You know me a gummy bear. It's the Internet. You're busy. Let's do this for August fifth, twenty twenty two. For the next hour or so, let me help you sort through the world of gaming on Game Mess Mornings Live with me Jeff Grubb. Today, I did not update this, but you know who cares. We're gonna get into this no matter what. But first join me and welcome today's co host the Game Mess Mornings. It's Patrick Kleppick from Waypoint. Patrick, how are you doing. I'm doing great. I've had a cold all week. It's not COVID, it's do feel like shit. And the pre show you made me talk about the Chicago Bears. So I am just I'm loved up and ready to go. Yeah, let's do this. I figured that would work. I'm glad to hear that. It's us. Like football, it's hard to like like go from like having one of these teams when we're both the NFC North teams to like, okay, now the year's starting. Where do I put my hopes after? I mean, god, you know, but like for the Lions, it's been just thirty years for it's like almost forty years for me now of just knowing they are never ever going to do anything. So our best player of the past fifteen years, Calvin Johnson, doesn't want to associate with the team. He feels like he was stiffed on millions of the teams should have given him. And then the quarterback that we failed for a decade immediately want to and as a commercial that plays constantly making fun of the organization for that fact. Yeah, yes, man, get your money, Get your money, boy, Well mine, we'll see the trait. Red Wings are looking pretty good this year. Everybody, all right, Well, before we get into this messal let's explain ourselves. Each weekday, I, Jeff Greb will help piece your gaming life back together. That includes breaking news, the Ketchup, where we discuss the biggest, biggest topics consuming the lives of gamers everywhere, and maybe even bring in some of our own original reporting. For all these topics, I'll get the input of a bona fide expert who will make me look smart. If you are watching live on Twitch, welcome, Hello Twitch. You can always listen to the show later on podcast feeds by searching for Game Mess Mornings, or find the RSS on giant bomb dot com. You can also catch the show later with chapters and time stamps on YouTube. If you are watching on there, please sure it hit that like button hellow YouTube. Okay, we will allow to get into So let's start the morning mess with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Family Plan. This comes from Tyler middle Deer. I tried to I practice this name beforehand. Middle Deer middle Deer, Senior technical program manager from the Xbox News Blog. It says, starting today in Columbia and Ireland, Xbox Enters insiders can begin to preview a plan that allows multiple people to share Game Pass Ultimate Benefits. This makes it even easier to play the best Game Pass games with friends and family across console, PC, and cloud by enabling you to add up to four people to your subscription, all with their own unique access to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate Games content and benefits. The pricing for this patrick they said, twenty two euros per month. I think for that in Ireland that you know, factors out to about twenty five dollars a month in US dollars. If this work to come to you, you know, the United States, that seems like a pretty good deal, right. What do you think is happening here? Well, I've just a backup a second. Why why Ireland? Like how do they places pick? Yeah, sense of the what are the regions? Is it just like occasion there's like on a dark board, it's like, hey, we're big international fields that way, like right, you know you used to remember like when I was covering mobile games, like test mobile games would launch in Australia and then Australian Canada, and then I think those those countries have something changed and shifted. I not kept up. This seems like a similar kind of thing, where like this is just where you test stuff, you just testing. Yeah, it makes makes sense to me, like on a just a practical scale of like rolling it out in places where there's smaller groups, you have a better sense of the data. Right, there's less of a scale. I'm just curious, like is it at some point like Xbox Ireland, if there is an Xbox Ireland was like, hey, this is this is our like we'd really like to be a part of this program. There's like a presentation rollout of like this is why we think we should get the game Class Family Ultimate Test. It's gonna be like working backwards from like demographics, right, like oh this this country just is pretty similar to what we are trying to hit when we go to bigger countries, and so therefore, and it's like okay, Ireland, Columbia. I mean, I don't know. It does feel like a dartboard though, that's what it actually feels like. I'll say that this kind of this kind of thing, this I highlight it here. This makes it even easier to play the best game game Pass games with your friends and family, because to me, this feels like the kind of thing where they put out a deal that is kind of so good that it makes people who were already proselytizing game passed to want to go out and do this even more because now they can get other people on and share the cost and save money, right, or just get more people to play games with if that's kind of what they what they care about. Because the more people who are on your game pass, well, like you know, they have those games, and now if you want to go play a multiplayer game, you have someone to play with. It's this network effect that sort of separates Xbox Game Pass from something like Netflix, where yeah, someone watching the same show as you is important. You want to have those conversations. It's not quite the same thing as someone playing a game with you at the same time, which can be a completely transformative experience. Right, Yeah, Do you do you have any sense of how especially as manager an era where places like Netflix are worried about password sharing after years of tweeting out how much they love password sharing. How exactly does the remote access on things like this work? Do you like, is it like an IP gating sort of thing, or is it like a number of check ins from different locations? Like? How exactly? Because you can immediately imagine the appeal of its service like this being hey, like this splits the cost, like this gets us in the door for a bunch of games. Do you mean any sense of how that works? As so, I haven't really messed with the family sharing stuff on any of the consoles really. Yeah, for this, they said, as long as you were in the same country. So I would imagine that that makes it a little bit easier to navigate, because that stuff's going to be like not just on an IP address level, but like a you know, an IP service like backbone level, like the you know, the backbone of the Internet in this entire country, if we know it's coming from there. Yeah, you could share your family account with this person in this country. That's how it works for now. I don't know if they'll change that when this thing gets out of early Access or whatever it's in right now. But also, I mean, the idea here seems to be getting ahead of where Netflix is at. Right. Let's just offer a higher tier one that is about password sharing, that is like that creates this opportunity for us to make a little bit more money while using the energy of our audience to market this service. And then at the same time it gives the people away to play a play a bunch of stuff with their friends. Netflix is like going to have to navigate that now, and they because the problem is they had their their service, and they had their time tier service, and it was never about like family sharing, although you could like have up to like four accounts playing stuff at the same time. I think it was signance at the same time playing stuff. That was always like a weird side effect of the way that they did things. Now they have to be like, Okay, we got to figure out how we get from here to there, and that's gonna be a little bit more challenging and they're gonna have to raise the press, they want to like charge people more. They're like, we don't want you to stop. We don't stop you from from password sharing. We're just going to charge you an extra two two dollars and fifty cents. And it just sets like a better better pitch, like when like I think for a lot of people situations with passwords sharing, which I like vice legal stop listening. Uh you know, like I do all the time. Like I canceled my cable and then was like, well, my mom's still paying for a wildly over expensive cable package and this is how I'm going to watch sports. And then she recently looked at her bill and was like, I wonder if I can get this down. And I discovered that she did that because all of a sudden they couldn't log into things like ESPN. I was like, no, did you change your password? She's like, oh, no, I have a much cheaper cable bill now, and I was like, yeah, Patrick's aware that you do. Like I'm happy for you, but uh, you know, I can't log into certain things now, and this is a problem. But it's it's one thing because I think a lot of the times, at least my relationship with password sharing would be it's just someone hands you the log in and you're just piggybacking, like yes, I it's not necessarily there was a financial arrangement, whereas like a family sharing thing from the jump, just like the terminology, the way you can imagine people setting it up. It feels it feels better to raise the price five ten dollars on a family share plan, and it does on potentially a single individual who is just loaning out their passwords to their exes and their friends and isn't actually quite sure at this point who who is logging into that account because how many of those people are like going into the like Netflix website checking like who has access. I've done that once before and that's when i discovered someone in South America had my password. