Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to Game Best Mornings with Me Jeff Greb,
your host from GiantBomb dot com. Thank you for tuning in.
In this episode, we're going to be talking about why
game Pass is getting cheaper and a whole lot more.
It's gonna be a good one because we have Matt
Piscatella on the show. Matt, how are you doing.
Speaker 2: Jeff Greb? How are you? How fun is this? I'm
very happ great to be back. Yeah, thank you so
much for you know, giving me a shout let's do this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I know you work hard
to get these reports ready. Glad to have you on
the day of the report coming out. We could definitely
talk about that a whole bunch more. There's a lot
of stories where it's like, hey, that'll be great to
get Matt's input. So looking forward to it. But let's
let let's let's shift gears a little bit before we
get into all that. What are you playing right now?
I will like you got anything that you're into?
Speaker 2: So at Belb. The show twenty six came out recently,
so I'm still deep into that about one hundred and
fifty hours in. It's my turn off the brain and
listen to pomcast kind of kind of game. Also doing
Citizen Sleeper. I'm trying to get one into done at
the same time, which are really very kind of choose
your own adventure style test heavy adventury type games that
are very well written. I'm having a really good time
doing that.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you have a good time with your padres. They
seem like they might be all right.
Speaker 2: As with anything from a gen X Sicilian, I'm always
waiting for the collapse.
Speaker 3: I wait for the other shoe to drop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're doing so well. It's like they should be
doing this well, but I'm gonna I'm gonna go ride
with it while I can.
Speaker 1: That Closer seems like a lot of fun too. I
don't know if people watching this will know, but he
kind of was a meme earlier in the season with
his corn music for the walkout song and the lights flashing.
And he's a big boy too, so when he comes
out to that, it's like, Okay, this is actually legitimately intimidating.
Speaker 3: I'm into it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he's a large He's a large human being
throws about one hundred and four. That's a lot of fun.
You know, but you're always always waiting for his arm
to explode. But hey, again, I'm just gonna ride it
while at last, Like everything in life, I.
Speaker 3: Guess absolutely all right. Well that's uh, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: I'll saw you earlier this week posting about getting up
early to get stuff ready.
Speaker 3: You you a morning person? Is that? Is that your
tendency or what extreme morning?
Speaker 2: I'm usually working like four to one and then my
brain completely just melts. So yeah, it kind of helps
doing the East Coast hours. I'm in San Diego and
the companies, you know, a lot of folks East Coast base.
So oh that kind of works out in a lot
of ways for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that that Yeah, that's good stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like I'm the one pm shutdown is like one
percent universally true for me. I can work from like
six pm to three am, and I can work four
am to one pm.
Speaker 3: That's definitely that what works for me.
Speaker 1: Anytime that afternoon period, It's like, why why am I
even doing anything? I should be horizontal maybe on the ground.
Actually I should be laying down, like face down. But
absolutely all right, we should we should get into things.
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with chapters and timestamps on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Hello YouTube.
Speaker 1: All right, we have a lot to get into, so
let's start the morning mess with the March twenty twenty
six US video game market highlights report from Matt Piscatella
over at Sircana, US video game spending jumped to twelve
percent in March, driven by console content and hardware, Crimson
Desert MLB, The Show twenty six and Pokemon Pacopia. We're
among several new releases fueling overall spending growth. There's plenty
to get into here, Matt, But I wonder if you
want to, like, give us the stuff that was really
sparking your interest, things that you took notice of, what
made your eyebrows raise well.
Speaker 2: I mean, growing twelve percent in March is great. Ending
the first quarter five percent above last year is also
very good. It's about as good of a result as
anyone should have reasonably expected given everything happening. So in
that respect, it's really great news to see that that
video game consumer in the US is still very much
excited to play games. And hey, I don't know if
you do this, but if you put out great games
that have good market appeal, turns out people will buy them.
And that's still true. So content still is king and
all of that. I mean, really though, the story is
the big new releases. We had several led by Crimson Desert,
like you mentioned MLB, the show Pokemon Pacopia, Pacopia Pocopia,
however it's pronounced really doing some work there, and really
the new releases helped drive things in sales like hardware
and even some accessory spending. So in general, like a
very positive end result for the March numbers.
Speaker 1: For sure, you're right here at US projected total market
video game spending reached five point three billion dollars in March.
That's that twelve percent increase when compared to a year ago.
First quarter spinning grew five percent. When we do like
drop down look at the chart of just the top
twenty best sellers here, a lot of like you always
compare it to last month's performance, and that column has
new a bunch of times. We got a new for MLB,
the Show, new for WWE Marathon. This is in order
everybody in Pokemon Pacopia with physical sales only, Monster Monster
hundred Stories three Twisted Reflection that was at number seven.
Then we do drop down to like number fifteen to
see Crimson Desert there new that is physical sales only
as well.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, on the chart it only can reflect physical
sales as well as digital from our digital panel participating publishers. However,
when we project out all of that missing digital data
from those charts, the ranking really is Crimson Desert one,
MLB The Show twenty six and two and Coopia three.
So yeah, the charts a have to be formed only
account for point of sale actuals rather than projections. But
when we project it changes the story a little bit.
Speaker 1: And just like clarify for people that that is just
Crimson dest what you're talking about, because that has the
asterisk and the other ones that have the asterisk. A
lot of these other ones, like you said, you have
a panel that does give you data and so many
of these do include digital, but you don't try you
don't project on this chart, but you are able to
protect and project internally. You do do projections, and you
guys are pretty confident in that math for something like
Crimson Desert.
Speaker 3: But what does that look like? It's like, oh man,
this like it's.
Speaker 1: Sold every copy it possibly could at physical and then
we see this reflected in other parts of the market,
like how do you project as best you as you
can tell us?
Speaker 3: I'm sure a lot of that is internal only.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we have, you know, not only the physical data,
but we also have several types of survey work we do.
We have receipt panels, which we basically have a panel
base that provides all of their purchasing receipts that we
can triangulate data from, and of course publicly available information.
