Speaker 1: He'll be beer, go'll be bit. Sorry, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: some silence here while the music plays. They can hear
Speaker 1: us now though. Hello everybody, it's the Internet. You're busy.
Speaker 1: Let's do this just for January twenty second, twenty twenty five. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm all discombobulated. I meant to start the show two
Speaker 1: seconds later than I did. I hit the wrong button.
Speaker 1: It's my first podcast, Alyssa. For the next hour or so,
Speaker 1: let me help you sort through the world of gaming
Speaker 1: on Game mes Mornings Live with me Jeff Grubb. Today,
Speaker 1: it's Microsoft's turn to take the spotlight, and it might
Speaker 1: have some surprises during its developer direct tomorrow. And is
Speaker 1: the switch to more powerful than that Mario Kart Tease suggests,
Speaker 1: But first, please join me and welcome you today's co
Speaker 1: host to Game mess Mornings. It's a listener conte everybody. Alyssa.
Speaker 1: How are you doing.
Speaker 2: I'm so good?
Speaker 1: How are you fantastic? I'm happy to see you, glad
Speaker 1: to see you doing well. Ready to talk about some
Speaker 1: video games, but yeah, first time? How you been?
Speaker 2: You know? Last night the New York Game Awards, which
Speaker 2: is great because it helps support the nonprofit the New
Speaker 2: Ork Video Game Critics Circle, which is great because we
Speaker 2: mentor underserved and unhouse youth in New York City and
Speaker 2: help them learn more about writing and video games. Be
Speaker 2: it narrative for journalism. And yeah, these kids have been
Speaker 2: They're incredible to work with and it's really fulfilling. And yeah,
Speaker 2: the New York Game Awards is like the Chiller Cooler,
Speaker 2: you know version. Obviously it's New York baby, So it's
Speaker 2: just cool. It's cool to be there. And like Todd
Speaker 2: Howard was there, Troy Baker was there, a couple of
Speaker 2: cool Sam Lake was honored. So it was a really
Speaker 2: cool thing and for just purely a good cause, which
Speaker 2: doesn't happen enough in this industry. So it was very nice.
Speaker 2: And yeah, everyone dressed really nice. So thanks guys.
Speaker 1: Good good. I'm glad you would be looking they knew. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw some some pictures of it. I think I
Speaker 1: think GameSpot might have streamed something from it last night.
Speaker 2: I don't know I co streams it. I forget which
Speaker 2: which outlet, but yeah, there is a coach dream.
Speaker 1: I thought I saw GameSpot doing that, so shouts them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I saw some mobe just it looked a really
Speaker 1: nice it looked like everyone was having a really good time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's nice to hear how you've been Otherwise,
Speaker 1: how is there are video games treating you well?
Speaker 2: You know, I have a lot of free time on
Speaker 2: my hands right now, Jeff, in between employment, like so
Speaker 2: many of us this industry are, and I've done virtually
Speaker 2: nothing but play Bilotro and Marvel Rivals.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're spending it well then all right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, clearly the lootro is becoming a problem though, because
Speaker 2: it's like the one more gaming me into being up
Speaker 2: too late or late to do everything or not getting
Speaker 2: out of bed. But it is just I see people
Speaker 2: play it on the train and we kind of have this.
Speaker 1: Like you Yeah, I definitely pulled the trick on myself
Speaker 1: where it is I did this with Uker. I don't
Speaker 1: know why I need to bring that up, but where
Speaker 1: it's like I need to stop going to my friend's
Speaker 1: house and playing you Car all the time. Like's just
Speaker 1: think about it, like there is one right way to
Speaker 1: play the game. So really I've already solved it. I
Speaker 1: can just move on, And I tell myself I've done
Speaker 1: that with Bloatro, where it's like it's all just come
Speaker 1: down to luck. Now I need to just get the
Speaker 1: right cards. But I know the right moves if I
Speaker 1: had the right cards, which is a total bullshit thing
Speaker 1: to say, but it's like that is mostly how I've
Speaker 1: broken it. And then pretending that I've solved this game
Speaker 1: and can just move on from it.
Speaker 2: Oh that's smart. See. I think that I'm watching my
Speaker 2: partner kind of do like the well, now I'm going
Speaker 2: for the gold chip difficulty on this deck, and then
Speaker 2: he's doing all these weird challenges where like jokers disappear
Speaker 2: and some don't, and I'm like, I'm just trying to
Speaker 2: get all the decks. Still, We're at a different we're
Speaker 2: at a different speed doing this game.
Speaker 1: In my Yeah, it's but yeah, I mean, I'm that
Speaker 1: is going to be a game I just go back
Speaker 1: to forever.
Speaker 2: I'm too fun, too easy. I played. I flew to
Speaker 2: Quebec City for Asasacree last week, and I those flights
Speaker 2: are short from New York. But I realized that I
Speaker 2: did nothing but play bollatro.
Speaker 1: Okay, now can you hear me, Melissa? Yes, okay, all right,
Speaker 1: can chat? Can you hear me? Now? It's a The
Speaker 1: goxers started acting up again where I can't touch it
Speaker 1: or it will disconnect. I had fixed that and now
Speaker 1: it is a problem again. So that's a real shame.
Speaker 2: I said. It's because I mentioned you'd be soft, and
Speaker 2: they new to the stream because they don't want me
Speaker 2: to break in Bargo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Eves is everywhere. He's in the walls
Speaker 1: for sure. All right, well, let's get the show back
Speaker 1: on the road and explain what we do here most weekdays. I,
Speaker 1: Jeff Greub, will help piece your gaming life back together.
Speaker 1: That includes breaking news and maybe even some of our
Speaker 1: own original reporting for all these topics at the input
Speaker 1: of a bona fide expert who will make me look smart.
Speaker 1: If you are watching live on twitch welcome, You can
Speaker 1: always listen to the show later on podcast feeds by
Speaker 1: searching for Game Mess Mornings, or find the RSS on
Speaker 1: giant bomb dot com. You can also catch the show
Speaker 1: later with chapters and timestamps on YouTube. Hello YouTube. All right,
Speaker 1: we have a lot to get into, so let's start
Speaker 1: the Morning Mess with. Microsoft has a couple of surprises
Speaker 1: in store for tomorrow's Xbox Developer Direct. According to rumor,
Speaker 1: this is from Jonas Macki at Game Reactor. As you
Speaker 1: may know, there's a dedicated Xbox event tomorrow where Microsoft
Speaker 1: has promised to show off Doom, the Dark Ages, South
Speaker 1: of Midnight and Claire Obscure Expedition thirty three, as well
Speaker 1: as a secret game from a secret studio. However, we've
Speaker 1: already reported that it seems that the Xbox team has
Speaker 1: additional surprises in store for the event, which apparently could
Speaker 1: be bigger than it sounds. The source of the time
Speaker 1: was Jess Cordon, editor of Windows Central and a person
Speaker 1: with proven insight into Microsoft. Now another very credible source
Speaker 1: is joining the chorus, namely Insider Gaming. They write that
Speaker 1: a few other surprises will be announced during the event
Speaker 1: or in the coming days. Rumors have been swirling about
Speaker 1: the secret game, with guesses like a comeback for Echo,
Speaker 1: the Dolphin, Final Fantasy seven remake for Xbox, and a
Speaker 1: new Ninja Guidan, but there has also been talk of
Speaker 1: a remaster or remake of the Elder Scrolls for Oblivion.
Speaker 1: Other educated guesses include new games for Game Pass and
Speaker 1: a Rise launch. It was during this event that Hi
Speaker 1: Fi Rush was stealth released two years ago. This is
Speaker 1: happening tomorrow, Alissa. You know we could guess any which way,
Speaker 1: but it does seem like they are setting expectations low
Speaker 1: for this announcement event and they probably will come in
Speaker 1: with a little bit more fire than they are, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of suggesting you think we're going to kind of
Speaker 1: get a kickoff here where there's a bunch of games
Speaker 1: that are pretty exciting from both like Microsoft and Sony,
Speaker 1: because Sony is certainly is going to have an event
Speaker 1: here pretty soon as well.
Speaker 2: What do you think, Yeah, I mean, I think we
Speaker 2: kind of have to have that, I think. And I
Speaker 2: think also the managing expectations thing is probably clever. Like
Speaker 2: we've how many times have we gotten gassed up for
Speaker 2: a direct of any sort and just been let down?