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, did my buddy in the Navy, who is you on my account? Go into South America and log in and never log out? Or did he just like give it to his girlfriend there at the time or something. I'm like, Okay, well I'm cutting this off. Sorry. I have a friend of mine who is in a long term relationship and so all their accounts got intertwined and then then a messy breakup, and they recently revealed to me that they are still one of the associated accounts on an Amazon Prime and so they're not charging anything to that person's account, but their name is like associated with it. And it was the same way that like, my wife and I share an account even though I think she she technically pays for it. So he keeps getting that sweet sweet you know, labor exploitative two days shipping. But at some point it's like, well she's gonna like he's into deep. Like the point that he was gonna tell her about this was long ago. We are now years deep into an Amazon n con in which I was like, well, now you verbally told me, I'm gonna keep the secret for you, and I will never tell her because I still see her like pretty frequently as well. But I was like, this is a this is a stinky situation because although you're not actually doing anything to that account, I think I would feel slightly violated and annoyed if you were ordered all sorts of there's some Amazon on that shared account. But I mean that momentum you're speaking to, though, is exactly what Microsoft wants here, Like they do if they do you are risking this this like human messiness because it's just so convenient and you want to just keep everything going as is. It's just like I am invested in this, this ecosystem. I already have, Like I bought some DLC for this game. If I get knocked off here, I'm either gonna have to pay for it myself or buy this video game like they want. Because once you're in there, all these things just start clicking into place and you build like home there. You start nesting in this ecosystem, and they want that that keeps them, Uh, it benefits them in the long run, even if we figured out later exactly, which is a lot of the you know, a lot of these tech companies work like it's a lot of like social networks. It's like, hey, get the users, figure out the monetization later. Now granted they have some monetization already in place, so like there's a structure that's a little similar than just exploiting people's like you know, data they can they can mind in order to to you know, do targeted advertising. But it is the same as a similar sort of model, like can you see Microsoft talking about it explicitly in their financials, like, yes, we're glad we're more important, but that the subscribers are important. The time played is important, like how much we're making often, you know, we'll figure out that part later once we understand like what the market can bear and like what the market interest is. And so I'm with you. I think they are going to like weirdly as we see a Netflix like hit crunch time and like, hey, like we hit the subscriber cap. Now we need to figure out what to do to do next. Microsoft is in that like really dreamy period of like, you know what, just throw money into this money pit, burn it and we'll figure out the rest later, because we're trying to figure out a business model, right, And so where do those walls close in later? I'm you know, I'm not sure, but I expect that, you know, we're I don't know, half a decade out from them truly caring about that. Like as long as as long as like Azure keeps making a shitload of money for Microsoft, like as long as the cloud stuff essentially allows them to just ignore what's going on at Xbox. I can't imagine that Microsoft's gonna worry too. And like, just to speak to that point, like, this is the kind of thing. We're making games way harder than making movies and television. We talked about that on the Bondcaster or this week. People remember that, and it's the Microsoft knows that it has a little bit longer rope than even Netflix did because once they get to that subscriber cap whatever that might be, which is a long way off. They It's not like suddenly Disney's gonna be able to come in and pull a Disney Plus on them. There's a few companies, have a very small handful of companies that can maybe do this, and even those companies will probably want to either use Amazon or Azure as their backbone for like their certain their online services. So it's like, in the end, Microsoft is just really well positioned to capitalize on this, and they're gonna be able to keep other people out by like making sure that game pass is as affordable as it is, and it's gonna make people think, man, even if we do this, how do we make it profitable for us as a smaller company than Microsoft. So they are cornering and boxing out the market. I mean, how in a certain way even saw to just to illustrate your point, of how difficult it is to just like we're gonna make video games. You know, Apple Arcade launches a couple of years back, and their whole positioning of it is like, man, wasn't it so cool when we weren't making shitloads of money off of exploitive lootbox free to play games. Remember when there was cool, artsy games on this platform. We're going to fund them and we actually there's a service, you just subscribe to it, and we're gonna make more of these. And the launch of Apple Arcade had a bunch of splashy and interesting games. They're like felt like the early years of playing games on the App Store, and then they quickly realize like is like expensive, like really time intensive, Like you know, it would be easier, is if we just look at what's really popular in the App Store and we just buy a time exclusive where we strip out the the monetization aspect and just dump that into Apple Arcade and we just loop those back into the ecosystem over and over again. And it's like if a company like Apple, with infinite capital and resources, looks at that and goes video games are a huge pain in the ass, Like, let's just not do it and just buy the ones that are already here. I think stuff like that at least gives you a like a small window into why why they would have the longer runway, right, I mean guylin like the current state of stuff like Ubisoft. You like, man, if we had hired that many employees and then we ended up in a situation like ubisofts end right now, no thanks. That's what like Googles saw as their future and they're like, no thank you. Square Enix has a wild reason for getting rid of Crystal Dynamics and Itos. This is from a square Enix call with investors, as translated by David Gibson on Twitter. He said that the company explained that Crystal Dynamics and Ido sales was the sale of those studios was driven by concerns that the titles cannibalize sales of the rest of the group so it could improve capital efficiency. So it got rid of them because it would eat into other squaring ex sales. Patrick, make this make sense? To make this makes sense to me. It is cannibalizing our ability to sell to Sony in the nearer to mid term, and so we are doing whatever the executives that Sony need us to do to clean up the books so that we can h not be a third party anymore, because at this point where a second party, and it's so much easier to be a first party. Go look at you know, Bungee, Like it's just so much easier to get bought not worry about this bullshit anymore. I think that is just financial gobbadu goook. And I'm not necessarily insinuating that I have any reporting suggesting that like Square is getting eventually circumstantial evidence, right, it's circumstantial looking at like the circumstances. Yeah, yes, I think, but I think it is them clearing the financial books to probably get sold or at the very least, even if that wasn't to happen. It is them just doubling down on what works and realizing, hey, the games that we make were really good at it, Let's just make those because our experiments and making games with developers outside Japan are kind of hit or