and maybe maybe pragmata is really fun at first but the hook of it gets old through it you know that could be a possibility but to me that the the ability to have a new experience is so cool to me that I probably am going to like it despite those flaws.

3:46:17Colin Moriarty:Who knows? Maybe it'll look great throughout the whole thing, but I'm very excited for it. But as I said, check out the demo if you're on the fence, because I could see you not being for everybody. Joshua Anderson has the final inquiry and says, sup, fellas, is it time for PlayStation to bring back the PlayStation experience between studio closures, the failed live service Games Initiative and the anti-woke narrative to their games and hardware price increases. I feel like the discussion around PlayStation hasn't been this bad since the early days of PS3. The revival of PlayStation experience would be a great PR boost, especially with PS6 in the pipeline thoughts.

3:46:51I think it would actually be the exact, I think it's a bad idea at this point. I think if you even asked me a couple of years ago, I would probably have a different answer, but, and we probably did. We've talked about it in the past about the revival of PSX many times, but it would be a grander version of the player base thing we talked about earlier with the scanning of people in. It's like, just shut the fuck up and focus on why we're here. We don't need... PSX hit at the right time because that was when the community was at an all-time high. Everything was symbiotic at that point. PS4 was rising and doing great.

3:47:25Everyone was happy. It's different now. I don't know that you want to get... There would be some excitement about it, but I don't think you'd want to gather everyone together before you have righted the ship. As I said, for lack of a better reference, it's like a politician using all of his political capital. It's like you have no more political capital. You used it to keep us all around and keep us believing in the brand. So now you need to deliver the goods and PSX is a distraction. That's a, for me, that's like a first party can't even imagine how disrupted that would be to them. They'd have to all make demos and and polish these things up and go to the show and all the rest.

3:48:05I just it's. I also think that, like, the chatter around PlayStation might seem negative in hardcore spaces like ours, but PlayStation is fine. So I think they look at that, too, and they're like. It's all good. Again, what we say over and over again, it could be so and should be even better than this. It should be so much better, but it's good. And so, no, I have no desire for the PlayStation experience. I don't think Sony's ever going to bring it back. The ironic thing to talk about it now though jeshua is that microsoft is bringing back their fan fest thing right or whatever they call it yeah so and they're doing it around the world i think so there is an argument to be made there i don't know but i don't think playstation is really playing xbox's game anymore anyway so i don't think they care either if you want to go to psx yes i don't think it's a good

3:48:50Colin Moriarty:idea i totally agree with you but i love playstation experience it was uh probably of the shows that I went to the best one which I didn't go to the first one but I went to the ones after that and apparently the first one was the best one but your camera's gone again by the way it keeps overheating well let me finish my thought real quick and then I'll throw it over put up the picture of Dennis Starfield okay

3:49:20Colin Moriarty:what was I saying PlayStation experience oh I do think it would be a bad thing that I wonder just like Sony's so afraid of negative PR and stuff. Like imagine people like the articles like this. These guys cosplayed as the crew of Concord at PlayStation experience with with signs that are like looking for work or something like that. That's a good idea. Something like that. And yeah, they just don't need it anymore. So agreed. Chris, you ever go to PSX? Did you go to one? No, no, I didn't. I didn't really do the convention. like i went to i went to like new york comic-con in 2012 and then like the next thing that i went to after that was i think e3 2018 yeah that sounds right 20 that's right yeah so i i and i went to pax's around that time too up until the up until covid and then since then i haven't really gone i i just i was never i was never huge on these events anyway but the i'm in agreement that it's just it's not a great idea i i also do think as much as i lament e3 being gone i do miss having that like communal thing where like every there would be just one day of all these like great new things to be excited for i think the reality of like how development timelines have shifted it's just like it's not it's not a wise use of time anymore like it made more sense to have an e3 trailer when you you'd max out at around three years of development time and you could it was it was comparably trivial to to whip up a vertical slice of something to and it was not to say that it was trivial in that in that time that still was a massive resource drain and like a big you know thing that derailed a lot of things but it was it wasn't i don't know it didn't feel uh unnecessary at the time compared to now where there's a lot of directs there's so many games at this point like you really got to just focus on building your thing and so having an event in a time where the the only people who are paying attention to it are probably like not super stoked you know not that they're miserable it's not like xbox where it's just like a fucking dumpster fire constantly they're just like what the hell is going on but it's not like it isn't it's a far cry from the ps4 era you know as far as like positive positivity and and now there's a whole grifter angle too it's like how many like engagement baiters are gonna show up to this thing yeah it is a different area right there it's a different like people people you didn't have the same level of like oh i'm gonna go and you know troll for money like you didn't you didn't have that back then it was more earnest and I think that's like long gone well I feel like I don't know I understand people's excitement they're looking for something I still feel like it's got to start with the games and then once there's something to celebrate again we can do that when the time comes it's a big question if we're ever going to get a fucking showcase again you know like who the hell knows yeah I feel like they they just kind of got rid of the showcase branding and now they're just all states of play or state of plays, depending on how you want to brand it.