Speaker 2: So I think appy to Yeah, I think every game
Speaker 2: company now is like definitely tempering expectations, probably over tempering them,
Speaker 2: but that we can be pleasantly surprised. But I think
Speaker 2: Xbox needs a big developer direct here. I think, you know,
Speaker 2: the way that it's been shifting itself from like a
Speaker 2: publisher as much as we're like a whole cloud based
Speaker 2: thing where you can play your game anywhere and it
Speaker 2: doesn't really matter. This is an Xbox and that's an
Speaker 2: Xbox and we don't care about selling the console, but
Speaker 2: you know, you could just play this with game Pass
Speaker 2: and it's cool. That stuff is like hitting really strange,
Speaker 2: and you know, a lot of people are pointing out that,
Speaker 2: like where is the marketing for something like a vowed.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just been a really weirdly quiet, like
Speaker 2: six to eight months for Xbox, even a year, I
Speaker 2: would say, so, I think it's got to be bigger
Speaker 2: than they're gonna let it up, like they're gonna make
Speaker 2: it seem at first. I think it has to be
Speaker 2: because Xbox has just felt like it's in this weird
Speaker 2: identity crisis, and I think getting back to publishing really
Speaker 2: good games from both their in house studios and elsewhere
Speaker 2: is huge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think it's you're right, you kind of
Speaker 1: come in with the faint and then you surprise people.
Speaker 1: That's always a good move. It's classic, it works, and
Speaker 1: you're just right about the timing. We should like, Yes,
Speaker 1: they are coming off of Indiana Jones that is clearly
Speaker 1: has been success critically and with fans, seems to be
Speaker 1: doing pretty well commercially as well. It's like there's some
Speaker 1: momentum there. But you know, there that was the one
Speaker 1: time it wasn't a false start with one of these
Speaker 1: releases recently where they released one of their big games,
Speaker 1: and in the past couple of years before that, it
Speaker 1: was like maybe not a misstep, but not the step
Speaker 1: that Xbox was looking for. Indiana Jones does seem to
Speaker 1: mostly be that, And now you've got to carry it
Speaker 1: forward because you can't kind of go back to that law.
Speaker 1: You can't go back to missus miss after miss So
Speaker 1: the way you do that is you start gassing up
Speaker 1: the games that are coming soon and maybe you even
Speaker 1: like start juicing up some games that are a little
Speaker 1: bit further off and build up a narrative of that
Speaker 1: you could tell people like why now is the right
Speaker 1: time to get very excited about the Xbox ecosystem. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a weird place because what is
Speaker 1: the Xbox ecosystem. It's changing constantly and it's you know,
Speaker 1: less emphasis on the console and things like that, but
Speaker 1: it definitely is still something that they are concerned about
Speaker 1: because they need to make money while they figure out
Speaker 1: what that transition looks like. If it is like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have everything's going to be an Xbox. They
Speaker 1: keep saying that, but not everyone treats every device like
Speaker 1: an Xbox. So I will actually have a story about
Speaker 1: that here in a little bit about Resident Evil on iPhones.
Speaker 1: And so it's like, yeah, they need to keep like
Speaker 1: this traditional audience pretty happy and spending as much money
Speaker 1: as possible, and that means some cool games. And you know,
Speaker 1: Doom the Dark Ages is going to be something that's
Speaker 1: going to be a real crowd pleaser. And if they
Speaker 1: do have like Elder Scrolls for Oblivion remake ready to go,
Speaker 1: people will eat that up. It's like okay, and then okay,
Speaker 1: is this South of Midnight? Is this gonna hit? I hope?
Speaker 1: So looks very interesting if some of these games can
Speaker 1: kind of come, you know, make a statement, and then
Speaker 1: they can build up a long term timeline of games
Speaker 1: starting with this event, I think people will actually begin
Speaker 1: changing what they think about Xbox, which has been a
Speaker 1: long time coming and something they've sort of missed the
Speaker 1: boat on accomplishing several times now, right.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent. I mean, I don't think people have
Speaker 2: looked at Xbox and their in house studios and what
Speaker 2: they make the same since Halo Infinite. Unfortunately, like I think,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're going to talk about the tent
Speaker 2: pole franchise for Xbox is Halo, and uh to drop
Speaker 2: the ball on that launch, like pick it up and
Speaker 2: drop it again, and then I mean, I love like,
Speaker 2: I love Halo Infinite. I played a lot of it,
Speaker 2: but it just it didn't seem like this promise of
Speaker 2: this open world campaign. It had this insinuation that there
Speaker 2: would be more added to it, that we would get
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff tacked on, it would grow, it
Speaker 2: would expand. But I just played through that campaign and
Speaker 2: then I played a bunch of multiplayer and then I
Speaker 2: fell off, and it's just that's not how any Halo
Speaker 2: game has ever been for me. So I think they're
Speaker 2: they're still trying to claw back from that. And I
Speaker 2: think it's really interesting that you know, they've they've hoovered
Speaker 2: up all these game studios and then sort of done
Speaker 2: this one eighty of like, well, it's about where you
Speaker 2: can play these games that maybe we publish, maybe we don't,
Speaker 2: but you subscribe to game Pass so you can play
Speaker 2: games anywhere, and that's what we're really It's just like
Speaker 2: what about the games, like show us some really really
Speaker 2: cool games and yeah, I think bring that good will back.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a hard fight to bring back goodwill
Speaker 2: in this industry, but I think it's strong. Showing tomorrow
Speaker 2: would definitely do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think at the end of the day, if
Speaker 1: you're putting out interesting games that people want to play,
Speaker 1: usually they'll just like go buy those things. They'll just
Speaker 1: go do that. You know. There's definitely times where there's
Speaker 1: such headwinds, like what is happening with ub Soft right now,
Speaker 1: where it's like, you know, the game's mediocre to good,
Speaker 1: and it's like, yeah, but it's Ubisoft. Get that out
Speaker 1: of my face, Like that clearly does happen, So you're right,
Speaker 1: Building up that goodwill again is tough. I think that
Speaker 1: people are like they want to give that good will
Speaker 1: to Xbox. I think mostly they do, especially especially as
Speaker 1: they do with deemphasize the console. They're like, Okay, we
Speaker 1: kind of just want you to figure your shit out
Speaker 1: so we can all just feel good about what you're
Speaker 1: doing again, and we'll happily keep playing on our PlayStations,
Speaker 1: our switches and PCs, and then if you keep releasing
Speaker 1: your games on PC, which you're gonna, we'll play them there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think people just kind of want to
Speaker 1: have a good showing from Xbox. Hopefully all those people
Speaker 1: that do get acquired in that big corporation are making
Speaker 1: games they want to make and that you know, will succeed,
Speaker 1: and that's what most people I think want want to see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: speaking of like PlayStation though, we do we are still
Speaker 1: waiting for them to like, hey, here's what our timeline
Speaker 1: is for releases coming up. And really it's been a
Speaker 1: waiting game for quite some time with them as well.