But you know, we're watching this stuff all the time
and triangulating that with even engagement data that we have,
so we feel like we're able to get to a
pretty comfortable range of error on some of these things.
But yeah, there's always a little bit of error in
any projection. But overall, especially with what Crimson Desert did
on PC, it had a very strong month and an
overall would have led all titles in full game dollar sales.
But that doesn't take anything away at all from MW
The Show twenty six, which had its second biggest launch
ever behind only MLB The Show twenty one, which of
course launched in a very interesting time period in gaming,
during the Big Boom. So but down the list, like
even if you go through the other big titles that
were new this year, in terms of franchise releases, WWE
was among the best performing WWE's at launch. Pacope did
incredibly well and even helped drive sales and Nintendo switch
to hardware and even Monster Hunter Stories three making the
top ten, and that's that's fantastic. So overall, like these
new games did do pretty darn well across the board.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I look at this this chart as well
and sort of read some of the stuff you're going
through here, one.
Speaker 3: Thing I do notice as well is in that publisher.
Speaker 1: Column, a lot of Sony Sony like their games are
popping up on this chart. I think the the number
one question I think people would have is, Hey, what
about that that marathon is marathon like here at number
four including both physical and digital sales?
Speaker 3: Is that is that good? Like? We don't know that?
Speaker 1: Guess that's the basic question like a lot of us
would have. I don't know if you know the answer,
but Matt, is that good?
Speaker 2: Well. Expectations and results are are tend to be different things, right,
reasonable a reasonable sales projection versus what's a necessary sales
target to make a PNL statement look good are also
very different things overall, especially based on the PC performance,
it's a very good start in the US for marathon.
Will it have legs? Will it extend? Will it build
an audience over time? Well, that looks like it's a
little more challenging right now looking at the engagement data
we have, But perhaps they can get that going again
with some updates, perhaps some price drops, and other games
have done it. But right now, very good start, but
looking a little if you on the legs so far.
Speaker 1: Yes, it probably is the story of we will have
to see six months out if this thing is still
hovering around on these charts specifically, it's like, oh, that's probably.
Speaker 3: The good news that they're waiting to see.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's like there's no reason to be like, oh,
we got to be running up the white flag and
declaring that we are going to submit for this game. Obviously,
but yeah, I think it will come down to how
does it perform over time.
Speaker 3: And it's one of.
Speaker 2: Those things where games now, right like, the audiences for
games are very different. You could have a smaller yet
extremely dedicated player base that could be just as successful
for your game as a wider audience that plays a
little bit less often and a little bit less enthusiastically, right,
So it all depends on the individual game what that
performance might look like over time.
Speaker 1: You you touched on hardware a little bit. I'll read
some more of what you wrote. March hardware spending grew
by sixty nine percent when compared to a year ago
to five hundred million dollars. Nintendo switch To drove the
overall game, while PlayStation five spending did increased by three
percent compared to March twenty twenty five. Nintendo switch To
was the best selling hardware platform across both units and
dollars for both March and twenty twenty six year to date,
with PlayStation five ranking second across both measures and time periods.
Speaker 3: It's a little bit of a flip right in.
Speaker 1: Up until this point PlayStation was doing, PlayStation five was
doing a little bit better than switch To. Do you
think it's the story of Pacopia coming in here and
just flipping things on its head.
Speaker 2: It sure is. I mean, I don't know who's responsible
if someone's got to reset the doomed clock for a Nintendo.
You know, when a big first party Nintendo game shows up,
things happen on the hardware side, and that was the
case for Pacopia. You know, we're still trending or Nintendo.
Switch To is now treading twelve percent ahead of Switch
on a timeline basis, and that includes the first holiday
for Switch. That's fantastic when you compare the last couple
of months the boom or the boost scene in March
for switch To, you driven by Pacopia really helped. So
it really re energized the platform. You know, it's one
of those things right where you've talked about it before.
Switch To had such a strong launch because they had
so many units available that a lot of that demand
was pulled forward because the units were able to be bought,
and so over time, you know, it's not going to
what we call a decay curve in gaming, where sales
decay over time for a product after launch. It's not
that they're going bad, it's just the way the curve
of the sales works. It's going to be different than
any other any other platform in history because so many
units were available at launch like this was expected. So
now we're getting these refreshes of these new games coming
out that can boost those sales. As long as that continues,
should be no problem. Now, whether it's going to outseell
Switch by the end of its life, who the hell knows.
I don't who knows, but it's off to a fantastic start,
and as long as content keeps showing up, people are
gonna keep buying it. Well, so long as the prices
don't go through the roof based on what's going on
with components and RAM. But that's a that's a story
for another day hopefully.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's a story for almost every other
day on this show. But yeah, it's I think you know,
we last time I had you on, we definitely were
having this exact conversation of it did well at launch.
Speaker 3: We'll see how it does through the holiday.
Speaker 1: The holiday wasn't It was certainly wasn't bad, but there
was some mixed signals maybe, but it seemed like at
the end of the day it was like, no, it
was a pretty good holiday, but we're still kind of
waiting for Hey, are are those people who are waiting
on the sideline that don't rush to get something just
because it's available going to step in? And this is
the exact thing that I think we're like, is something
like this going to happen? The fact that it did
happen at least once throughout the life cycle of the
switch to is a sign that Nintendo does still have
something there that they can work with, right.
Speaker 2: They still got some juice. They know what they're doing
over there for sure. And you know, when you look
at something like the PlayStation five interesting, like you mentioned,
we did see a sales increase for PlayStation five hours,
but I gotta tell you, a lot of that happened
in the last few days of the month following the
announcement of the price increase and before the implementation of
the price increase, So that little window there that's really
accounted for that growth. And so it's gonna be very
interesting to see what happens over time. Now that price
increase didn't really find its way all the way through
retail until around April fifteenth.