miss, and so let's just focus on what's good. So like there's a world where yeah, they're just making more final Fantasy games and more Final Fantasy expansions and delaying for spoken for saying, you know, I can never quite get that in the game's name, right, but just delaying that six months more and eventually it'll maybe come out, or I think more likely is that they get sold to some sort of entity, and Sony makes the most sense. I can't imagine Microsoft even if they wanted to, like I can't. I don't think they're gonna be doing any major acquisitions anytime soon, just because of the way that the government is going to be turning the screws on them, and it would just be easier for Sony from all sorts of logistical standpoints to do. It also makes sense for the fact that, hey, they're already paying all sorts of marketing and development costs to make the games exclusive, seems like it would make sense at some point to turn that in house. And so I don't really buy the excuse other than they found it difficult to oversee Crystal Dynamics. They it was a huge pain in the ass. They made okay money, but clearly the big bets they were making on things like Avengers weren't panning out, and they just no point understand those markets or those audiences want. They're really good at making the Kingdom Hearts in the final fantasy, why don't we just keep making those? And whether that turned into a sale or not, it is sort of like it's relevant and irrelevant because whichever situation they find themselves in, it's probably better for everybody involved that right, split happened, Yeah, and I was like, we don't know really what to expect from an Embracer owned like whatever, like Crystal Dynamics, Idos expect from Embracer Embracer exactly in overall, right, but it's like, uh, it's early. The rumblings I've heard is that like these the student I think Crystal Dynamics, right, I think wants to immediately get into the do sex. It's that Crystal Dynamics or idos. I can never like keep it straight. Is that? Yes? Idols Montreal was like at da sex, right, they want to get right back into that, and they're like want to challenge, like they want to do what Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven couldn't and stuff like that. That's the word going around. I mean, whatever, we'll see if the habits. It's so early, who knows like what they'll turn into. But that was probably not even there was no possibility for that conversation to even begin under the current square in X right. No, no, And and that's that's where I think it's it was best for for all parties. I mean, it's true that you know, the Idos and Crystal games were blowing the doors off, you know, financially, but you know those games were greenlit because because Squares said, that makes sense, let's go do that in what world? You remember talking to somebody that was a kind of external producer brought on early on the Avengers project, and I was asking like, well, you know, how how is that going? They're like, well, do you think it was smart to ask a studio that's used to making third like third person action adventure games to make a like monetization heavy brawler thing, Like, just how do you think that would go? Do you think the skill sets from those like previous teams directly applied to that? Probably not. And this person was being brought in with more expertise on like the brawler side to like try and get the combat up to snuff and so that sort of thing. And so you know, Squares, you know, in their financials, they can sit and wind all they want about how these games who are financial misfires. But like so someone green lit those pitches and was attracted by what they could turn into, and it was maybe a misuse of resources of those teams. And so whether Embracer turns to be like the better sort of like omnipotent, you know, financial backer of those, I don't know. I kind of get the sense though, that Embracer is going to also is in this kind of period of I don't know, we're going to spend a bunch of money and we'll see where we're at in five years, and hopefully these like lower cost bets that we just throw up on steam will sort of like have a financial cushion while we figure out what's going on going forward. But you know, i'd love to see them take a whack at a new data sex. I mean those I quite liked those two games. In the second one wasn't nearly as good as the first one. Yeah, and it's money was cheap in Europe, and I think that was the big thing powering Embracer. Who knows how much longer that last doesn't seem like it's gonna last much longer. What is the transition then, Like, how do they go from this acquisition feast to then a long tale of building games using what they already have. We just have no idea what to expect there. As with every company this reporting their earnings in this earn during this earning season, square Enix's sales are down. HD games sales did not reach the level of previous year, despite the release of multiple new titles. They say this, I looked at the last quarter. I didn't see a lot of like big games from score Enix during the April May June period, but I don't know, and it did look busier last year, so that makes sense. That would be down to me. But this is what they say. They're like, hey, we released a bunch of stuff and sales are still down. That said, software sales across the board for everybody down like this is just not surprising. This is just where it's at right now. They did note for their MMO games, paying subscriber numbers for Final Famous fourteen rows year over year. That game Unstoppable. It seems like it's kind of it's It is so fascinating to imagine an alternate scenario in which that game is not the success that it is similar to win like Capcom pre Monster Hunter World in which I'm I'm sure you were hearing similar things of sort of like, you know, nothing substantial like Capcom is gonna get sold, but it was like, hey, I the company isn't sort of a weird B tiered financial state, like they're doing fine, but I do. It kind of feels like similar to were like Usoft was at. Like ri E seven was a hit, but it wasn't the sort of like hit the transforms a company. It's one of my favorite games of all time. But Monster Hunter World, like it was a transformative moment for that company, and like whereas that was like one game that was like a giant blockbuster that hit and sort of like the company was off to the races after that, and it's just had hit after hit after hit. And it just seems to be like operating at a like on all cylinders in a way that I haven't seen Capcom operate in decades. Frankly, it's just it's just hard. I'm just so curious. What is a Square NX that doesn't have like their MMO. I just just like just as a money factory. I mean, they're so lucky they do have it. It feels like I mean, it's without Final Fantasy fourteen. This company feels lost. And we're not just talking about like, oh, they're Western games. This is a company a green light The Quiet Man and Let Live, a frigging front front mission metal gear rip off that is atrocious, and uh, what's the balance Wonder World? I mean what these are greenlit games that they're from, like Square Nix Japan proper uh saying hey, this is what we want to be investing our money in. And I don't. I don't get it like this, Like clearly there are some issues with like picking and choosing the games they're gonna publish, and then you know, some of their that's not to say all of their games have like tripped and fallen fallen all over themselves. There's been some successes, but it's like, you know, I think there's also a lot of stuff like Coronocross comes out and it's like, yeah, that's doing pretty well. It's not light in the World on Fire, but it's doing okay. It all comes Little Live is a game that I think is quite good, right interesting, But I don't think that game is gonna sell more than a one hundred thousand copies, you know, pulling a number out of my app, you know what I mean. Like it did very well in Japan from the Fimitsu sales, it like was already at like seventy thousand copies sold just in Japan, so that one might be a surprise hit. I agree, Like it was like hard to gauge where that one was going to be, but it seems like that one's probably gonna maybe get to five hundred thousand to a million for them, So that's good. That's good. Oh, let's see. Microsoft gives Xbox Series S dev's more memory to improve graphics performance. This comes from Tom Warren at The Verge. A new Xbox software development can has been released to developers recently, and it frees up more memory for developers to access for Xbox Series S games, and it also boost performance in certain titles. This is a quote from the game dev team. Hundreds of additional megabytes of memory are now available to the Xbox Series S developers. That gives the developers more control over memory, which can improve graphics performance and memory constrained conditions. This is important because the one issue with the Series S so far has