Speaker 1: There's been you know, little spots here or there, or
Speaker 1: big games release, you know, Astrobot, and then they or
Speaker 1: they announced something like a Ghost to Yota, something along
Speaker 1: those lines. So they have broken silence or released something
Speaker 1: very big in the last year or so. But it's
Speaker 1: not like I think what people were used to or
Speaker 1: maybe expecting, especially coming out of a PS four generation,
Speaker 1: where there were years where you were looking forward to
Speaker 1: Final Fantasy seven remake and things like that. So we
Speaker 1: are due for some kind of state of play and
Speaker 1: then maybe eventually a PlayStation show case, one of their
Speaker 1: bigger shows that's more akin to an E three, but
Speaker 1: probably a state of play first. And again there are
Speaker 1: rumors out there and maybe once happen in February. I
Speaker 1: have not heard that personally, but there's rumors out there
Speaker 1: for that, And you know, do you think this could
Speaker 1: be a much bigger one or we should We still
Speaker 1: kind of be setting our expectations for Sony at a
Speaker 1: level of it's a state of play. It's not going
Speaker 1: to be not going to be much.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think they both. It has to be,
Speaker 2: it has to be big. Like I know that we
Speaker 2: should probably temper expectations. But if we're thinking about how
Speaker 2: long we are into this console cycle, you know, it's
Speaker 2: been six years, five years, you know, like it's four
Speaker 2: and a half, four in change. We're getting into the
Speaker 2: fifth year that it launched, and you know November will
Speaker 2: be five, and it's what do we have to show
Speaker 2: for it? That kind of is showcasing all of these
Speaker 2: incredible features that were promised when we bought you know,
Speaker 2: new Gen or Current and consoles. I think we're getting
Speaker 2: up on the end of it being like technically the
Speaker 2: end of a console cycle in terms of how often
Speaker 2: these things released. So it's like you need to give
Speaker 2: us something big, and there has to have been things
Speaker 2: in the can that you were working on for this big,
Speaker 2: huge new console that are probably towards the tail end
Speaker 2: of development, and if they're not, then what were we
Speaker 2: doing this whole time? Is really the kind of question
Speaker 2: that I have, and I do think PlayStation has to
Speaker 2: they both have to to deliver, and you know, I
Speaker 2: think we'll probably get something shorter and a little bit
Speaker 2: teasier in the late winter early spring, and then yeah,
Speaker 2: everyone goes big for Summer game Fest, which is replaced three,
Speaker 2: and so I think the summer will probably show us
Speaker 2: a lot too. But in terms of the summer, like
Speaker 2: how many things are we going to see there that
Speaker 2: would release within the next six months realistically? You know,
Speaker 2: So I think some game coming out this year that's
Speaker 2: big and important that we know about in the next
Speaker 2: few months I think could really turn the tide for
Speaker 2: both companies.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we'll see. Yeah, you know, we know they
Speaker 1: have Intergalactic from Insomniac. I mean, at some point that
Speaker 1: was like one of the few things at the Kiley
Speaker 1: Show that didn't have a year at least attached to it,
Speaker 1: like twenty twenty five. So we don't think it's coming
Speaker 1: this year. It probably not. Yeah, And then okay, so
Speaker 1: Venom is something that had been rumored a you know,
Speaker 1: the Insomniac is or not Insomniac, I'm sorry, Or is
Speaker 1: that is that Insomniac and somebody Venom, and then they're
Speaker 1: also making the X Men games eventually, and before that
Speaker 1: they are gonna have Wolverine something that is possibly going
Speaker 1: to come out this year. Still feels like maybe that
Speaker 1: gets announced and comes out early next year or something
Speaker 1: like that, But we're still talking about Insomniac where it's
Speaker 1: like that's that's the studio that has been carrying PlayStation
Speaker 1: through a lot of this part of the generation. With
Speaker 1: with multiple Spider Man games kind of just selling more
Speaker 1: than anything else by far, They've got to have maybe
Speaker 1: a couple other surprises and surprising returns right to go
Speaker 1: along with that.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I think I think Insomniac can only shoulder
Speaker 2: the burden for so long. But it is also like
Speaker 2: I think we will see a lot of this Wolverine, Venom,
Speaker 2: x Men stuff because if anybody is paying attention and
Speaker 2: seeing how popular Marvel Rivals is, they're probably turning the
Speaker 2: dial up on whatever they're doing in development for Marvel
Speaker 2: and superhero stuff. And I mean, this is just what
Speaker 2: the industry does, right, You see something start to do
Speaker 2: well and then a bunch of people chase it. And
Speaker 2: so I think if these things are already in development
Speaker 2: and they're seeing how popular something like Rivals is and
Speaker 2: how people are engaging with Marvel stuff, not in the
Speaker 2: same way that they were when the MCU is at
Speaker 2: his peak, but you know, people are getting super into it.
Speaker 2: I think they might be pushing to get Wolverine out
Speaker 2: sooner rather than later. But again, yeah, it's just insomniac,
Speaker 2: So what about everybody else? And even like you think
Speaker 2: Astrobot's incredible, but you know, the Astrobot just to me
Speaker 2: feels like the most like in house PlayStation PlayStation game
Speaker 2: that was you know, probably planned from the moment they
Speaker 2: released the little demo with the you know, and what
Speaker 2: about these these these tent poles things that aren't just
Speaker 2: you know, Sony stickered up, you know, like tagged with
Speaker 2: PlayStation everywhere. What's going to give us you know, a
Speaker 2: big open world that's like Ghost of Yota I'm super
Speaker 2: excited about, but that's pretty far down the line. And
Speaker 2: it just does feel like there's this strange gap right now,
Speaker 2: and something's got.
Speaker 1: To fill it, yep, And we know kind of what
Speaker 1: part of the problem is is PlayStation was not like
Speaker 1: taking investment away from the kinds of games that people
Speaker 1: are talking about when they talk about PlayStation, but definitely
Speaker 1: distracting from that investment by going hard on live service games.
Speaker 1: And that is something they've canceled a bunch of those.
Speaker 1: So that's something that just didn't pan out, so that
Speaker 1: those gaps might like persist going forward for quite some
Speaker 1: time and it will be kind of noticeable, I think,
Speaker 1: But I think they can also maybe find some ways
Speaker 1: to pay that over, even if they just kind of
Speaker 1: make some announcements for stuff that won't come out till
Speaker 1: like late twenty twenty six, and then they do you
Speaker 1: follow through with the latest rumor that they are going
Speaker 1: to work with some of these studios that they already
Speaker 1: have in some partner studios to make smaller games based
Speaker 1: on some of their more deep cut ip games that
Speaker 1: they can maybe get done in two to three years.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, yeah, that could begin to make things
Speaker 1: feel significantly different over there, but that also is still
Speaker 1: going to take some time. Speaking of Insomniac breaking news,
Speaker 1: Insomniac Games CEO Ted Price is going to exit the company.
Speaker 1: Ryan Schneider, Chad Dezern, and Jen Huang set as new
Speaker 1: co chiefs at the PlayStation Studio. Sorry, this is just breaking.
Speaker 1: I'm reading this from right now. This is from Jennifer
Speaker 1: Moss at Variety. Insomniac Games founder and CEO Ted Price
Speaker 1: is stepping down from his role atop the Sony Interactive
Speaker 1: Entertainment owned studio after more than twenty years running the
Speaker 1: company behind PlayStations or PlayStation's Ratchet and Claying franchise and
Speaker 1: Marvel's Spider Man games. Taking over for Price will be
Speaker 1: who will be staying with PlayStation Studio through March. Are
Speaker 1: a tree of Insomniac vets who will serve as co
Speaker 1: heads upon his retirement, and that's Ryan Schneider, Chad Desern,
Speaker 1: and Jen Hwang. Each of the Insomniac co studio heads
Speaker 1: will have a different purview, era and arenas which they
Speaker 1: have already been settling into over the past twelve months. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ted Price has been there for for a long time,
Speaker 1: and honestly, in my head he is already kind of
Speaker 1: like I'm settling into the background. I don't even run
Speaker 1: the day to day. Maybe he was, but In my head,
Speaker 1: it was just like, no, Ted Price is someone who's
Speaker 1: like already sort of earned his stripes and is kind
Speaker 1: of just staying in the background. So the fact that
Speaker 1: he's retiring, in my head, it's like, again, not going
Speaker 1: to change much, but maybe it does at the same time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a storied career and good for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, especially if there's three people stepping into
Speaker 2: his role, it does seem like he was kind of right,
Speaker 2: must be setting things up to be run slightly differently,
Speaker 2: you know, after he leaves. So that's really interesting. I mean,
Speaker 2: Dan twenty more than twenty years yep. Incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and god, he just was looked like a kid,
Speaker 1: was he when he was Insomniac Games president early on?
Speaker 1: Just a real child looking effort. He still looks very youthful.
Speaker 1: I would regret if this got brought up. We didn't
Speaker 1: have a chance to mention that Insomniac Games music video
Speaker 1: that he made about the developers that worked there. I
Speaker 1: think I have let's see here, Okay, yeah, I can
Speaker 1: count on Dan Reikert to post it on the Blue Sky.
Speaker 1: Let me see if I can bring this up real quick.
Speaker 1: It's really good. They just are like wearing big wigs
Speaker 1: and doing headbanging and playing guitars and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: It's good stuff. Let's see here, I'll bring that there.
Speaker 2: Let me see co heads, guys, co heads.
Speaker 1: They're co heading, Yes, they're co heading Insomniac. All right,
Speaker 1: yeah there, you can kind of see it. It's off
Speaker 1: to the side there though. Everybody yeap, and there's Ted
Speaker 1: Price doing his thing. All right, Okay, let's get back
Speaker 1: into the news as we had it here. Eleven percent
Speaker 1: of game developers surveyed by GDC were laid off in
Speaker 1: the past year. This is from Tom Ivan at VGC.