Speaker 3: It took some time, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: As units sold through and then the new units came
in and they got the higher price. So you know,
we're gonna that impact of that price increase is gonna
be a little bit delayed because of that. But it's
going to be super interesting to see just how well
PlayStation five continues to sell after those really quite significant
price increases.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I'm Sony and I'm trying to, like,
you know, I feel these pressures on these sides. I
want to sell as many PlayStations as possible. I want
to set the price as high as possible because our
cost or as high as they possibly can be. Right now,
it's like, this is the best case scenario with the
you know, Trump card in your pocket of Grand Theft
Auto six comes along here later this year and people
forget about the price because they just need to play
Grand Theft Auto six that bad. At the very least,
they do seem set up for that to be a possibility,
right Like, the sales certainly could decay more over the
month the intervening months up until Grand Theft Auto six,
but I'm sure they are expecting that with the hope
that yes, but the people get used to this price
by the time Grand Theft Auto six is here, and yeah,
that sort of wipes people's mind clean, and like, whatever
it is, I got to pay it right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's a hell of a tightrope all of
these companies are having to walk right now because the
pressures on the cost side are enormous. The demands from
the consumer base are large, and consumers right now, particularly
in the US, are facing incredible price pressure from everyday
spending categories like food and housing, which have been that
way for a while now, the prices have been increasing
rather dramatically, and now of course gas, which has you know,
which is costing billions in additional spending every month. So like,
the pressures on the consumer are immense, and now we're
slapping these price increases on everything gaming like it. It's
a very delicate, delicate tightrope to try to walk in.
You know, every this is all new, this is all
new territory, new world, nothing really in history to look
at to give you a guide about what to do.
So everyone's just trying to figure it out. And you know,
as I'm sure we'll talk about later when it comes
to game pass, sometimes you can boost prices up and
then when that doesn't work, you bring them down. You're
trying to find the right balance, and that's what everyone's
trying to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's uh, you know, I've been thinking about it
because of the the S and K stuff in the
backlash against Saudi Arabia owning that, and like thinking about
way things are so interconnected. I've been thinking about, you know,
plastics being in everything, and that might got me thinking,
does rising cost of energy like increase the cost of petrochemicals?
And say, of course it does, even if it's just
like the cost of the energy to produce those things.
And it's like, oh yeah, it raises the prices for
everything across the board. And everyone keeps saying it's like,
there's no reason to expect those prices for energy to
go down anytime soon. And I'm certainly no experts, so
I'm just kind of listening to everybody and being like, okay,
when and people give timelines of a year to two
years out, and these companies, the uncertainty was already there,
and it seems like every week there's a new dice
getting thrown that is just as uncertain so they kind
of just have to assume worst case scenario a lot
of times, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to have multiple scenarios in your planning,
and no matter who you talk to, like, no one knows, right,
everyone has there are estimates based on assumptions, but no
one knows. So you'll get estimates across the board about
even things like whether it's energy or the price of
RAM or RAM availability, like exactly when things start improving,
and you'll hear estimates from you know, later this year
to twenty thirty, and so a lot of there's a
lot of scenario plans. You just kind of have to
wing it and see how it goes. I mean, I'm
sure on the on the whiteboard over at Valve there's
a whole bunch of price points and release.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that whiteboard probably looks insane.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, because things are changing so quickly and rapidly. Yeah,
it's it's it's a mess out there, Jeff, I don't
know if you knew.
Speaker 3: It's it's kind of wack of do trying to get
that sense for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, before we move on, two more things, Uh, tell
me what we should take away from Sensor Towers data.
You know you guys partner with them, from the mobile market. Uh,
it does in a lot of ways to me feel
like a eight. You know, there's a bifurcation. There's a
separation between what happens on the side that we usually
talk about on the show and what happens so on mobile.
But where are they connected and what signals are you
getting from there?
Speaker 2: So what's interesting is that the mobile market's also matured
and we're seeing the same type of behavior there that
we are seeing on like the console and PC side,
where these big behemoths just kind of stick around at
the top of these charts and you get some mixed
in every once in a while, but then.
Speaker 3: It goes right stagnant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's mostly stagnant, just like the console market. So
right now, what they're seeing is like Pokemon goes and
the Monopoly goes. They'll kind of battle back and forth
based on events. I don't know if you've heard this before,
but like big, big content drops will reinvigorate the mobile market.
So a lot of the same types of things that
we're seeing on the console and PC side. Of course,
mobile continues to be the biggest segment in video game spend.
In March, spending was down a little bit in mobile,
but you know, on the console and PC side, we
more than made up for it, so we were able
to get to that overall spending growth. But really these
two markets are much more similar than they used to
be in terms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the behaviors around them makes sense.
Speaker 1: And then I always like to look at accessories as
a way of like forecasting things out a little bit
like because to me, you know, you could tell me
if this is wrong. I always feel like if people
are buying accessories, it's because they plan to be investing
more in games. They want to spend more time playing
games in the near future. They're buying headsets, they're buying
controllers because they're playing games now, but they also expect
to be playing games in the next couple of months.
So when I see that accessories spending, accessories spending grew
by five percent when compared to a year ago, to
two hundred and fifty two million, to me, that sounds
like a pretty good jump.
Speaker 3: I don't know, is it.
Speaker 2: It is, and you know it's flat year to date.
So this coincided with the big push on hardware that
we saw in the month of March. A lot of
cases and organized there's a lot of people buying cases
for their Nintendo Switch tos, they just buy pcope. Yeah,
and that was a big driver there, So yeah, i'd
agree when it's kind of a trailing indicator in a
lot of ways, but it does correlate somewhat to what
we're seeing on the hardware side.
Speaker 1: Makes sense, all right, fantastic, Let's uh, let's do this
next story real quick. Diablo four Lord of Hatred reviews
are end. This is the DLC for that game. It's
got an eighty three on open Critic. Tayler Cope at
pc gamer gave it a ninety out of one hundred
said Lord of Hatred brings a campaign packed with thrills
in a system systems refresh that revolutionizes the loot chase,
and then Travis Northrop at IGN gave it an eight
out of ten. Lord of Hatred gives Diablo four an
extremely satisfying conclusion, excellent changes to build crafting, and an
in game that could potentially go the distance, and then
four stars from shreef'sai ed at VG twenty four to seven.