been memory. The CPU GPU very powerful, more powerful than you really need for ten ADP sixty gaming more powerful than like, if you were to build a PC like the GPU, I would recommend if you were trying to build a budget PC to do ten ADP sixty, I would probably recommend something that's even less powerful than the Xbox Series S. So you're good on that side of things. Developers were running into memory issues, so and Microsoft sort of finding a few hundred extra mega megabytes is going to probably make a little something of a difference. It's pretty interesting that they did this. I don't remember many instances of something like this happening in the past. Patrick, do you no, I'm sure just under game must certainly speak to that some of the complaints or feedback they're getting from developers that'd be so curious to know what is the you know, the split, like what is the like I know that you know, the series as has sold exceptionally well, like largely not just because of the price, but also just like availability. It's the one that if you gets the one that if you go to target, it's there and my otherwise otherwise you're not finding anything else behind the glass or it's just a note that says, please ask if we have it behind the shelf because we're not putting these things out for regular people to touch. But I, you know, it's it's certainly been a successful gambit that they couldn't have guessed that. I wonder if it's been more successful than they anticipated, not just because of price, but because of COVID specifically in which it comes during a period which, hey, people wanted to buy a new console. This one was gonna you know, essentially, it was kind of like, you know, if you had an Xbox Series X, like it's or it's, uh, you know, Xbox one X. You know, it's like a nice like you know, you know, almost like you're shoving a new GPU. The games are gonna run niceer're gonna run faster, and it's a nice like optional console to have like in a second part of your house. Like I've thought about getting one because my Series X is connected to my office and it's the cloud stuff works okay ish, but it's like, wouldn't it just be easier for me to buy like a series of US just have that connected upstairs and just not have to worry about the cloud stuff. But anyway, I do wonder if the COVID situation of the last you know, two and a half years has created an instance in which this console has become more popular and more used than they expected, and so they're feeling more of a crunch than they would have based on previous expectations of how well it would have done. And as a result, you know, you are, you have developers maybe I don't know if they're getting complaint, Like I wonder how much of this is driven by users or developers, right, Like our users upset would like the performance of their games, and so then developers are hearting that feedback. Or is this, hey, you're making it harder for development at large because this game is essentially like the base level PC that we have to spec towards, and it's and it's kind of a pain in the ass. I don't know. I would not be surprised, And this is not based on any report, it's just speculation. I wouldn't be surprised if it's something like Starfield needed this and you guys need to figure out how to do this because we need this game to be able to be played really well on sides, and so if we're figuring out, oh now everyone's gonna benefit, I wouldn't be surprised. If it was something like that, like they had a very specific game line. They wanted to make sure it was running as best as it possibly can, as good as it possibly can, and and they you know, they figured out, they did the engineering work, and here we are, so yeah, uh, here's we get a series of kind of small game announcements that wouldn't to go over and like expansions of stuff. Let's start here with Back for Blood expansion to Children of the Worm getting its release date. Turtle Rock and Warner Brothers have announced details of expansion two for zombie shooter Back for Blood. It is launching at the end of this month. Entitled Children of the Worm. The expansion follows the release of the previous DLC Tunnels of Tear that arrived back in April. Children of the Worm has been set for August thirtieth. Players will be able to pick it up either standalone or as part of the of the Back for Blood Annual Pass. If you have the Deluxe edition of the game, you'll get it as part of all that stuff. Uh. Back for Blood, Patrick, do you have any one of these? You know, a PVEE multiplayer you know, four police people to team up and go out and take on a wave and waves of enemies. Do you have one of these games is Back for Blood yours? We at way point we actually played through all of the original campaign Back for Blood some months back, and it was it was fine, Like you know, the card stuff like you know, didn't really do anything for me. It's like a unique way to present you know, different you know, like a skill tree essentially like in a roguelike fashion for the game. But I got to the end of it was like, you know, I'm good. Like it was. It was a game that I had a great time playing with my friends on stream, but didn't really have the impulse to come back to. Uh. I mean these games in general are I'm so jealous of people that have so many of these types of games that I would have put in so many hours when it was younger. Like I know that I still look seventeen, but I swear to you, I'm a father of two and I'm thirty seven years old. I'm closer to forty than I am the twenty, even if it doesn't look at But like I would have played this ship out of these games when I was younger, and these days like a game with when he presents me a game with infinite replay value. I look at you and go It makes me sad because I need to see the end credits so I can move on to something else. And the notion of there being no end credits is the most distressing thing that you can say to it. At least Back for Road did have some end credits, and I could say I did it. I saw the final cut scene. I can I can move on to the next thing. Right when when when the credits are a thing you could select on the opening screen of the game, You're like, is that is that a wiki concept page? I wonder if that's a wiki concept page? Games they have their credits on the opening screen, and then is that that is a unique thing? I was struck by this. We did a stream recently where we're not a price. Who I work with is is much younger. I believe she's only twenty two years old, and so we're doing this feature called Ren's Blockbuster on Fridays, where when normally when you do like a nostalgia stream, it is like, yeah, hey, like who was it? Play? Like you know Nass, you know Snash Genesis games, and it's like no, like nostalgia for Ren two of those grade. Uh. The game that we're doing today that she played when she was thirteen is too Human. Jeff, Oh my god, Yeah, that is messed up. That would have been the last thing I would have expected you to say. Another one on her list was uh and this will this will have uh good good import for the Giant Bomb Bible audience is uh sleeping dogs like when we were when we were picking up the purse, right, that was like on this website. I know that was that I lived. I lived through it. I live, I lived through it, and uh uh anyway, it's just you know, all to say, Uh, I don't know where I was going with that. I had a point, yeah, you get back to it. Just wanted to make everyone feel young, and then I was going somewhere I don't know, ye, living on the colds. We're for UPF today. We're doing games from from two thousand and two, and I'm expecting a lot of people in Chad to be like, yeah, that's the year I was born. That's fun stuff. Two thousand and two wames from teams. Well, I'm I'm playing a modified version of Metroid Prime where I can play with mouse was just the keyboard and mouse. Oh you've got one of those hacked game cubes. That's right. Yeah, I'll put in four ks. That's right. Yeah, that's what we're always always saying when we're doing our streams. This hacked PS two has it's cool saving and loading features. It's get the cartridge from the back room. Yeah you wink wink. I think it cut to cards. Something is going wrong with my hacked gags. Oh man, I had this one up so we can play online against each other. Here we go, let's go for it. Yeah. I also might try to play Ultimate Muscle, one of the aky wrestling games that actually came out in two that's to do in Japan, but I don't care. I'm want to count it. Do you think, uh, do you think that Metrid Prime Your Master is going to look better than the version of that game you can play. I'm I'm like really wanted. So like what they did for the fan version. What they do is they use that Topaz gigapixel software that's really good at upresing stuff. It's like really really good and that people did this like Final Fantasy seven and stuff. And of course it's always just one guy. It's like I was trying it with this one tool and it was it