Speaker 1: Over one in ten developers question in a new industry
Speaker 1: survey said that they were laid off over the past
Speaker 1: Year's latest annual State of the Games Industry survey, which
Speaker 1: asked over three thousand game developers across Indie and Triple
Speaker 1: A studios questions about their work, was published on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: About eleven percent of respondents reported being laid off in
Speaker 1: the past twelve months, which was up from seven percent
Speaker 1: in last year's survey, and forty one percent of respond
Speaker 1: it said that they were impacted by layoffs, up from
Speaker 1: thirty five percent in GDC's twenty twenty four report, twenty
Speaker 1: nine percent said that they had colleagues who lost their jobs,
Speaker 1: which was up from seventeen percent a year earlier. Well,
Speaker 1: eighteen percent said staff and other teams or departments were
Speaker 1: laid off, which was up from eleven percent. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: if last year felt worse for layoffs, it's because it
Speaker 1: was you could like, let's see like that number of
Speaker 1: twenty nine percent said that they had colleagues who lost
Speaker 1: their jobs in the previous year, it's seventeen percent. It's
Speaker 1: almost it's almost a doubling of people looking around going so, Okay,
Speaker 1: my team has been decimated. So it's going to feel harder,
Speaker 1: harsher than ever. And it's because it really really was, Melissa,
Speaker 1: the thing that we were all saying, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: got to get this man in the horsehead costume off
Speaker 1: the scream while we're talking about this. The thing we
Speaker 1: were saying last year was survive twenty to twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: And maybe you know, at that point companies will look around, reassess, reinvest,
Speaker 1: and you'll have a chance to sort of solidify your
Speaker 1: standing on the ground with your position. It doesn't really
Speaker 1: feel like that's gonna happen, right, No.
Speaker 2: I mean I think this is all still holdover and
Speaker 2: butterfly effect ripples from everything that happened during COVID, the
Speaker 2: massive boom and over hiring and overspending and investing in
Speaker 2: the life service or things that they were chasing. I
Speaker 2: think we're going to, unfortunately, see these reverberations for the
Speaker 2: next few years, because I think the COVID gaming boom
Speaker 2: was still happening in twenty twenty one into twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: and I think that fall off, you know, only started
Speaker 2: affecting those companies into twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: and then you get the layoffs, and so I yeah,
Speaker 2: I think and now you know, whole new regime and
Speaker 2: order here in the US, and there's conversations and rumors
Speaker 2: that if there's tariffs getting put on things coming from
Speaker 2: Mexico that could affect physical game discs and the cost
Speaker 2: of them, and so there's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 2: could change in the next few months that could also
Speaker 2: affect this negatively. It's a bummer, like it, There's no
Speaker 2: other way to put it, but it's a bummer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you're right that, Like I think people
Speaker 1: do want to put COVID completely in the rear view mirror,
Speaker 1: but these reverberations is right. It is this this wobble
Speaker 1: of people having one idea of what the future was
Speaker 1: going to be and then it was very different and
Speaker 1: then sort of the way that like you know, wind
Speaker 1: just fills in a gap and a vacuum, like the
Speaker 1: industry is just like whiplashing from one side of the
Speaker 1: other and it's just sort of wobbling back and forth,
Speaker 1: and it feels like we are we going to find
Speaker 1: our standing. It's like yeah, but it's got a wobble
Speaker 1: bunch first, and people are going to get thrown off
Speaker 1: in that process, and it just is going to keep
Speaker 1: and every time you feel like, oh, it's slowing down,
Speaker 1: it's like no, it's just beginning the wobble back in
Speaker 1: the other direction. And you know the reality is that
Speaker 1: even like going in the pandemic into the pandemic, we
Speaker 1: were still coming off of a decade of kind of
Speaker 1: shocking growth for the industry, and then the pandemic exacerbated
Speaker 1: that and really made a lot of these companies feel like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: we know it's not going to keep growing. Like the
Speaker 1: pandemic said it was, but it's going to continue the
Speaker 1: way it was coming out of those the previous ten years.
Speaker 1: That's just video games, baby, And I think they were
Speaker 1: not recognizing just how fortuitous of a time that they
Speaker 1: were living in where it was. And again, I've been
Speaker 1: talking about this a lot recently, where it's like there
Speaker 1: were so many ideas that they could just take off
Speaker 1: the shelf to make a ton of money, whether that
Speaker 1: was micro transactions or battle passes or Battle Royale or
Speaker 1: all you know, business models and game models that all
Speaker 1: enabled them to make a ton of money really fast,
Speaker 1: and you know, there was room for new games to
Speaker 1: come in and use those ideas. And now it just
Speaker 1: feels like everything saturated and and and so they thought
Speaker 1: the line was just gonna keep going up and and
Speaker 1: it just kind of flatlined a little bit. It didn't
Speaker 1: even go down. Spending is pretty much just in line
Speaker 1: with where it was, but boy, they thought it was
Speaker 1: going to go up way higher. So you're right, all
Speaker 1: those big investments, all those big bets looked real rough,
Speaker 1: and they are really rough right now. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: they're going to keep throwing people off the industry to
Speaker 1: try to save money. But you know, these companies are
Speaker 1: looking for growth, right listen, that that is what they want,
Speaker 1: and how were they going to get growth without having
Speaker 1: enough people to make brand new games that have new ideas.
Speaker 1: They are kind of sealing their fade.
Speaker 2: A little bit, right, Yeah, I think so, And I think,
Speaker 2: you know, before I even address that, I think it's
Speaker 2: incredibly frustrating, obviously, to see how many people are affected
Speaker 2: by this, and it's never the people who make those decisions. Now,
Speaker 2: you know, you look at these live service games and
Speaker 2: the people that worked on them, you know, the live
Speaker 2: service game, a game like Concord, that was the decision
Speaker 2: made up top to make that game, and then people
Speaker 2: made that game, and all of those people who worked
Speaker 2: on that game suffered when that game did not do well.
Speaker 2: And the person whose decision it was to make that
Speaker 2: game is probably still sitting in a corner office somewhere,
Speaker 2: you know, or.
Speaker 1: They're sitting at an inauguration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think that's incredibly frustrating
Speaker 2: for people. But yeah, I think the other I think
Speaker 2: this is the thing that sucks, right because every studio
Speaker 2: head and the people who are actually making these big
Speaker 2: money decisions and are affecting people's livelihoods. They always want
Speaker 2: number to go up, and like you, like you mentioned
Speaker 2: with live service micro transactions, not that I wanted, you know,
Speaker 2: pooh pooh on the difficulties of developing a game like that,
Speaker 2: But it is obviously a lot easier to take an
Speaker 2: existing model and apply it to a game and boom,
Speaker 2: you know, money, machine go.
Speaker 1: Boom, like it's the story of Fortnite.
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of studio
Speaker 2: heads have kind of, unfortunately leaned on this idea that
Speaker 2: you can you can get things made cheaply quickly if
Speaker 2: you follow this model, and they don't necessarily want to
Speaker 2: invest the time and the energy into something a little
Speaker 2: bit more bespoke that might take more time, that might
Speaker 2: require a more robust team. You know, they kind of
Speaker 2: want this like Skeleton Crew. You know. I think of
Speaker 2: it as like roadblocks too. You look at something like
Speaker 2: Roblocks that makes a ton of money, and it's you know,
Speaker 2: essentially child labor.
Speaker 1: It's a machine that a machine exploit, yes and where,
Speaker 1: and roadblocks it's kids, but on the industry's late it's
Speaker 1: the same thing. But for adults in the house better,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know, yah, yeah.
Speaker 2: But that's what you can only hope that there's more,
Speaker 2: you know, the double A games will fill that gap,
Speaker 2: will expand a little bit more to kind of that's
Speaker 2: what we've always hoped. I think that we would have
Speaker 2: a robust sort of like several a twenty fours of
Speaker 2: gaming that are just making these these really cool, cheaper
Speaker 2: to make, really thoughtful, boundary pushing games. And I'm hoping
Speaker 2: that you know, somebody up top will kind of wake up,
Speaker 2: have like an aha moment and their sleep and realize
Speaker 2: that that's what gamers want too. Like they do want
Speaker 2: cool experiences, they do want to explore a new world.
Speaker 2: They don't necessarily need a one hundred hour open world
Speaker 2: with you know, six hundred quest lines and two thousand
Speaker 2: you know NPCs that you can interact with and fourteen
Speaker 2: million lines of dialogue. Like those numbers, like, that's not
Speaker 2: what people care about. They care about a really cool experience.
Speaker 2: And I think if you look at how much it's blossomed,
Speaker 2: how much the cost of making a game has blossomed,
Speaker 2: and how how little thought is put into what actually
Speaker 2: comes out from people all the way up top, it's
Speaker 2: incredibly frustrating because I would take a bad ass indie
Speaker 2: game over you know, another live service.
Speaker 1: Shooter, and it's like a certain pout, like what choice
Speaker 1: do we have anymore? It's like, that's just gonna be
Speaker 1: a bunch of slop from these corporations now. And that's
Speaker 1: how people feel about you'd soft games. They just think
Speaker 1: it's you'd be slop. And and you know, I think
Speaker 1: the what is happening is the rest of the industry
Speaker 1: is feeling more like Ubisoft than the then they're feeling
Speaker 1: more like cool, exciting indie games. Uh for the most part.