Lord of Hatred accomplishes the near impossible task of delivering
a game changing expansion that fundamentally improves on the core
of Diablo four and a weiting narrative conclusion that so brilliant,
brilliantly balances spectacle with the emotional heft essential for any
fan of arpg's Mad Again. I'll ask you kind of
like about the a little bit of the business case
here of the DLC, especially for a long running franchise
that has done this a bunch of times like Diablo. Uh,
these are often moments of reset and sort of like
setting the game up for its long term future, which
we know Diablo always, always, always has. These companies look
at it that way, right, like, this is a chance
to put out the game that people are actually going
to remember.
Speaker 3: So if they get it right, does it it does
it often pay off?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a long tail for sure, especially as it
could be repackaged and reduced in price over time. I mean, Diablo,
for is one of those one of those games that
no one really thinks about as being one of the
the big games that kind of stick around forever. But
it isn't like that world like the Sims, which just
keep on drugging along for that dedicated player base. And
I mean it's great to see that this this really
is going to deliver for that player base. That's that's
with it. Yeah, and over time, like this is a
game that'll sell for ten years or more as as
it goes on. So yeah, that's that's great to see.
Speaker 3: Mike's been playing this.
Speaker 1: He talked about it on the BombCast yesterday, so if
you haven't listened to that, go give that.
Speaker 3: Oh listen.
Speaker 1: It sounded like he was pretty happy with it. As
someone who I think was who liked the obblo for
but but but did not necessarily love it. I don't
even know if that's a fair way of putting it.
He seemed happy with the Lord of Hatred is how
I'll phrase it. All Right, we have to take a break.
Plenty more to get into, including our little chat here
about how people are feeling about that game pass price drop.
Speaker 3: Will do that after this.
Speaker 1: If you want to skip out on the ads, you
could do so Giant bomb dot com, slash joined, become
a premium member, get yad re versions of the shows.
In the meantime, we will be right back. We're back
with Game Mess Mornings. I'm Jeff Grubb, that's Matt Piscatella.
Let's get into this next story. Analyst say Xbox game
Pass price drop is quote unsurprising after Call of Duty
failed to significantly increase subscriptions. This is from Chris Scullion
at VGC. Analysts have said that Microsoft's decision to drop
the price of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game
Pass isn't surprising given that the addition of Call of
Duty had made the little impact to subscription numbers. On Tuesday,
Microsoft announced that it was dropping the price of Game
Pass Ultimate from twenty nine ninety nine or thirty dollars
down to twenty three dollars and PC Game Pass from
sixteen fifty to eleven or yeah, excuse me, fourteen dollars.
Speaker 3: There we go.
Speaker 1: It's all mixed in here with the pounds and euros
and stuff. It also announces the future of Call of
Duty games would not be available, or future Call of
Duty games would not be available on either service on
the day of release and would instead be added the
following holiday season. Speaking to Games Industry Dot is Or
Canada Senior director matpis Caadella and Ampier Analysis head of
games Research Peers Harding Roles both agreed that this was
inevitable given that Xbox's hope it would see a large
growth in Game Pass Ultimate subscribers by adding Call of
Duty available on day one hasn't played out, Matt. It's
the kind of thing where like we sit back years
ago talk about the things that Microsoft, the levers that
Microsoft had that they could pull to sort of push
this thing forward. If Starfield hits, that's the big game changer.
Like people loved Oblivion, they loved Skyrim, and that's the
thing that could really change things. It didn't change its fate,
and then it's like, well, they're acquiring Activision. Call of
Duty is the next and maybe last big lever that
they could pull. What's bigger than that? Now, the Call
of Duty that did launch into game Pass had some
quality issues around it, But I'm of the opinion and
it sounds like maybe you are, and you can explain
it yourself, that that didn't matter as much as the
fact that the people looking at game Pass are just
not necessarily looking for that deal in particular, Like that
didn't move the needle. The people who are going to
get game Pass already have game Pass. What do you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, originally game Pass was like kind of
situated as the best deal in gaming, and you know, yeah,
it didn't hold a candle to a giant bomb premium subscription,
which really is the best deal in gaming if you
think about it.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So when you know when call did he first
made it to game pass, I mean we were talking
about this just a few weeks after that happened. We
did not see a particularly big bump into hardware sales.
We didn't see a massive increase in subscriptions. All there's
there's sure was an increase, and you know, in twenty
five the same situation, we did not see any kind
of bump when it comes to hardware sales and subscription
spending increase, but just slightly so. In terms of the experiment,
and it was an experiment, you know, it didn't work
out the way they wanted. I mean, Phil Spencer for
years had talked about three billion gamers and this was
going to be one of those big ways to find
three billion gamers, right, is to bring these types of
games to the service. But ultimately, like you said, in
terms of the value proposition, thirty dollars a month became
pretty steep, which Microsoft itself recognized and led to the price.
The price decreases right now, which you know we were
waiting for. I was kind of surprised they just dropped
it on a you know, just here you go and
a random on a random Tuesday or whatever day that was.
But hey, great, better better now than never?
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, exactly. You know.
Speaker 1: I wonder like, do people come to you when they
come to you for data? Are they often asking about
player behaviors and how they can change consumer behaviors? How
do we get people to spend money here instead of there?
Or is that something you're like, look, we like that stuff.
Is we look at it after it happens? Trying to
get people to change their behaviors is difficult? And is
that the wall that Microsoft is running into with gamers
that we're kind of stubborn, we're stuck in our ways,
or is it just like, oh, game pass, we could
see it's already expensive and we know it's going to
have to get more expensive to justify all these games,
and people aren't sort of biting because of that, you know,
to give.