was dump meeting my standards. And then gigapixel came out and I just didn't the entire game, and like a couple of weeks, I just sat there texture after texture and I install that and it does look fantastic. I will I'm gonna bet it's not gonna be quite as good as it's the moded stuff from the fans because they like listen. Having fans make stuff is uh, like there's a risky thing there where like they're gonna just kind of like do this loop where it's like they just the feedback loop kind of thing, and that's always a problem. But if you're gonna have them do stuff to like upres a game or take care of something that exists, I think fans can do a really good job because they pay attention to every little minute detail. So yeah, oh I can close the loop here. Well there's one. There is a concept page. Someone put it in the Chatred added you, so there is the credits menu options. Thank you, Mary. Now, how the Giant Bomb wiki never fails to deliver to the entire reason I brought it up was because the first game we played in Ren's blockbuster was Final Fantasy seven Dirge of Cerberus, and that was a nostalgic game for She's never played Final Fantasy seven, which is wild and like really interesting. But when we loaded that, that game's title screen. And this is the reason that the credits thing kind of triggered this for me, is that it's like, you know, like new game load game options, probably credits, but then the bottom of just say, you know, character designer, uh to see you any mora, And it was just like I want to maybe there should also be a page, a wiki, a section on Giant Bomb that is like developers who can get like title billing on the front of a game when you were not the director, Like that doesn't even happen for you know, like most people who are creative directors like like being yes, because like it's incredible. It's like sid Meyer wasn't necessarily directing those civilization games anymore. But it's like that even feels a bit different than what you're talking about. I don't know. That's yeah, that's interesting. All right, let's go through these other ones. Frogwars is making a new Sherlock Holmes game based on one of its earlier releases, and the project has already met its Kickstarter goal. You know, let me bring this up here for people it could take a look at the game when we talk about it. This comes from their Kickstarter post. We originally released from Sherlock Holmes The Awakened back in two thousand and six as a standalone story with a mature Sherlock taking on the case of supernatural mystery and intrigue. For quite some time, we've had the idea that our game from sixteen years ago can be the perfect foundation for the continuation of our Young Sherlock story arc that started with our latest game, Sherlock Holmes Chapter one. So we are taking this foundation and remaking The Awakened entirely from the ground up. On top of a slew of visual and gameplay changes. We are rewriting the story to be a direct continuation of Young Sherlock. And here's are like a list of things that they're improving, like graphics, asset models and new animations, new cut scenes, additional investigation, gameplay mechanics, rewriting the story to connect the case from the awaken to a younger Shrhawk, stuff like that. This is I'll say that one of the reasons I did want to put this here. It's like, okay, sure, I know some people were really into these Sherlock Holmes games. The game hit Kickstarter and it's already like past its goal, like in the first couple of hours. So there's a lot of demand out there for this from that audience, and it sounds like this is exactly the kind of thing they want. And I'm like, oh, I guess I'm a little surprised that a game can come out and immediately hit it's goal and kickstarting. Now. Of course they set the goal very low, but still they like at one hundred thousand dollars right out the gate. I'm like, okay, if that's still working for this kind of game, I'm a little bit surprised by that. What about you, Patrick, Well, you know, it's probably important to note that they are also situated in Ukraine, and so I think there is probably a motivation here to like a lot of how they're pitching this game is like, hey, it's pretty shitty to make games here right now because of that whole Russia thing. Not great, and so you know, I think this is in some ways, uh, you know, an appeal to you know, an audience that would be sympathetic to what is what is happening to the to the particularly awful situation this developer is in. A developers found themselves like multiple times and like weird. Yes, I was obsessed for like the better part of a week with the push and poll that frog Wars was having. Yeah, I think it was reading some stories. Yeah, the Sinking City. I think it was like in which they were I forget that, like the particulars of like the legal spat they were in with their publisher, but the longest shore of it was like this, like the publisher was putting up a version of the game on Steam that wasn't being sold by frog Wears. Then Froggers was issuing like like uh like DMCA requests to sneemed to have that taken down so they could put up their own version of The Sinking City on stead. Just you know, this company seems to have been through the ringer. They make games that I've never been particularly interested in, but I know that they are beloved by the people that do like them, and to you know, even absent the Ukraine situation, I think this studio is just one that people just show up for like if if they make they scratch an itch that people just can't get enough of, then you throw on the war and it's just like like, you know, fuck it, like they can have some of my money. And and this my understanding is this is like one of the more beloved ones of the games they have made, so a lot of it lines up pretty well. It also feels very sure, like Holmesy right at a certain point, like you're you're pulling from a lot of the same stories over and over and if you've done one of these games before, but yeah, it's okay to pull from your own stuff to like to re establish it and sort of remake it in this fun way where it's tying into this new storyline you got going on. Yeah, very cool. Uh, let's see here. Grim Guardians, so Inti creates, developer of Azure GUNVLL is making Grim Guardians Demon Purge, a two decapsul Vania style action platformer. Players take control two sisters with different attacks and capabilities to challenge the Demon Castle and the boss is waiting within covered New route routes through the castle using the sisters unique abilities. One of them is a long distance focus fighter, the other one is a brawler. I can't tell. Can you switch between the two of them on the fly? I think that's what's happening here. I like Azure Gun Vault. I played the first one. I haven't played any of the sequels. They're very Mega man x, which is never never exactly my kind of game, I think, But I think I'm very much into the idea of that studio going more towards something that's closer to Castlevania. Where are you at with this? Yeah, I you know, I I fell off like this style a game a little while because I feel like I was simply in the Night was like such a big deal for me when I was a kid, and then they put out like seven of those, like in a row between like the games Savans and then the DS and then and then at some point I transitioned to now I just can't get enough of like the Dark Souls inspired Meteor Vania crossovers. So I mean, this looks like a good one of those. I don't have much of a history with like this studio in particular, But I think also part of the problem is, like you can load up steam these days, and there are just a thousand of these that are like, and it's sometimes hard for me to figure out what is the one that like I need to spend my time with. Part of that's like they're appealing to different esthetics and different you know, this one's a little more you know, anime adjacent, I suppose, and so I can see, I can see where that falls. I'm trying to remember what's the one that I got really into a couple of years back. It was it has been in Spain. Uh is a Dark Souls aspired metroid style game. I remember you talking about it too, and I'm trying to remember it too. The one I was playing recently is a deedlit Lotus swar something something that's available everything. Yes, look, you have seen a million trailers that promise you to play a like Dark Souls adjacent metroid style game that is so common these days, especially with like. And it's also got gorgeous tooty pixelar so does everything these days. Yes, But Blasphemous is like an absolute banger of video game. And so you know, although I cannot speak to this studio in particularly, I can't say you should go play Blastemous because that game. Yeah, I've been on a kick with these games just because of the Steam deck, where it's like, so I can just play them here? Yes, exactly, Uh, Crypto the necrodance, Oh here actually needs to go here? S and K brings a pair of obscure MegaMan