Speaker 1: You know, we're speaking broadly, but yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: just think it's it's rotten to the core, right, it's
Speaker 1: rotten to the core core. We you know, look at
Speaker 1: like the way capitalism works right now, where uh they
Speaker 1: are set out to make as much money as possible
Speaker 1: within the confines of the rules, and uh and and
Speaker 1: that's it. That is their guiding principle. And so they'll
Speaker 1: do everything within those rules to make as much money possible.
Speaker 1: And we see what that leads to. Politically, It leads
Speaker 1: to you know, four or five tech executives sitting next
Speaker 1: to each other at the inauguration, being like, we need
Speaker 1: to do this to make as much money money as
Speaker 1: possible within the rules for the next four years, we
Speaker 1: have to do this, and so people need to understand
Speaker 1: we're no. You know, in five years, they're going to
Speaker 1: come back and be like, look, we just did what
Speaker 1: we had to do to make sure we can make
Speaker 1: as much money as possible so we can keep employing
Speaker 1: as many people as possible. We were trying to be
Speaker 1: trying to just navigate it. And it's like, yep, okay,
Speaker 1: so you are a symptom of a system and you
Speaker 1: are just behaving as a symptom. So who do I
Speaker 1: talk to to get this to change? Who do I
Speaker 1: speak to? It's not you. If you're just operating within
Speaker 1: the way you need to operate to make this whole
Speaker 1: system go around, who is your boss? And it's like,
Speaker 1: oh no, it's the whole system. It's rotten to the core.
Speaker 1: And that that same sort of thinking is what is
Speaker 1: leading us to the kinds of games we're getting to today.
Speaker 1: I don't know if people feel like that is a
Speaker 1: leap I'm making, It's not.
Speaker 2: No, it's not a leap. It's so connected and at
Speaker 2: the end of the day that this is like the
Speaker 2: stuff I've always I've been joking for the last like
Speaker 2: ten months that I've kind of felt like a girl
Speaker 2: in a horror movie that's on the other side of glass.
Speaker 2: I can see someone getting killed, but they can't hear me.
Speaker 2: Like I'm like, this is all connected, This is all connected,
Speaker 2: and it really is, like you can see like these
Speaker 2: studios making these decisions that are bad decisions, because in
Speaker 2: my mind, it's like a monopoly man who someone tells
Speaker 2: them to jail. Video games make a lot of money,
Speaker 2: and this guy's like one of these things these kidsl buy.
Speaker 2: The parents are blin for that, kids like millions, and
Speaker 2: they start, you know, like making these games and making
Speaker 2: these poor decisions for these games. Those people don't suffer
Speaker 2: when those games suffer. It's the lowest people on the ladder.
Speaker 2: And not only that, but the people who are angry
Speaker 2: at the perceived lack of quality of modern games. They
Speaker 2: get pointed to those people as well. So the people
Speaker 2: who have no protections, who have no job security, who
Speaker 2: don't have the ability to feel comfortable getting you know,
Speaker 2: streams of hate thrown at them, those are the people
Speaker 2: that get targeted and that's exactly what's happening on the
Speaker 2: administration level too. In politics. You know, it's like there's
Speaker 2: a lot wrong with this country, and it has to
Speaker 2: do with the foundations that are set here that have
Speaker 2: to do with capitalism and all of this stuff. But
Speaker 2: we're gonna blame immigrants, you know, We're gonna blame trans kids,
Speaker 2: and that's never the issue. The issue is that there's
Speaker 2: systems of power that put people untouchable all the way
Speaker 2: at the top, and until you actually turn around and
Speaker 2: point the finger at them, they're just going to keep
Speaker 2: making sure everyone Spider Man beaming each other, yeah, so
Speaker 2: that they're not in trouble. And it's it sucks, but
Speaker 2: it is one hundred percent connected, you know, the games
Speaker 2: industry and politics. Unfortunately, they go hand in hand.
Speaker 1: There was more out of that GDC survey. This one
Speaker 1: comes from Emrond Colin over at games Beet. Shout out
Speaker 1: to Mrond. More developers are making VR software for Apple
Speaker 1: Vision OS than PlayStation VR two. In this year's GDC
Speaker 1: State of the Industry Report, a massive and far reaching
Speaker 1: survey of game developers across all disciplines within the industry.
Speaker 1: Respondents were asked to detail their current and near future
Speaker 1: plans for their software among differing platforms. This of course,
Speaker 1: also includes virtual reality and augmented reality developers, who seem
Speaker 1: to largely be coalescing around Meta Quest and Steam VR
Speaker 1: as their primary landing zones for these technologies. That in
Speaker 1: itself is no surprise, as those two platforms also dominated
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four VR and AR list. One notable
Speaker 1: change in dynamics, however, has been a flip between PlayStation
Speaker 1: VR ecosystem excuse me, incleaning both the original PlayStation four
Speaker 1: compatible headset and its PlayStation five successor, and the Apple
Speaker 1: Vision OS, which is exclusively used for Apple's Vision Pro headset.
Speaker 1: While last year the Vision Pro edged out the PlayStation
Speaker 1: headset by fifteen from fifteen percent to thirteen percent, and
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, twenty six percent of respondents said they
Speaker 1: were working on Apple Vision OS software, well, twenty five
Speaker 1: percent are making efforts on PlayStation VR two. That was
Speaker 1: so that was last year. This year it is now
Speaker 1: fifteen percent to thirteen percent in favor of Apple Vision OS. Okay,
Speaker 1: so just pointing this out, that's like not a lot
Speaker 1: of people are working on Apple Vision OS games because
Speaker 1: very few people are buying that thing. I think the
Speaker 1: last word we heard was Apple is like sort of
Speaker 1: winding that down in such way. Maybe they have something
Speaker 1: more coming. But the thing, the three thousand dollars Apple
Speaker 1: Vision Pro that is out there right now is not
Speaker 1: a going concern for them really, And the VR PlayStation
Speaker 1: vir excuse me, VR two is getting even less support
Speaker 1: from developers, So to me, that just says both these
Speaker 1: things are kind of dead in the water. And I
Speaker 1: think we knew that, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just the barrier to entry is so high,
Speaker 2: and if people are already feeling like games have gotten
Speaker 2: more expensive and have not our income is not reflected
Speaker 2: in how more expensive games have gotten. I think when
Speaker 2: you look at something like VR, it's just it's too
Speaker 2: big of a barrier for so many people. And and
Speaker 2: and also the specificity of making a game in that world.
Speaker 2: You know, the amount of time and energy that has
Speaker 2: to go into you can't just poured it to other shit.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not meant for that.
Speaker 1: And even the other VR headsets now still have kind
Speaker 1: of weird differing technology, so it's a lot of work
Speaker 1: to go from one VR thing to the other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's just it's expensive to bank, it's expensive
Speaker 2: to sell, it's expensive to buy. It's I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people, you know, like anything that seems technologically
Speaker 2: forward futuristic ly, you know, it's sort of it sort
Speaker 2: of became, ooh, what if I have an original PSVR
Speaker 2: headset that I got from when I used to work
Speaker 2: at games or Radar. And I mean I played that
Speaker 2: thing for like a week and then I was like,
Speaker 2: I've done. Like it's I don't really, I'm good. You know.
Speaker 2: It's like people would come over for part and I'd
Speaker 2: be like, please this thing right, Yeah, I don't want
Speaker 2: to set it up anymore, and like it's just out
Speaker 2: of the room in my apartment. It's also that too,
Speaker 2: like even if you have the money to get it,
Speaker 2: what if you don't, Like I don't have the space. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you need a lot of space.
Speaker 1: I have the space. I'm going to my basement down
Speaker 1: here in the suburbs of Cleveland. I have the space.
Speaker 1: And yet for years there's like a couple of games
Speaker 1: on the original PSVR that I want I want to play.
Speaker 1: There's one where you have a controller, you have the
Speaker 1: dual sense in your hand and you see it in
Speaker 1: the VR and it like it looks like your hands
Speaker 1: are trapped in cuffs inside of it and you have
Speaker 1: to like do a little like the room style game
Speaker 1: on the controller, pressing all the buttons to kind of
Speaker 1: get it to do things to unlock the cuffs. It's
Speaker 1: a really cool idea. I played it at a show
Speaker 1: and I'll play that when I get home. Never did,
Speaker 1: still intend to, and then I never beat the Astro
Speaker 1: VR Rescue Mission game. Want to do that, and so
Speaker 1: for years I tell myself I'll set that up and
Speaker 1: I haven't, and I'm like, I'm just gotta be honest.
Speaker 1: It's it's just enough of a hassle that I'm never
Speaker 1: going to do it. And I'm someone who's an enthusiast
Speaker 1: about this, So what is the casual person going to do.