Speaker 2: Them the credit that I think they deserve. Microsoft and
Xbox in particular have always been willing to try things
and kind of break out of established norms. Whether they
have succeeded all the time or not, certainly sure, certainly debatable,
but a lot of these cases, like you could have
your research, you can go talk to players, you can say, hey,
what would you think about this or that or the other,
But ultimately you don't really know until you execute a plan,
right you say, all right, well we think this is
this is how this is going to go, but until
we actually throw Call of Duty in the game pass,
we're not going to know what's gonna happen. And now
they do. So you know when one of the biggest
questions we've had, I mean, sometimes questions in social media
and forums that fans have are ridiculous, ridiculous. Yeah, and
sometimes they're the same conversations that are being had in
the industry. Whether or not game paths or other subscription
services hurts or harm sales, is the same arguments and
discussions internally that they are in the fan base. And
there is no like really crisp or clear answer to that.
Even now, some games benefit, some games do not benefit.
There are all kinds of opinions all over the place
about whether it's good or bad. Right now, Microsoft is
that taking Call of Duty out of this equation is
the best thing for the brand, And perhaps it is. Well,
we'll have to wait and see.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: For me, I'm at a point where I guess someone
who talks about this stuff kind of constantly, and for
a long time there it was like, Hey, whoop, Xbox
is trying something that makes it newsworthy, that makes it
worth bringing onto shows like this and having conversations about it.
I'm definitely at a point now where it's like, I
think we're a little bit at the end of that
story of them trying these big interesting ideas. It's like
they are the retreating a little bit and the novelty
of game Pass from both my perspective of observing it
and I think from the gamer's perspective of the best
deal in gaming and Xbox's position.
Speaker 3: Of this is the future.
Speaker 1: All that sort of like run its course now and
game Pass is just another one of those things that's
an option for people off to the side and they
have to sort of find a way to maintain it.
Speaker 3: Is it shifting into a long term maintenance mode.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's the goals either. Where it's sat right.
And what's interesting is the recent reporting around whether or
not it's going to become more of an all a
cart type subscription bundling service where you could pick and
choose potentially different types of programs that you could put
into a game Pass subscription. I saw someone somewhere say
that game Pass could go from being the Netflix of
gaming to being the cable bundle of gaming, which I
thought was pretty interesting take on it. And ultimately, like,
what looms over everything right now is the hardware component
parts situation and whether or not these things will get
so expensive that a whole bunch of people will be
shifted to things like cloud and what impact that could
have long term on things like subscriptions if people can't
afford hardware or it's easier for them to do something else.
It's more of a longer term question, but these are
the things that you got to think about when you're
planning out a five to ten year plan.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah. I think maybe one last question I have
about this, one thing I'm thinking about is Okay, so
they've dropped the price, and that's certainly one of the
things people have been saying it's too expensive. But I
think a lot of people looking at this are looking
to be like, yeah, I mean it's dropped for now,
but it's going to go back up. They at like Xbox, Microsoft,
have they reset the clock in such a way where
like we recognized the price was too high, where it's
like it's going to be difficult for them to raise
the price on this thing again for a couple of years.
Speaker 2: Or or what memories are short?
Speaker 3: Are short? Aren't they?
Speaker 2: Yeah? They're very short, especially in gaming, and things changed
very quickly. We'll have to see what the response to
this is. This is a pretty big drop in price
from previous level, and it's going to be very difficult
to get a subscriber increase enough to offset that lower
cost per year. Yeah, we'll have to see if if
that works, if this works incredibly well, and then all
of a sudden, you know, okay, we're getting content creep again,
We're getting more content. Oh geez, you know, the math
is out of whack again. We have to raise the price.
That'll be a very interesting conversation. But I mean, for
right now, with this transition at Xbox, they're saying all
the right things. They're doing these things that seem to
be finding you know, a lot of positive feedback from
the player base. We'll see if they can expand on
that and you know, really re energize the brand, which
is right now, you know, it's it's it's struggling a
little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a certainly, it's like hard to as gamers
who love to make these brands part of their identity,
it's got to be hard to like build that narrative
internally as a person who wants to be a fan
be like, hey, here's what Xbox is. It's that there's
no really real great answer to that right now for sure.
All right, let's move on to Miamoto, who says he
was surprised Mario Galaxy movie reviews were even harsher than
the first. This comes from comes from Chris Scullion at VGC,
who's gonna have a lot of stories on the show.
Speaker 3: Everybody shouts out to Chris.
Speaker 1: Nintendo's Shiagiro Miyamoto says he's surprised at the negative critical
reception to the Super Mario Galaxy movie. As reported by Famitsu,
Miyamoto conducted a group interview with Japanese media to mark
the local release of the Super Mario Galaxy Movie. During
the interview, Miamoto was asked for his views on the
critical reception to the film in the West, where critics
reviews have been mostly negative. Miamoto replied that while he
understood some of the negative points aimed at the Super
Mario Brothers movie, he thought the reception would be better
for the sequel. It's true, the situation is indeed very similar,
he said. Actually, regarding the previous film, I felt that
critics' opinions did hold some validity. However, I thought things
would be different this time around, only to find that
the criticism is even harsher than it was before.
Speaker 3: It really is quite baffling.
Speaker 1: Here we are having crossed over from a different field,
working hard with the specific aim of helping to revitalize
the film industry. Yet the very people who ought to
be championing that cause seem to be the ones taking
a passive stance.
Speaker 3: Look, yeah, a.
Speaker 1: Miamoto is working in a field that is different than
the one he's had before. I think that he does
bring a lot of his ways of doing things that
he applied to video games to great success, and I
think he is applying that to movies to us as
much as he can. Like, you know, he's not making
these movies, but he's involved in making these movies. He
is created as as executive producer, and I do think
that they go to him when they have questions about
what he wants, and I bet he speaks up when
things going away that he doesn't think that they should,
and I think that's reflected on the screen. So I
think he's like, I'm making the movies. I want to
make this works for games, it's going to work for movies,
And I think there's a part of me it's like, actually,
these are two very different things, and the things that
make games good that Miamoto is good at are not
necessarily what's best for a movie. And yet I had
a fun time at the film whatever it's and I
enjoyed it, and I'm glad it's making a lot of
money because I want them to make more of it.