games to Switch. This is matt Leone at Polygon. Patrick. I almost only specifically put the story here because it was mattheo and I'm like, he's waiting a news story. He must just love these games or something he does. He does, I think this fits his wheelhouse. Sek announced that the two thousand Japan only Neo Geo pocket color game Rockman Battle and Fighters is now available on Switch under the name MegaMan Battle and Fighters in the West, though still in Japanese. It's a port of two mid nineties Capcom arcade games, MegaMan The Power Battle and MegaMan two The Power Fighters, both of which were fighting game added fighting fighting game elements to the MegaMan formula. They were scaled down to fit the portable hardware of Neo geopocket color. Uh, he says. Where all this gets to be a bit of a dogpile and kind of weird is that Capcom just released the arcade versions of Mega Man The Power Battle and Mega Man two The Power Fighters on Switch a couple of weeks ago as part of its Capcom Arcade's Second Stadium collection. But hey, if you want the weird neo geo pocket color versions of these, here you go. There. A lot of Mega Man games turns out like like I know the Battle Network ones, these ones I don't even remember. They never even got into my head. No, I don't think I had a neo geopocet color, and I think I imported. Like this was back when I was writing about games, like really early on in like the late nineties, other two thousands in which you could make I was writing for Gaming Age, an old website of people around back back then, and I was that one I was gonna my first money writing about games, and so I'd have enough money to import stuff, and so like that's where I am, like a dreamcast for the first time, I got a neo geopocket color. But I don't think I played the Mega Man Fighting game, so this one is new even to me, and as someone that has played most of the MegaMan games, although like you, the Network RPGs like for some reason pass me by. So I'm excited for that new collection to come out, although my understanding of that collection is like they're all kind of the same game, and then maybe you should just play three. I think like that was a lot of people. It's like, yeah, just play the third one if you're gonna play one of them, and if you want more, well there's more here. Uh, let's see here. And then Crypto the necro Dancer Synchrony is out now in Steam Early Access. Crypton Necrodancwer Synchrony is a massive new content pack for crypt Of the Necrodancwer. It adds online multiplayer co op and versus three new characters, full month support and built in and it built in mod portal, new items, enemies and traps and more. You know, Patrick, I thought they were done with Crypto the Necrodancwer, So this surprised me. This is I'll go back to this and play some more a Necrodancwer. It's a good game. It's well, I mean it's been five years since they last really touched the game, right, So yeah, right, it's been a yeah, right, because they put out a whole other cadence, so High Rule is like kind of old at this point. That's like several years old at this point. So yeah, it's this has been a while. Uh and then yeah, and I believe they announced to like they tease their next game, right like Rise of the Rift Rift answer, no other details there. I don't know what to expect. Is that a League of Legends necro danswer game? Uh? Yeah, I want to. I cannot explain why I didn't get more into Crypt the Necrodo answer. I love rhythm games. I can get into a roguelike. They're not my favorite genre, but occasionally, like a game like Splunky will come along and it'll become one of my favorite games of all time. And so I thought that, you know, Crypt would have kind of been up up my alley, but I just never I don't never quite clicked for me. But I like so much of what they're doing. Then I kind of came away from my experience with that game being like, well, maybe this isn't for me, but I really like what this This studio is obviously extremely smart, and I can't wait to see what they do next. So maybe this is an opportunity to jump back into that also seem like a game that would be very good on the Steam deck. Frankly, as we're talking talking about and I'm always looking for something to play on the couch with my Steam Deck while my kids are watching, you know, their copaganda Paw Patrol episodes, telling them that cops are great by getting to watch Paw Patrol. Uh and and I need something else on the steam Deck and so that I might have to give that another shot because people people do really like those. Uh yeah, I would say even Shrike Haydence a high rule that Zeldom music is im is so good. It's Danny Be doing those remixes. They're fantastic. They are just off the wall good. All right, let's get to the ketchup where we're just gonna maybe catch up on some of the things people are discussing, especially coming from yesterday. We we did this story yesterday about the switch supply and demand issue where Nintendo's Nintendo's said, hey, we might not have a new switch until We're not gonna have a new switch hardware this calendar year, this fiscal year. Excuse me. Uh. We got a little bit more from David Gibson on Twitter from what fur Okawa, who is the CEO of Nintendo said about this, and he's kind of talked about it from the perspective of the supply and demand of the Nintendo Switch. He said, normally we would stockpile inventory in the summer to be ready for the end of the year when it is at its peak and sales is what they're talking about there. This summer, we have not been able to produce as much as in previous years. Even if we can produce the volume we want, it's not I'm not optimistic that we will be able to sell it all. That's the other thing here. It's like he's saying pretty much for the first time that they seem like if we were to stockpile as much as we normally would, would we be able to sell it all. Now they are expecting to sell eighteen million more switches through the end of the year, and that's on top of the three year four ish that they just sold, so they'll get that'll get them to their previous guidance for the year of twenty one million switch systems sold. That's still a huge number. But if you look at the shipments, like July was way down and it's like, is that just supply issues that's what they are saying, or is this also then maybe pulling back it's saying, well, supply issues, but maybe we should also step back and let the gas let a foot off the gas while we look at head to what's next. I'm like kind of still a little bit confused about this, Patrick where Okay, yeah, sure, maybe they're saying there's no new switch hardware this fiscal year. I don't know if I fully buy into that. Maybe there's gonna be some kind of revision to like keep these numbers going up, or maybe they are going to be preparing for something bigger next year. But what do you think? Do you think that when we look at this chart here that's on the screen right now, you can see that, yeah, year over year, the red line things are down, but they're not It's not as big of a drop as it has been and sometimes in the past, But in terms of just raw shipments it is way down to uh just like what was that like, Yeah, for July it was just over six hundred thousand for that month. It's like has never been that low in the last two years, even throughout the pandemic, So that seems extremely low. What do you think is happening here? I mean it would not be you know, wild to see this as a company like Nintendo just being conservative in the way that they're always conservative, where there are a lot of signals that the uh, you know, the the American on me is you know if if not in a recession, is contracting or easton, it's got weird vibes, weird vibes, right like, Like I think like that is probably the takeaway is like terms like are we in a recession? Yes or no? YadA YadA. It's like all just sort of sort of you know, philosophical looking back bullshit, but like the economy has got weird vibes right now, and so it's like lots of numbers are like this seems really good. Gas is coming down, like but like new jobs are sort of like it's just sort of weird vibes. And like I think Nintendo taking these stance of like like we don't really know, like let's just wait, wait and see. We have an incredible like lineup of banger games coming out the rest of the year, while everyone else is, look, Nintendo has decided we'll just finish games and sit on them for six to twelve months, including manufacturing carts and boxes and just leaving them in warehouses for upboards of a year before they even will announce the games. Yes, wild ship that this company gets up to is like in that situation. Now, I think of those they had multiple games. Now we're like, I'll here about it right where their announced. They're like, yeah, this is just they get aware about yeah for ones and but but they're in a unique situation where they don't like, they don't have to live quarter to quarter and the way other companies do. And