Speaker 1: There's no way that they are going to go through
Speaker 1: the hassle of that. So yeah, mediquest makes it a
Speaker 1: bit easier, and that is also like that's good, but
Speaker 1: even that, every time you put on the headset and
Speaker 1: making sure it's ready to go and update it and
Speaker 1: then you have to go away from the world, something
Speaker 1: about that just feels like enough of a hassle as
Speaker 1: well that I think most people are like, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if that's for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I wonder if these you know, especially with
Speaker 2: applevision pro, if they kind of thought this would be
Speaker 2: more of like a tech bro buy and then you
Speaker 2: could sort of backdoor them into playing games on the device.
Speaker 2: But I just it didn't sell enough. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: think they've completely cut production down on it and everything.
Speaker 2: So it's just yeah, I mean we kind of I
Speaker 2: think a lot of us in the industry knew that
Speaker 2: VR was not going to explode the way that I
Speaker 2: think companies did, and it's still like has I know
Speaker 2: that there's an enthusiast community of VR gamers, but it's small,
Speaker 2: and yeah, I don't think it can hold up you know,
Speaker 2: extensive developments.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I just I like VR. I hope it continues
Speaker 1: to find a place. I think it will. Long term,
Speaker 1: it's going to go through a probably a weird side
Speaker 1: path than what I think we originally imagined it was
Speaker 1: going to take. But for now, when people think of
Speaker 1: video games, it's still going to be the video games
Speaker 1: that everyone is used to. And now at that point
Speaker 1: that's mobile and PC and console and all that. All right,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. When we come back, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the kinds of games that people buy or
Speaker 1: maybe don't buy on mobile, and a few other things,
Speaker 1: including maybe the switch to being more powerful than we
Speaker 1: think right after this, all right, we're right back into it.
Speaker 1: Let's do it, And as promised, Resident Evil to remake
Speaker 1: has sold fewer than ten thousand copies on iOS according
Speaker 1: to some estimates. This is from Chris Sculling at VGC.
Speaker 1: And if this story sounds familiar, we have talked about
Speaker 1: this before. I think with Resident Evil four and seven
Speaker 1: and maybe eight, a bunch of Resident Evil games got
Speaker 1: ported to iOS. Now they only work on chat help
Speaker 1: me out here. It's iPhone fifteen and above, iPhones sixteen
Speaker 1: and above. There is something something like it only works
Speaker 1: on a handful of devices. So it's a limited audience
Speaker 1: that can potentially get these things. And yet they do
Speaker 1: sell millions of every single kind of iPhone, so there's
Speaker 1: plenty of people out there, more so than some consoles. Still,
Speaker 1: so fifteen above, Thank you, jan. Ten thousand copies is
Speaker 1: not a lot. I think this is illustrates a couple
Speaker 1: of problems Alyssa. I think we talk about for a
Speaker 1: long time Hey, these people at these companies are afraid
Speaker 1: to invest in long term on the console because they
Speaker 1: are looking around and they're like, your phone is as
Speaker 1: powerful as a console, and you'll just use that to
Speaker 1: play these games. And so five hundred dollars to spend
Speaker 1: on a console doesn't make a ton of sense. And
Speaker 1: so if we want these games to continue to thrive,
Speaker 1: they need to just kind of be able to be
Speaker 1: on anything. And now Residentaval too is on anything, and
Speaker 1: no one's buying it on there, and I just think
Speaker 1: it's OK. It is one thing to say the phone
Speaker 1: is as powerful as a console. It's another thing to
Speaker 1: say the kind of person that is going to be
Speaker 1: buying games on a phone even exists, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and look there are there are game Yes,
Speaker 2: a phone is as powerful as a console. Sure, but
Speaker 2: sure it's also just the it's the it's the medium,
Speaker 2: like we were talking about Ballatro, like Blatter's perfect phone game.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's simple, it's clean, it's easy to see.
Speaker 2: It feels like a just a phone game that was there,
Speaker 2: but better. But something like Resident Evil, which I think
Speaker 2: you know inherently needs mood, it needs you need to
Speaker 2: be playing it like either in a place that's dark
Speaker 2: and gloomy or just like comfortable so that you can
Speaker 2: be scared. I don't know. I can't imagine any of
Speaker 2: the intention of a resident Evil game translating well onto
Speaker 2: a phone in any way, shape or form, And so
Speaker 2: I think it's also horror game enthusiasts are our niche,
Speaker 2: at least in terms of the way a company would
Speaker 2: look at a gamer consumer, And I think, yeah, assuming
Speaker 2: that they would be the kind of person who would
Speaker 2: spend money on a game for their phone when it
Speaker 2: exists elsewhere is strange, especially since I mean they discounted
Speaker 2: it heavily for the first like month it was out right,
Speaker 2: and then it went out, so yeah, and then it
Speaker 2: was like forty dollars to buy a phone game. I
Speaker 2: don't know if that's you're going to get people spending
Speaker 2: that in micro transactions on a phone game, but I
Speaker 2: don't think you're going to get someone buying a game
Speaker 2: full out, like for.
Speaker 1: Forty My Super Mario Brothers Run like that was ten dollars,
Speaker 1: and that was I think it was a notable failure
Speaker 1: because it's just like even Mario, we don't want to
Speaker 1: buy that, like we'll download the free thing that you're
Speaker 1: giving us here, we'll play it, and then when ask
Speaker 1: us to spend money, goodbye. And I you know, we
Speaker 1: could talk about all the reasons that people feel that
Speaker 1: way when they're using their phone. You know, I think
Speaker 1: it is it goes back to speaking about the way
Speaker 1: that the capitalism, just the business fills in the gap
Speaker 1: that you provide for it. And on on phone it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: we are going to fill in this gap where it's
Speaker 1: like we see the path to make the most money
Speaker 1: possible is give them the game for free, try to
Speaker 1: charge money for micro transactions, find some whales, and then
Speaker 1: just go to cash those checks for the next several years.
Speaker 1: And that taught an audience what to expect on those devices,
Speaker 1: and there's kind of no one doing that. You have
Speaker 1: to build a culture around your consumer electronics devices, as
Speaker 1: stupid as that sounds, but you have to to kind
Speaker 1: of convince people that spending their money and investing their
Speaker 1: time and their money and something is going to be
Speaker 1: worth it. So when you pick up device, that feeling
Speaker 1: you have about like what you're expecting to get out
Speaker 1: of it in that moment is very important. So when
Speaker 1: you pick up a switch, and you're like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: picking this up to play games, and they're real, big
Speaker 1: games made by real developers, and I can imagine the
Speaker 1: companies and I care about them and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: All that creates an environment where people are willing to
Speaker 1: spend fifty to seventy dollars on games and the phone
Speaker 1: just everything feels disposable. And you know who's to blame
Speaker 1: for that, Well, it's it's the corporation's created that environment
Speaker 1: in the first place, and they raced to that place.
Speaker 1: I mean that remembering early smartphone games and the race
Speaker 1: to ninety nine cents so you could be at the
Speaker 1: top of the of the charts. And then after that
Speaker 1: was like someone figured it out free to play, and
Speaker 1: that that was the whole story. And there again, no
Speaker 1: one doing that, right No.
Speaker 2: And it's also just so strange because, like you're saying,
Speaker 2: filling in these gaps, but it's like, who do you
Speaker 2: think is your your your folk? Who are you focusing
Speaker 2: on as a consumer for a mobile game? Right? Are
Speaker 2: you focusing on someone that doesn't play video games that
Speaker 2: now realizes they have a video game console in their pocket.
Speaker 2: And if that's the case, why would you think that
Speaker 2: like a big budget triple A. You know, dense, dentse
Speaker 2: in every sense of the term visually dense, you know,
Speaker 2: story dense, a gameplay dnse. Why would you think anything
Speaker 2: like that would be a doorway for people who don't
Speaker 2: play video games regularly to start because they would play
Speaker 2: it on their phone. For me, and I'm not you know,
Speaker 2: I don't, I don't have a I don't own a business.
Speaker 2: Nobody pays me big bucks to make bad decisions. Uh,
Speaker 2: for me, I would think that you would rather be
Speaker 2: doing this sort of twee cozy game approach of putting
Speaker 2: all things that might feel at home on a switch
Speaker 2: on mobile rather than going for the island.
Speaker 1: A venture game did very well on Apple Arcade and
Speaker 1: you have a subscription.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and and listen, there there are a lot of uh,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of mobile gamers that are women.
Speaker 2: And uh, you know, obviously I don't believe in girl
Speaker 2: games versus boy games, but yes, there are women. There
Speaker 2: are women who prefer to play cozy games and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. And I think I think you should be
Speaker 2: you should be focusing more on these these right bold
Speaker 2: more simple in every sense of the word, games that
Speaker 2: are still full budget, you know, full blown Triple A games,
Speaker 2: but it just they translate better to me to mobile.