But I don't know, what do you think? Have you
seen the Galaxy movie? Do you have an opinion on it?
Do you think Miamoto is kind of just a little
out of touch here or what I mean?
Speaker 2: I have not seen the movie yet. I'll see it
in a while when it shows up on my screen downstairs.
I mean, you got to love and admire the passion
and wanting, you know, to see people connect with what
your vision is. But ultimately that box office is pretty good.
So like what do you. I mean, what are you doing, dude? Like,
look at the the consumer response has been so strong, like, yeah,
it's a bummer, but I don't know, I wouldn't feel
too bad about it for too long looking at the
box office.
Speaker 1: Right, and it's like, you know, I mean, maybe you'll
remember better than me. I think after that first movie
there really was with that consumer response fueling interest in
the games the exact way that Nintendo said it.
Speaker 3: That's what they were doing this for.
Speaker 1: The expectation is that is going to probably be replicated
this time around, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean we're already like we saw a big bump
in Mario Kart World sales. We saw other Nintendo games
you know, pick up the last month as well. I
mean sure, like and the theme parks and everything else
they're doing. It's all part of this big push and
people seem to really like it, even if you know,
the critical flaws are there, like okay, Like it's how
it's just entertainment, man. Like everyone does the same thing
to some of the biggest games of the year and
they end up selling very well. It's just part of
the deal. I don't know, Like I get it. I
empathize with him, but ultimately, like, I don't think anyone's
bummed out over there about what considers were thinking about it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think it's like, you know, critics do
they want to come away with film. Critics go to
a movie and they're like, I want to know what
it's about. I want to be able to talk about
that and have a conversation with the film, and Mario
movies are not doing that. I told the story on
the BombCast of listening to just McRoy talk about his
kids and him talking to them about different movies and like,
what's the theme of these Pixar films And it's like, oh,
they kind of understand, so oh it's growing up, or
it's this, it's and it's a little bit deeper. And
then what's the theme of the Mario movie? And the
kids just said Mario and it's like, yeah, that's the
theme of the Mario movies. And I think that's what
a lot of people, including me. I think it's what
a lot of people want from those movies. I want
Mario and it delivers that.
Speaker 2: Or the Minecraft movie or whatever else. Is just a
good time to go hang out and just turn your
brain off for a little bit. Because I mean, damn,
do the world's on fire, Like, let me go look
at some bright, shiny colors and happy music for a
little bit, lead me alone, like totally get it.
Speaker 1: And that's I mean, honestly, you described exactly what it
was for us to go as a family.
Speaker 3: It was, what's go in there?
Speaker 1: Turn the world off, enjoy some bright colors and some
familiar sounds and point at starfucks and all that stuff,
and it was.
Speaker 3: It was a good time.
Speaker 2: Now, mission accomplished.
Speaker 3: Mission accomplished.
Speaker 1: I'll have to spoil the movie slightly for you with
this next story.
Speaker 3: I hope that's not going to ruin it.
Speaker 1: Miyamoto says he wants Peach's origin story in the Super
Mario Galaxy Movie to remain cannon in future games. This
is from Chris Culling at VGC as well.
Speaker 3: She hear.
Speaker 1: Miamoto says Peachs newly revealed backstory in the Super Mario
Galaxy Movie may remain canon in future games. Basically they
just kind of changed where she comes from and her
relationship to Rosalina. I won't get into this SPECIs everybody,
but I actually thought it was good. I'm like, this
is a good way of doing things. It explains a
couple of things I had questions about, for sure, and
he does talk about some of the reasons why he's like,
why they haven't made these decisions in the past.
Speaker 3: I'll get to that quote here.
Speaker 1: Miyamoto replied that Nintendo has avoided going to the characters
backstories too much in the past because it can limit
what they can do with those characters going forward. But
now that their past have been explored more in the movies,
the plan is to try to establish this as the
official lore in upcoming games. Because we don't always know
what kind of game we'll make next, having too many
character backstories can end up restricting us. Miyamoto explained again,
this is to Famitsu, so this is a machine translation.
I'm fine with being bound by the gameplay, but I
didn't want to be constrained by a story we've created.
This is the reason why we had avoided making movies
for so many years until we made this film. Then
we hadn't decided on Peaches origins. But now that we've
made the movie, it's become fun to expand on the
characters in various ways. Therefore, I'd like to adhere to
the backstory established in the movies as much as possible
in future games. I do think it's interesting how like
making movies and again me and Motive being very involved
has forced him to think about things he just didn't
have to think about before. He's like, that doesn't serve
the game, so I don't need to come up with
an answer to where Peach comes from. But now that
that is something they needed for this movie, he's like, Oh,
I can play with that in games and kind of
running with that now. Again, he's not day to day
making games. He's an executive producer on all those. They
do come to him to ask questions and stuff the
people on those teams. But yeah, it does feel like
Nintendo's becoming this like full like circle media company where
they make games and then they make movies and one
informs the other. And that does seem like it's going
to be a strength for strength for them. Does that
sound right to you?
Speaker 2: It's the Mario cinematic universe extending to everything else, right,
like why.
Speaker 1: It got its fingers and everything? Yeah, that's spreading.
Speaker 2: Let's get a new ride at the theme park. It
will explore these I don't know, man, Like that's cool.
Speaker 1: Sure, let's see yeah, Zacy Zacy and Chad says, the
original Peach origin story is that she's a girl. It's like, yeah,
that's that's exactly right. And in the yeah it was.
It worked for the games, but now I do think
this could be a lot of fun as they go forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, give me, give me a movie where Yoshi dies forever. No,
I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Yeah, it's terrible. It's fine.
Speaker 3: Listen, you're gonna this. This movie does.
Speaker 1: Have some Yoshi, but you could tell they're like, they
just had Yoshi show up to have Yoshi. That's he's
just there doing a couple of Yoshi things, and they
tease them at the end of the last movie at
the credits, and then he shows up in this one.
It's like, Okay, now, what are they gonna do with that?