I think this may be the company just like being very concerntive on their estimates and like would it shock you if like we got through the holidays and they said, actually things were, things were just fine and uh and everything, and then all of a sudden they get to turn around next year and you know, start talking about you know, a news Elda and uh, you know whatever else they got they got cooking because they they they're they're they're ahead of the eight ball as opposed to behind the eight ball as every other developer, every other like sort of major game company h is And so I take this as them just looking at the state of the world economy and going, I don't know, so, yeah, why why overpromise when it's so much easier to you know, like just deliver just surprise people later. I think, I think you're exactly. They are the squirrel that nested away so many extra eggs that they can afford to pause, and even like half months were like, Okay, you're in supply issues. You know what, We're not going to trying to figure this out. We are going to take this time to assess what our plan is going to be for the next several months to the next year or so. And they they're the one company in this in this market that can afford to do that. It's for them, it's you know, it's uh, you know, they haven't they have an aging or at least older console relative to the PS five and then the new xboxes, and so like when they experience a dip, is this a dip relative to consumer spending habits or is this a dip relative to Hey, people are getting tired of the current switch. We need we need to refresh, and so like that's like those are two wildly different things. And like lots of consumer spending is like going down in which like it would be not shocking at all if like their holiday sales were through the roof and like, you know, whatever timeline they have for another switch is like just throw it out, like who who gives a ship? Like whoops? Like you know, just moving back another eighteen months. And so I think that I think this is an insist in which it's just they're looking at the macro conditions and trying to figure out how that actually impacts their bottom line. And there's just really no way to tell until you get more. Nope, no way to tell. And and then the data we're getting weird vibes. Five hundred thousand jobs added today July. What what are you talking about? I thought we were again, I know, yeah, on the past way to Hell. I thought, no, okay, all right, whatever whatever, all right, there's gonna be a Kirby concert later. I think it's next week. Let's see here. Uh they yes, August eleventh, So Nintendo announced this. You're gonna be able to watch it live. They are going to post the archive of it later. I'm into Curban music. Kurby music won an Emmy or I'm sorry, Grammy like last year. Right, It's like that's how good Kurby music is an Emmy. So yesh yesh Kirby and he got he got By Kurby. Yes, I love it? Uh And then this last one here. Mario Kart eight DLC tracks may have leak to do to music data mining. There's a whole bunch of tracks listed here. I just wanted, like, I don't know how into Mario Kart. You aren't Patrick for me like I like it. I can't remember the names of courses except for Kuba Beach for the N sixty four. It is not on this list, and it hasn't been part of the previous waves, and it's not in the game. It's one of my favorite tracks. I'm like, man, I'm starting to get worried it's not going to be in Mario Kart eight Deluxe at all. But do you have anything like that from Mario Kart that you're like, Man, I wish they would put that in here. My relationship with Mario Kart these days is it is so it's mostly a game that my well, my kid lost the cart and she keeps, well, she lost it. I didn't lose it, Shaska, not my fault, Okay, should have kept tracking that. You have your own switch aka daddy's old switch that was sitting in a drawer and he gave it to you, and then he has to remind the parents in the neighborhood. No, Patrick did not spend three hundred dollars on a new switch for his five year old. He hadn't in a drawer. No, he spent on a new one for him. For me exactly exactly, whoops this all that switch is just like I just I guess I gotta get this. Yeah, but I don't play a ton of Miercar, excepting like when she asked me to play it with her. But that game I cannot praise enough These sort of like kid friendly features it has in terms of allowing so it has automatic like the cars just go. It has has automatic driving that essentially keeps them from falling off, but it still allows but it still allowed them to control. And if your kids were even younger, it has like gyros steering on West. But one of the first times my kid was interacting with it, she just didn't understand the analog stick. And it's like, don't worry about it. You don't have to press anything, like just tell me your's character you want to be and then I'll go and then all you have to do is like turn this thing. And it was just it's just delightful. And it was things like that that illustrated to me how many games don't could have more of that, like the amount of time. I don't care that much of my kids play games, like they should figure out their own hobbies. But I've when I've met my kids halfway on it where they've wanted to play things, I am so frustrated fight like, hey, this game is hard because she doesn't understand what going left to right on a screen is. Can I just turn off dying so that she can just understand how a jump works? And most games just don't comply. But Mario Kart just has a level of accessibility for that that I found just delightful and I just wish Actually it's Mario Odyssey has a pretty wonderful set of tools that like get you halfway there on a on a pretty complex three platform. Yeah, I completely agree. It's the kind of like you're right, like the kids are gonna do their own thing. But when like if I have a friend over and you know, family over and we can sit down to play games, that's all the kids want to do too. They want to they want to control, or they want to be part of the fun. And there are it's a very limited number of games that can support like especially like if because Mario Kart, I could play, friends could play with, the kids could play, and everyone could just be participating on whatever level they want to play. But all at the same time, almost no games support that. So Mario Kart's kind of a miracle. No what I introduced her to the new Mario Party came out. I was like, well, maybe this will be something we could do as a family, and I just like I couldn't dumb down the AI enough and she likes, like we made it two rounds before she was crying. I was like, this isn't worth it, Like we're not playing Mario Party again. And we were visited I think like a year later. I was like, all right, let's see, she's got a better sense of how controls work now. And she made it through a whole round. I didn't have to defend the AI from her, and I was like, I'm very proud of you, Jessica, like you did this, like you made it through an entire round of Mario Party, which you know, I feel like there's no better uh you know, salute to Giant Bomb than explaining how I got my kid through a round of Mario Party. There it is. That is that is perfect. Let's uh, let's get to the poll here for the yesterday, we asked over under, and apparently a lot of people had issue with the this terminology, and I'm like, what does that mean? I just can't okay, I just don't you don't have enough gambling degenerates. I guess Okay, Nintendo launches the switch follow up pro or switch to by December twenty five, twenty twenty three. What could over possibly mean? But past that date? I just don't get how in anyone's brain over would I mean, the only thing I can imagine is they're looking at a physical calendar and over would be I guess before, but why, Like, I just you that there's so many hoops you have to go through to get to that point whatever said over? Forty seven percent said under. I'm I guess I'm not too surprised by this split people are. I think this reflects what we were talking about, where Nintendo doesn't necessarily know what to expect, so that I bet internally they're being pretty fluid and they're happy that they could be reactive and do what they need to do to meet the needs of the market. As the market changes, right, Yeah, yeah, I I you know, I would always push back your expectation for whatever the next hand eld is from Nintendo because they are under absolutely zero pressure outside of intense fan anxiety and leakers making you know, leakers make it making their uh, you know, their lives a little more anxious. But there's just there is nothing to suggest they need to do it any time soon other than maybe at some point, you know, you see things like, gosh it, what was the un super Mario three D World Bowser's Fury? Right, so about one? How has it been six years since another Mario game? Bowser's Fury is excellent, absolutely like Dwarves, and I desperately hope the Bowser's