3:52:40Anyway, my friends, that's all we've got. It's over. It's time to go. It's good to be here with you guys the other day, and we had a good time. Let's go around the horn and say goodbye to everyone. Chris, goodbye to you, my friend. Be well. Goodbye. Any plans for the rest of your day?

3:52:55Colin Moriarty:Probably do some paperwork. Set time of the year. Get some food. And then cryo. I don't know when but at some point today I'm going to be jumping onto cryo archive get some lose all my stuff become destitute as the cycle yeah as the cycle demands but uh yeah I'm looking forward to it it's it's a simple low-key day which is good it's better than it what is it that I used to I feel like I remember saying to you like it's like it's it's been uneventful which is good yeah that is good yeah that is good we'll enjoy I'm sure other have you met other any listeners or fans on the um on marathon um i've gotten friend invites but i usually and i i've accepted them on there because it's like yeah it doesn't hurt to be able to like get a third in but every time i i dabble in the idea of like getting like oh people have friended me from the show or from the stream or whatever um let me pull them in usually while i'm in the process of considering that i'll get a dm from somebody that i know who just wants to play so it's just like it That hasn't really materially happened yet, but I'm sure it'll happen at some point.

3:54:09Colin Moriarty:I'm sure I'll rope. If I've accepted you on Bungie.net or whatever the fucking thing is, you may get roped into something. I think I invited somebody actually, and then they didn't accept it. And then they were like, oh, I didn't see this. I was like, well, sorry. Time's up. Dustin Furman. Yeah. goodbye to you my friend goodbye everyone uh i think i'll also be trying to play cryo archive tonight very good it's been interesting the players that you interact with because i've had interactions where like i kill someone or they kill me and it's like ah you got me now like sorry i don't have anything on me i'm just a free kit he's like oh no worries i'm a free kit too and then knife me in the neck and i killed someone the other day and they just repeated the n-word for 20 seconds straight jeez louise and i was like you you good dog you okay and then i kill him so a little bit of everything in uh a little bit of everything in tau setty yeah a little the racists of tau setty 20 they're out there in 2888 people still hurling the n-word 35 light years from earth or whatever it is dude i my uh nvidia shadow play that's like always recording wasn't on because i'm like man i wish i could have clipped that that would have been oh yeah so i have that on now so hopefully i can run into him again yeah they'll be i gotta turn that on i always forget to activate that shit there's there's something that steam does natively too right that's not in video that i don't know if it's clip based like that i don't know maybe it does i always forget you gotta set like a key binding to like record the last few seconds and i always forget what it is when I'm playing right yeah but other than that um no plans right now so it's just gonna be gamer time yeah let me know when you get on cryo yeah sounds good yeah I'll continue tonight I'm gonna go for a walk after this it's nice I'll go for my my weird six mile walk look at the trees um I'll probably get back into Starfield tonight.

3:56:16I've been playing a lot of Saint Slayer as well, just kind of playing it over and over again, making sure everything's good to go. That comes out on the 20th, of course. And yeah, wait for Pragmata. And I actually think sooner, I think, is it Monday or Tuesday or something? I don't know. Mouse comes out at some point. So we'll have a lot of games to talk about in the weeks to come. All right, my friends. Well, good show. Thank you for being here with me. It's good to see you guys. Thank you all out there for your love, kindness, and support. Evolving sacred symbols in Last Stand Media. Couldn't do it without you.

3:56:40Patreon.com slash Last Stand Media for early ad-free access. and lastandmedia.store for merch. We'll see you next time. Until then, goodbye. See ya. Take care, guys. Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast, is a product and trademark of Last Stand Media and Colin's Last Stand LLC and is proudly recorded in the USA. The show was conceived by, is written by, and is directed by me, Colin Moriarty. My co-hosts are Chris Raygun Maldonado and Dustin Furman. The show is produced by executive producer Dustin Furman. All of Last Stand's theme music is by my best friend, Ramon Narvaez. 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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