And the answer is he's just Yoshi. That's what they're
doing with it.
Speaker 2: What do you mean back in the vault forever? That's fine.
Speaker 3: They just shove it back in that damn egg.
Speaker 2: Get out of here.
Speaker 3: Yoshi's Island's a great game, and I Love Yoshi.
Speaker 1: Gamers file class action lawsuit against Nintendo over US tariff refunds.
This is from Nintendo everything. According to a report from
game File, Shout out to Steven Totila, who does great
work on tracking down these legal cases. Everybody go subscribe
to the game File newsletter. A pair of gamers have
filed a class section lawsuit against Nintendo. This will represent
everyone in the US who purchased products impacted by a
price increase during between February first, twenty twenty five and
February twenty fourth, twenty twenty six. Greg Grayhawford and Poschant
Sharon say they bought Nintendo products that saw a price
increase because of tariffs. As stated by game File, they're
now claiming that the company will be unjustly enriching itself
with any refund it secures from the US government over
widespread tariffs last year that, among other things, hug the
prices of Nintendo hardware and accessories. This is like the
next parts, like the key thing here that they're kind
of trying to argue and less restrained by this court.
Nintendo stands to recover the same tariff payment twice, once
from consumers through higher prices and again from the federal
government through tariff refunds, including interest paid by the government
on those funds. God, I don't know, man, this is
this seems kind of crazy. I think it's I want
to hear what the court.
Speaker 3: Thinks I will be I won't be shocked, gets.
Speaker 1: Like thrown out, but if it doesn't, I will be
interested to hear the reasoning of all this, because it
does seem like that is a little wit will be
scary for the kinds of companies to have a lot
of sway in this economy and this government and in
this country of Hey, we want to have the freedom
to raise prices for whatever reason we want, and then
we don't have to We won't want to answer for
why we did that, no matter what the reason is.
And it's like, well, why shouldn't you, I don't know
what What do you make of this, Matt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a complete mess. And this isn't the only
one of these.
Speaker 3: No, it won't be no way happening.
Speaker 2: Across the board. And now that the portal was established
for companies to submit for a reimbursement from the government,
right and some of the comments from the administration, particularly
the President, around how he'll remember what companies don't submit
for those reimbursements it's it's a it's a very messy, sticky,
ugly situation across the board. I'm also very interesting to
see where this goes. Consumer sentiment is strongly against tariff's
seventy two percent. I think it was of our respondents
in our survey work thought that tariffs increase prices. And
some of the estimates you see about how much tariffs
cost the average consumer last year can range anywhere, but
you know, between fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars depending
on who you talk to. It's significant. And yeah, as
a consumer, you'd expect some of those dollars to get
back to you. Will they That's a great question. But
this is going to take a long time to untangle,
and it's going to be very messy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that is always the story with tariffs
is they are messy no matter what. And usually the
story is they're so messy and entangled, we just don't
get rid of them.
Speaker 3: They stick with us forever.
Speaker 1: Now the court stepped in and actually struck them down,
and so it's like, now we get the fun mess
of actually getting to entanglement and seeing what that looks like.
And it's going to be a mess in its own way.
It's this is often the problem with tariffs is they
just create so many more headaches than anyone can ever predict,
and and here we are dealing with it yet again.
I think it's I want to see what happens with
a case like this, and like you said, it's gonna
happen across the economy.
Speaker 3: We're going to see this over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: And uh and yeah, I mean the stated reason from
a lot of these companies of why they erase prices
is tariffs. I think it's less likely that if they
just raise prices that they're gonna be like a lot
of these cases like this will win. But if there's
like fees added on top and they're called like tariff
surg charges, those are the ones that might be a
little bit more susceptible to something like this because it's
just so clean cut.
Speaker 3: But again, we're gonna have to wait and see what
the courts think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, last couple of stories here. Echo the
Dolphin Complete announced. This is from Salamano at Gamatsu A
and r at Tillier has announced Echo the Dolphin Complete,
a remaster collection including all versions of Echo the Dolphin
and Echo the Tides of Time. Those are the first
two games, as well as a new Echo game that
stends the journey into the modern era.
Speaker 3: Platforms in release date were not announced. Fantastic. I like
Echo the Dolphin quite a bit.
Speaker 1: I don't it doesn't seem to include Echo Junior. People
are asking, I don't see Echo Defender of the Future here.
I don't think that's included. Although these these kinds of
collections often do get updated later with free editions. I
wouldn't be surprised if something like Echo Junior gets added.
You an Echo the Echo the Dolphin fan Matt Piscatella.
Speaker 2: I've played some Echo the Dolphin, but every time I
think I've Echoed the Dolphin, I think a Semen. I
always wonder like if Semen's part of the Echo of
the Dolphins, you know universe, And if it is, and
maybe it should be, where's this Semen collection?
Speaker 3: That's what I Yes, they need to put those games
back out.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, let's get a remaster remake of Semen. What what
can go wrong?
Speaker 3: Nothing? Absolutely nothing can go wrong.
Speaker 1: We'll get Look, let's put you to some of these
microphones built into the PS five controllers.
Speaker 3: Absolutely all right, last couple of stories.
Speaker 1: Like I said, Ubisoft has scrapped its Animal Crossing Competitors
from Jonas Mackia Game Reactor.
Speaker 3: What I'll Terra is the name of that game.
Speaker 1: There was a time when like half of the games
maybe more that Ubi stuff were putting out could be
described as SIMS competitors or Animal Crossing clones or or whatever.
They had like the my uh what were they called,
like my Babies with the Z and stuff like that.
They had a ton of that stuff and it seemed
like a pretty big basic business for them. And now
we're in a world where when we do have these
games like Animal Crossing and Impacopia and told me about
you life, they are popping off, but they do come
from like a handful of companies, and like you mentioned earlier,
the SIMS just chugs along and that audience is so dedicated.
What like, what do you think you is thinking here,
like oh we like this, we can't crack into this market,
or it's just not worth the squeeze or.