Speaker 2: It's such a strange thing because if you're focusing on
Speaker 2: someone who doesn't play video games normally. Again, yeah, I
Speaker 2: can't imagine them being like, oh, I want to play
Speaker 2: Assassin's Creed Mirage. I've never heard of this before, and
Speaker 2: I want to play it on my on my phone
Speaker 2: on the train. It's strange. It's a strange thing. And again,
Speaker 2: it's like you're saying, it just feels like somebody woke up,
Speaker 2: had an idea and then they went go with it,
Speaker 2: go with it, go with it, do it.
Speaker 1: And it's like why, Yeah, And you know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: that I guess I'm not sure. I guess that Apple
Speaker 1: probably paid Capcom to do this. Just doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: that Apple style. I you know, part of me is like,
Speaker 1: maybe Capcom just want to do experiment, but they keep
Speaker 1: doing it over and over again. So I parties like
Speaker 1: this must have been to the multi game deal. Someone
Speaker 1: at Apple just made happen. There's a ton of people
Speaker 1: working there and this probably just accidentally happened at some point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that we, like the industry is going to
Speaker 1: keep changing. The way people come to games is going
Speaker 1: to keep changing. I for a while there, we've known that,
Speaker 1: and we kept saying it's like, oh, if we want
Speaker 1: to keep getting games like Restident Evil, we need to
Speaker 1: put them on something like a phone, and that will
Speaker 1: mean we keep getting them. And it's like, God, I
Speaker 1: hope that's not the case. I hope there's some other
Speaker 1: answer there, because those people are just not going to
Speaker 1: buy those games, and rightfully so they don't appeal to them.
Speaker 1: So I hope we continue to get Resident Evil games
Speaker 1: because we keep buying them on console and PC and
Speaker 1: that continues to be enough. But we'll see. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: Ninja five ohs Nintendo Switch release dates set for February.
Speaker 1: This is just an old Game Boy Advance game that
Speaker 1: I like quite a bit. It's from Konami. It was
Speaker 1: a really good action game. It kind of became a
Speaker 1: sleeper hit on the GBA where a lot of people like,
Speaker 1: when you say, hey, what's the game most people haven't
Speaker 1: played on GBA that they should, this one always comes up. Well.
Speaker 1: Apparently the physical version that was put out by I
Speaker 1: think Limited Run Games that began to ship last month,
Speaker 1: so people got their hands on that. Now, the digital
Speaker 1: version is going to come out on February twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, so looking forward to that. I'm a
Speaker 1: big Ninja five oh fan. All right, let's get to
Speaker 1: this next one. We are beginning to run a time here.
Speaker 1: Why switch to is significantly more powerful, According to one
Speaker 1: game developer. This is from Blair Marnell at Game Spot,
Speaker 1: the first look at Nintendo Switch two didn't have much
Speaker 1: in the way of game footage, except for a brief
Speaker 1: glimpse at a new Mario Kart. Ordinary players may be
Speaker 1: able to appreciate that the preview of what Switch two
Speaker 1: can do, but one game developer has broken down how
Speaker 1: the footage exposes the sheer power of Nintendo's next system.
Speaker 1: Sungrind Studio's Gerald Doulay, whose previous credits include the Silver
Speaker 1: Falls game series, shared his extended look at the Switch
Speaker 1: two's capabilities. Doulay has experienced work has experienced working on
Speaker 1: titles for the original Switch, so the difference between the
Speaker 1: console generations was readily apparent to him. The two most
Speaker 1: important things he pointed out were the true volume volume
Speaker 1: metric lighting and advanced lighting technique that creates a sense
Speaker 1: of density in the atmosphere and the extremely detailed and
Speaker 1: unique textures on the backgrounds. Because the first iteration of
Speaker 1: switch would struggle to run either of those features at
Speaker 1: a high frame rate, Delay noted their inclusion suggest that
Speaker 1: this system is significantly more powerful. He also estimated that
Speaker 1: the RAM for the switch to will be between twelve
Speaker 1: and sixteen gigabytes, which I think rumors put it at fourteen.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. Additionally, do
Speaker 1: I noted the real time creation of shadows, cloth simulation
Speaker 1: on the flags in the background, reflective textures, and the
Speaker 1: higher polygon counts on the character models for Mario and
Speaker 1: his friends. Yeah, I think this is where we're at though,
Speaker 1: right A lista where we do have to kind of
Speaker 1: like have an expert come in and look at the
Speaker 1: details to tell the difference, because when I still look
Speaker 1: at it, it's like, yeah, that's Mario Kart. That is
Speaker 1: that's Mario Kart, and the vast majority of people are
Speaker 1: going to feel that way now. Even I began to
Speaker 1: notice some stuff as I watched that trailer a couple
Speaker 1: more times, and I mentioned this on another show recently,
Speaker 1: But the characters have a bounce and give to them,
Speaker 1: sort of like Mario and Mario Wonder or the characters
Speaker 1: in Luigi's Mansion three, so that they kind of stretch
Speaker 1: and deform and then bounce back down when they like
Speaker 1: land a jump or something like that. And the carts
Speaker 1: have that as well. They like there's more bring to them,
Speaker 1: and so, uh, it just made the animations feel more
Speaker 1: lively alone. So there's just a lot more going on
Speaker 1: in this game. But I don't know if that animation
Speaker 1: tech spoke to the more powerful switch to the volumetric
Speaker 1: lighting some of this other stuff does. But do you
Speaker 1: think this is going to make much of a difference
Speaker 1: for a switch to or is this system just kind
Speaker 1: of it is what it needs to be, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, first of all, I will point out
Speaker 2: I did not realize that that was the guy they
Speaker 2: were using as their as their source. He's an interesting person.
Speaker 1: I have no idea about him.
Speaker 2: Tell me about it, Yeah, I don't. I only I
Speaker 2: recognized him very briefly because I believe he wrote a
Speaker 2: song about me.
Speaker 1: Oh it's very interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's uh, he's he he leans a certain way.
Speaker 2: Oh say, but that doesn't mean that we should discount
Speaker 2: everything that he's saying here, I'm sure every once in
Speaker 2: a while, yeah, exactly, you know, but I think this
Speaker 2: is always so interesting to me, right because this is
Speaker 2: like our job to pay attention to these these things
Speaker 2: in terms of whether it's stronger, more powerful, what it
Speaker 2: can do on like a on like a level of
Speaker 2: consumer I don't know how many people notice care those
Speaker 2: little things will notice it. You'll notice it after watching
Speaker 2: the trailer a couple couple of times, but how much
Speaker 2: of a difference will it actually make. I think the
Speaker 2: ways that it will feel tangible for people are our
Speaker 2: load times or things like that that'll translate to like,
Speaker 2: oh this feels better, this feels stronger, Oh this is
Speaker 2: this is loading up fast. Oh this feels good.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Otherwise yeah, I think I think until you show something
Speaker 2: like that, like like imagine just like the simple little
Speaker 2: Nintendo sound and it's the switch, the original switch and
Speaker 2: the switch to powering up the same game, and just
Speaker 2: seeing them side by side, that could do something I
Speaker 2: think for people that that would translate more than again,
Speaker 2: I think this was just such a weird Nintendo makes
Speaker 2: such weird decisions when when they do stuff like this.
Speaker 2: Because also the trailer in and of itself, was just
Speaker 2: like you picked the beige flat place for this. This
Speaker 2: is your visual spectacle guy.
Speaker 1: We used to have rooftop parties and now we have this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like what so?
Speaker 2: I think I think it probably a signal ificuely more powerful.
Speaker 2: They've been sitting on this for a while. What does
Speaker 2: that mean for the average person who knows? I think
Speaker 2: it'll translate for some people. But I'm also the kind
Speaker 2: of person that, like, I don't even I don't even
Speaker 2: notice like fps things unless I'm unless I'm playing like
Speaker 2: a highly competitive shooter. So I'm a bad person to
Speaker 2: speak to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it is. I think you're right though
Speaker 1: most people this will not register for the most part.
Speaker 1: I think for most people that are getting the switch
Speaker 1: to they want to know what games are going to
Speaker 1: be able to be played on it that will matter
Speaker 1: to them, And I think maybe the good news to
Speaker 1: those people is at twelve to sixteen gigabytes of RAM,
Speaker 1: that is going to be the biggest difference maker. Don't
Speaker 1: You don't need to understand why, you just need to know.