Fury is a template for what they're going to do for the next Mario game. But even like in that one was one of the first instances where I saw, huh, I wonder if Nintendo's Zone developers are starting to hit constraints on developing that game, is you know, sixty frames a second docked thirty frames a second un handheld, and like that's a really noticeable split between like the two experiences, Like it's perfectly playable in both and so like that's like one of the only tensions I can imagine. It's like their developers being anxious about the technical limitations. My guess is that I don't think that would be enough. Like I think that I just at every turn would just assume it's going to happen later. But watch, You'll just wake up one day and they'll be a like fully polished promo video for a switch a switch to and like that's what I'm expecting to happen. Like I'll take no guesses on what it's actually happening, because we'll happen is you'll just wake up one day and there'll be a video on their channel that says, hey, you can buy it, and you know, I mean the Switch was like from announcement to release was three months, like it was really it was the most four months because it was in that December We've got that first teaser video. Then there was like a little bit of something between that and March when it came out, right, it was at the end of March. So so I expect something like that to happen. It's like it'll just appear out of nowhere and it's like pre orders are open tomorrow, right, and it was never it was never gonna be at E three like that, even if they were to have done an event, they never do it at E three. It has its own thing, its own special time when it gets announced and maybe you know, September's coming, maybe we'll see something. I doubt it, though, I mean, it's the thing I'll say about the like I have been in the same boat of the the switch Switch pro switch to anxiety as a lot of people in which it is now just a Nintendo exclusive machine for me because of the Steam Deck, But the Steam Deck would leaved a lot of the annoyance I had, like because of my the way my life is set up, the switch fits in, fitted in perfectly. For years of just like this is how I want to play games, This is how I want to enjoy games. I get to play more games because of the Switch form Factory. But then once independent games like started kind of running crumier and crummier on that machine, it was like, this isn't like now I'd rather just go play these games on my PC because it's it's actually like the convenience is not outweighing the fact that they're just they don't very they don't. They're not really fun to play on the switch. So the steam Deck comes along kind of solves that for me. And so you know, I'll sit around waiting until the next Nintendo exclusive comes out, and I will happily play that on my Switch. But I you know, I get white people want another one, and I get white people want a more powerful one. I'd be right there with you. But you know, I'm also think that the steam Deck line, like the production lines are getting cleaned up because that right, frankly, frankly, you should buy a steam Deck more than you should expect Nintendo to ship at a switch too. However, many people, yeah, absolutely, I mean at lest I get people want to have the phiscal cards that the Switch has steam Deck doesn't. And a lot of people are still like, Okay, the steam Deck seems complicated. It's not they get putting so many rails and safeguards to make sure that you're just going to have a consulized experience. Yeah, I can't. I mean, people know, I can't speak highly enough of the steam Deck. It's it's so good. I still expect I mean, the way that they've gone with like from oh, people have been waiting weeks and weeks to now. Suddenly we're in this place where like, oh no, we're launching in new territories and everyone that orders one now is going to get it by the end of the year. I think that thing is in at least one retail store. By the end of this year, it's probably going to be in like a Best Buy or something, and it's gonna just keep growing from there. I think it's just it's just too good, not too it's it's really it is the ideal way for many people to play games now. People always coming like I just play everything on the TV, like you a different life than I do. For me, I needed the steam Deck and it's finally here's what it feels like. H and I need their production pascity to catch up because when I play the steam Deck, everyone's talking about all I need to switch to or switch pro. You know what I need? I need? I need a steam Deck too. I need a steam Deck Pro. Like it's really good, but it feels like a template for the ultimate device that will be the one after this. Like it's really good. It fits almost all the youth. It's way better than it has any right to be. And yeah, it's still could be really good. I look, you just you can't help but look at it and be like, oh man, like internally at Valve, the one that I truly like, you know, I was playing live alive, like you know, what is an old screen? Is it to make a break? No? Does it good screen? Look also on the steam Deck, man, it would every time I use that, Oh, I'm like, man, the screen is real. It's really good, right right. It's not like if I had to choose between the steam Deck or the switch, I'm probably choosing steam Deck for the performance. But that only screen, damn, especially with live a live band. That game looks really good on that with that old screen. Will it be a steam Deck too before there's a switch to I'm confident in saying no, no, no, no, I mean but would you be surprised? No, I guess I wouldn't if there was this okay, maybe still going now, I wouldn't be too surprised if there was an old lad steam Deck before there was a switch. Yes, yes, right, because we're gonna get through what this year with like the steam Deck just on on its own merits. By next holiday they could have a revision of some kind like with an OLED screen or something. Absolutely, but we were able to shrink down the process. You know, we have more room for a bigger battery and in a lad screen. And maybe we're erasing the price fifty dollars because we can that kind of stuff. I could see that happening. All right, let's see this is the question for next week. Do you plan or do you use or plan to use any gaming subscription family plans. I'm just kind of interest to see if there's a much of a market for the people that normally tune into this stuff. I'm gonna put this on Twitter right now. Slam the consumate chat usually post these into chats, So thank you Slang for for doing that. If you're here today. If not, you guess we can find out my Twitter. All right, Patrick, where can people find you? Where can people hang out? When you say, I know you guys got a ton of stuff going on Waypoint all the time. I am a subscriber to what do you guys called Waypoint plus? Yes, yeah stuff, So people should be what do we guess got going on? Look? We you know giant bound Waypoint we love subs and uh yeah no you can you know you can find me personally at Twitter dot com slash Patrick Klubbic. I'm writing for Waypoint at waypoint dot wis dot com. But uh we yes, we have Waypoint Plus, which gets you access to uh, you know, a bunch of it. It's it's some stuff that is subscriber only. It is also a way, uh working under a corporate company to sort of unlock enough money for us to do things that we just want to do. Like the Twitch streams only exist because people subscribe at Waypoint Plus, but those are for everybody, and so we really appreciate the folks that subscribe over there that allow us to kind of you know, I am now backplaying elden Ring once week all day because I got fifty hours in that game, fell off it. I was I saw your stream and you were like, I'm playing it all day and I'm like, I wonder if he's just never been in, Like this is an excuse to make sure he does. Okay, this is this is my way back into that game because what happened, and I'm sure you're familiar with this is like, hey, there are I need to play new games to write about and talk about. I can't just talk about the five hours of elden Ring I'm playing each week on our podcast, and so I kind of just fell off elden Ring and I was like, I need I just need like a big push to get back into it. And so I'm starting to play it once a week all day, ordering Terrible Food, White Castle Bell along with it. I'm going to order next week. But if you want to watch that and many other things, you can can join us over at twitch dot tv slash wait Point awesome and uh, let's see today upf we're doing two thousand and two games. I think there's probably a couple other quick looks that went up. I can't remember everybody, but thank you for tuning in today. I really appreciate it. Patrick, thank you so much for joining me. This was awesome. I had a really good time talk with you too. Until next time, everybody, you're the best audience in gaming. Have a good one, take care of yourself, and goodbye.