Speaker 3: What was it like?
Speaker 2: It was Imagine babies, wasn't it wasn't Imagine babies.
Speaker 1: Yes, imagine they had always imagine Imagine cats, Imagine all
kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3: That's what it was.
Speaker 2: The Brainstar Works. Uh Ubi's going through it right, like
they've been undergoing some significant change over the last couple
of stays. So I can only imagine all the projects
that are projects that got canceled that we've never heard
about to begin with, as they've redone everything, and how
they're approaching the business. I mean, but yeah, this type
of thing, when you have established competitors and established players
in these spaces, breaking into them exceptionally difficult. And if
you don't think you can do it, better to cut
it while you cut it early rather than later.
Speaker 3: Yep, absolutely all right.
Speaker 1: And then Street Fighters six year four DLC characters a leak.
Maybe this is a rumor. There's a reason I'm putting
here at the end. We don't know if this is
accurate everybody, but I'll let you know what people are
out there saying this is from Nintendo Everything. A New
Week is making the round which claims to have outed
the identities of DLC characters for Street Fighter six year four.
Speaker 3: The character's name come from R. N. K Lucius, who has.
Speaker 1: An accurate, accurate track record for these kinds of leaks.
Let's see here the rumored DLC characters for year four
are Vega, Hagar, Gookin I can't I can't remember I
say his name, but that's like the guy that trained
Reu and Ken and Tifa. The last one is a
big name in particular as this as it be a
new crossover. Tifa, of course, is one of the main
characters in Final Fantasy seven. I think the expectation is
she would show up in Teken, but no, it's maybe
it's she's showing up here.
Speaker 3: Sean was saying, who's our like fighting game expert?
Speaker 1: That maybe because Capcom and Square Enix maybe had to
work together because Alex, the most recent character, does some
Final Fantasy style moves because it's based on Kenny Omega,
who does a lot who has a lot of moves
named after Final Fantasy stuff, including one winged angel. Maybe
there were some conversations there already happening, and it's like
they got talking like why not put Tifa in there
as well? So I won't be surprised if this is
the exact list of characters.
Speaker 3: I would love to see Vega back and have our
That would be fantastic.
Speaker 1: All right, that does it for the headlines. Let's start
wrapping up the show. We have the poll question for Monday.
Let me get the most recent results for that by
refreshing this page.
Speaker 3: Here we go. This is it.
Speaker 1: Which Zelda story do you think the movie is most
likely based on?
Speaker 3: Options?
Speaker 1: Were Breath of the Wild, Okerina of Time, or a
different Zelda story. Twenty two percent think it'll be based
on Breath of the Wild, which I think is fair.
Speaker 3: It's like, what is that story again?
Speaker 1: Thirty two percent say a different Zelda story and forty
six percent say Ockera of Time. I think that is
the safe money if you want to go take all
that to the prediction markets and just make a fortune.
Don't do that, Please God, don't do that. What do
you think, Matt, Matt, we think about this movie?
Speaker 3: Story?
Speaker 2: Great? I don't know. All I know from playing all
tho Zelda games is you run around and you smash
things and then your your sword break. So hey whatever, cool,
All of them are good for me. Great? Whatever, people
love I love it?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think they did, just like like take what they need, right,
just don't don't force anything that that'll probably be the
most awkward thing if they just try to force something.
Because it was in one of the the games. Just
take the components that you need. All right, we have
a new pool question. We'll get to this here in
a second. Before we do that, though, Matt, why don't
you tell people where they can find you on the
internet if that's even something that you want them to do.
Speaker 2: If you want to talk about video game sales stuff,
why not. I'm on the Blue Skies at Matt Piscatella
with one tu because my mom. Anyways, it's a long storry.
I'm also on LinkedIn, but but don't go on LinkedIn.
You don't have to, Like Jesus, save yourself. It's terrible.
But I'm over there posting things too, because it's all
about business. So yeah, come hang out. Let's schott video games.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, I love it. I always appreciate you.
Speaker 1: You do a great job of like people come out
you with questions and you always seem to do your
best to give them an honest answer. You're like, yeah,
if you were wondering about that, I have here's what
I can tell you. And I always appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the video game's long history of transparency. I try
to break through that as as much as I can
without resulting in a lot of angry emails and phone calls,
so I do my best exactly.
Speaker 3: It's like there's and there's a lot of people that
work at these companies. This is what you know.
Speaker 1: I talked to them that they want people to know
they do, but there's just a lot of reasons not
for them, but for them to not say anything.
Speaker 3: And that's where we're still at all.
Speaker 1: Right, New Pool question, Are you more interested in Game
Pass now that it's cheaper?
Speaker 3: Yes? Or no? I know there's a lot of nuanced there.
Speaker 1: I know it's like maybe you already have it, like
I'm not more interested in it, but I guess I'm
happy answer this question however you want to interpret it.
Speaker 3: I just kind of want to get a general sentiment.
Yes or no?
Speaker 1: Are you more interested now that it's cheaper. We'll get
the results. Talk about it here on Game Mess Mornings.
On Giant Bomb tomorrow speaking a Giant Bomb. It's Wednesday.
It's time for Blight Club. Dan's got like forty minutes
left in space ace for Super Nintendo. Everybody, so tune in.
Maybe he beats it today.
Speaker 3: We'll see. That's gonna be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Earlier today, Jan Am I correct that that quick look,
the preview quick look for Yoshi and the Mysterious Book
went up.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 1: Everybody go check that out now. Lots of cool stuff
happening over on giant bomb dot com. Thanks again, everybody
for tuning in and checking that out. Matt, thank you
for hanging out with me today and talking about video games.
Speaker 3: Man, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you. It's always a blast. Really, I really
love being in saying hi to all the dude's out there.
It's a good time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we love it as well. You're one of the
favorite guests. We'll make it happen again here real soon.
In the meantime, thank you everybody for tuning in, thank
you for watching, and thank you for listening. We really
appreciate it. Until next time, have a good one, take
care of yourself, and goodbye.