Speaker 1: Developers really did not like the limited amount of RAM
Speaker 1: on the switch. One that was the biggest complaint and
Speaker 1: having more memory though, RAM will ensure that a lot
Speaker 1: more games will be able to be ported to the
Speaker 1: switch to, and it'll make the lives of developers who
Speaker 1: have to do that parting and making new games of
Speaker 1: the switch to a lot easier. So easier time for
Speaker 1: devs means more games for you. So this is probably
Speaker 1: what you want to hear. And I suppose we didn't
Speaker 1: need a weirdo to tell us that, but oh well,
Speaker 1: that's how it goes sometimes in video.
Speaker 2: Games, Melyssa, Right, yeah, it really do be like that.
Speaker 1: It do be that way sometimes unfortunately. All right, let's see,
Speaker 1: do I want to do this one? Yeah, games coming
Speaker 1: to game Pass to January. Lonely Mountain snow Riders. I
Speaker 1: love the Lonely Mountain game that came out several years ago.
Speaker 1: It was like you rode a bike downhill and there
Speaker 1: was like a yeah, there was a leaderboard element to it,
Speaker 1: but you could also just play it as a chill game.
Speaker 1: And I also I love snow, so this I'm very
Speaker 1: excited about Lonely Mountain snow Riders that's out now. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go play that. Gigantic Rampage Edition is coming
Speaker 1: January twenty second, Starbound. We'll hit console and cloud game
Speaker 1: Pass on January twenty second. Eternal Strands orcs Must Die,
Speaker 1: Shady part of Me. Sniper Elite Resist is going to
Speaker 1: launch into game Pass, so its Citizen Sleeper, two, Star
Speaker 1: Wars Vector far right, New New Dawn is joining, and
Speaker 1: then uh yeah, let's see here and then okay, then
Speaker 1: on game Pass Standard. So this is not like game
Speaker 1: Pass Ultimate where you get every new game that launches
Speaker 1: day one these this is like a library of games,
Speaker 1: including in game Pass Standard that includes Kunitsugami, Path of
Speaker 1: the Goddess, Magical Delicacy to Chia, Chia, Yeah, Chia, the
Speaker 1: Case of the Golden Idol, and Flock and Boy. I
Speaker 1: like a lot of those games. Pepper Goddess is good,
Speaker 1: Chia is fantastic. Case of Golden Idol must play. So yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone should go out there and check those out. Pretty
Speaker 1: pretty good time for game Pass, A thing that feels
Speaker 1: like it is becoming less and less of an emphasis
Speaker 1: for Xbox. But at least, I mean the support.
Speaker 2: You can't argue with that, right, No, no, and it
Speaker 2: is it's still a good deal. I mean it may
Speaker 2: not be a good deal. For the for the developers,
Speaker 2: the studios an Xbox, that's a good deal for the gamer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, the developers Xbox, You're right, those ones. That's
Speaker 1: who's a specifically pro. Probably not a good deal for Capcom.
Speaker 1: Keeps coming back to it, right. The third party developer
Speaker 1: seemed to love it, Like if you're making a game
Speaker 1: that also has to sell and you work at Xbox,
Speaker 1: it's oh, this is rough stuff. Yeah, all right, a
Speaker 1: poll question, we have that here somewhere. Let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and bring that up. Okay, are you disappointed that Sony
Speaker 1: canceled Bluepoints Live service God of War game? Again? Let
Speaker 1: me bring that up for everybody. I'm going to vote no.
Speaker 1: Let's see if anyone voted yes. Five percent of people
Speaker 1: voted yes that they are disappointed that Sony canceled Bluepoints,
Speaker 1: a live service God of War game. I am disappointed
Speaker 1: for the people that had to spend that time working
Speaker 1: on it. And I also bet that had we seen it,
Speaker 1: have we had a chance to like like glean the
Speaker 1: ideas that they had come up with for this game,
Speaker 1: I bet we would have been impressed. I bet it
Speaker 1: was pretty solid stuff. But yeah, ninety five percent of
Speaker 1: people did not want this boy. That just speaks to
Speaker 1: that mismanagement again. Huh right, Melissa, It's yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it's strange because I think if
Speaker 2: you had a bunch of people who actually were directly
Speaker 2: involved in the industry making these higher up decisions, I
Speaker 2: think a lot of people could have told you they'd
Speaker 2: been getting sick of live service games long before people
Speaker 2: started putting a lot of money into them. But you know,
Speaker 2: then something like Marvel Rivals happens and shuts me up.
Speaker 2: But that's that's that's a rarity that is not the norm.
Speaker 2: And you have to consider Rivals being free to play
Speaker 2: an established ip, you know, and and essentially just being
Speaker 2: an Overwatch killer as why it's so popular, and how
Speaker 2: it's almost impossible to strike that catch, that lightning with
Speaker 2: anything else right now. So I get it. It's just
Speaker 2: sucks for the people who were employed to work on
Speaker 2: this game, and there's going to be a gap now
Speaker 2: because everyone's turning around and going, you shit, delete the
Speaker 2: live service, delete the live service stuff. And there's a
Speaker 2: lot of that. There was a lot of that in development.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then it's like, okay, and now what do
Speaker 1: we pitch to the Sony Executive's next that they want
Speaker 1: to hear, and there's nothing, no one, no one knows.
Speaker 1: And that's the scariest part. It's like, well, stop working
Speaker 1: on the thing we thought they wanted because they don't
Speaker 1: want it anymore, and so now what do we try
Speaker 1: to make that they do want? Oh boy, that's scared.
Speaker 2: And you're still going to have people up top who
Speaker 2: were like, so after they buy the game, how do
Speaker 2: they how do we get more money? And then being like, no,
Speaker 2: this is just a it's a single player campaign, it's
Speaker 2: an opening shut It's going to be great, and they're like, we.
Speaker 1: Can charge one hundred dollars to get played three days early?
Speaker 1: Is that good? You like that?
Speaker 2: Really? Get a special skin? You want a digital art?
Speaker 1: I have a new pole question. We'll get to that
Speaker 1: here in a second. Before we do that, though a
Speaker 1: listener content, why don't you tell people where they can
Speaker 1: find you on the internet what you have going on?
Speaker 1: Any special special messages here for anybody? Let me know.
Speaker 2: So I'm a listamer Kante, I am at alyssa underscore
Speaker 2: mark on the hell site x, which is actually Twitter.
Speaker 2: I'm on a blue sky with my name Alissa, mrk
Speaker 2: and I am live streaming on twitch a listamrk. I
Speaker 2: will be doing that right after this. I like to
Speaker 2: do a little mix of game news and gaming, kind
Speaker 2: of trying to bridge the gap between games journalists and
Speaker 2: twitch streamers and see what kind of world that is
Speaker 2: for us. It's an interesting one, but yeah, that's what
Speaker 2: I'm doing. I'm also on Patreon a listamer conte and yeah,
Speaker 2: if anyone wants me to write anything cool, just hit
Speaker 2: me up. I'm freelancing.
Speaker 1: Awesome, excellent. Yeah, everybody go make sure you give all
Speaker 1: listen some love. Thank you so much for doing the show.
Speaker 1: Let's see here new poll question. Have you ever spent
Speaker 1: more than ten dollars to buy a game for your
Speaker 1: mobile device? Yes? Or no? We will discuss this on
Speaker 1: Games Mornings here on Giant Bomb tomorrow. Speaking a Giant Bomb.
Speaker 1: Later today we will kick off the latest season yet
Speaker 1: again of Blake Club. Dan has already finished up Terminator,
Speaker 1: that was just two episodes. You finished that. He is
Speaker 1: now going on to Drake of I think it's Drake
Speaker 1: of the ninety nine Dragons, which I think we're going
Speaker 1: to call Reikert of the ninety nine Dangins. We got
Speaker 1: to pick the stupidest name every time, so I think
Speaker 1: we succeeded this time. So we'll get that going here
Speaker 1: at the normal time, which I think is three pm
Speaker 1: Eastern noon Pacific. You won't want to miss it. Of course.
Speaker 1: This is a infamously bad game. It is a game
Speaker 1: that people really really always bring up. Is one of
Speaker 1: the worst games of all time, and especially the Xbox version,
Speaker 1: which is what Dan will be starting with. If it breaks.
Speaker 1: If it stops working, which is a distinct possibility, we're
Speaker 1: giving him permission to restart it on PC, so he
Speaker 1: does have at least one outlet. We'll see how that goes.
Speaker 1: All right, that's gonna be a good time. Listen, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for hanging out with me today and
Speaker 1: talking about video games. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. I always appreciate you.
Speaker 1: Of course, anytime we'll make it happen again. Thank you
Speaker 1: once one more time. Thank you to everybody who was
Speaker 1: listening and watching. You were the best audience in gaming.
Speaker 1: Until next time, have a good one, take care of yourself,
Speaker 1: and goodbye.