Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to Game Mess Mornings with Me Jeff Grub,
your host from giant bomb dot com. Thank you for
tuning in. In this episode, we're going to be talking
about a silent hill in every pot, and everyone but
Mike loves Splatoon Raiders. It's gonna be a good one
because we have Jeff Backler on the show.
Speaker 2: Jeff, how are you doing?
Speaker 3: I'm doing well. I'm wearing the gaming shirt I got
in my subscription box. It's super sick. Apparently Katamari Damassy
is the thing I like and I but no, I'm kidding.
I'm a diehard. Yeah, I'm og soon as again came.
Speaker 1: At first one like I was like, I gotta get
this game. I have no idea really what it's going
to be about, but uh yeah, right from the beginning
I was there for Katamari.
Speaker 2: So I'm very excited about that shirt. Looking good.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you pal. I'm very happy to be
here on Jeff Jeff's Games Morning.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, I'm uh, I am.
Speaker 1: I played a little bit of Splatoon Raiders and now
I'm like, I'm trying to wait and see if I'm
gonna end up agreeing with Mike or we have a
story here about doing very well with the user reviews.
But that's what I have been playing since I got back.
You've been playing anything back? Are you been checking in
on any games this week?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been trying to convince myself that I should
play more of Halo y same.
Speaker 2: Yes, Uh.
Speaker 3: If I could just insert a little aside here, I've
been soft locked no less than four times now in
this game because like, the war Hoog will get stuck
on a rock or something, and then I can't get
back into it. The game like, won't let me drive
the war Hoog when it's like, you know, sort of
split on something weird and I have to restart the checkpoint.
Guess where the checkpoint was. It was right after my
war Hoog got stuck, So I know, Yeah, it's happened.
I'm not Joe, I shit you not. It happened twice
last night, and I was like, what the fuck is
going on? Yes, chat mechanize. I had to malay the
shit out of my warhaw so that it moved a
few frames off whatever collision was happening, so that it
could detect the opportunity to enter and drive it again.
Look I think, Yeah, I'm having an okay time with it.
I feel bad about shooting grunts. We've talked about this,
of course, but yeah, I don't know. I'm waiting for
a couple other things to open up for me. But
that's what I'm playing right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have not had those experiences yet, but definitely
sounds a little bit like Halo.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'll probably stick with it for a.
Speaker 1: Little bit longer, but yeah, there's other games coming, and
once those get in my purview here, I'll probably drop it.
It's nothing, not like the game has any problems. I'm
just not like overwhelmed with the emotions to play that
game or something like.
Speaker 3: It's a rest stop game, you know what I mean. Right,
I'm a little bill in there waiting for the tank
to fill up and then I'm bouncing off this thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, Zacy Sacy says street Fighter two.
Speaker 3: Yea.
Speaker 1: I am imagining Ken coming out and just beating the
shit out of the war Hug thinks it's.
Speaker 3: Kind of what I had to do. My other guys
are like, what are you doing. I'm like, I gotta
move this all right, I need the PCs like stop,
don't do that.
Speaker 2: I'm not walking. Yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 1: All right, let's explain ourselves. We're giant Bomb. Go to
giant bomb dot com slash join become a premium member.
If you do, you are supporting independent games media. We're
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If you want to get access to that, giant bomb
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Speaker 2: It also gets you ad free versions of the show.
Speaker 1: As far as this show goes most weekdays, I Jeff
Greb will help piece your gaming life back together. That
includes breaking news and maybe even some of our own
original reporting. For all these topics, I'll get the input
of a bona fide expert who will make me look smart.
If you were watching live on twitch welcome, You can
always listen to the show later on podcast feeds by
searching for game Mes Mornings, or find the RSS feed
on giant bomb dot com. You can also catch the
show later with chapters and timestamps on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Hello YouTube.
Speaker 1: All right, we have a lot to get into, so
let's start the morning mess with. Double Fine has laid
off twenty three staff after going independent. This is from
Chris going In at VGC. Double Fine Productions has announced
that it has laid off twenty three members of its
development staff. The studio, founded in two thousand by former
LucasArts veteran Tim Schaeffer, was acquired by Mike, was acquired
by Microsoft in twenty nineteen and developed rad psychoedouts to Keeper,
KILLN After and KILLN after That. Following news last month
that Xbox planned to cut thousands of jobs as part
of what CEO Asha Sharma called the most significant restructure
in Xbox history, however, a number of Microsoft owned studios
to faced closure. Some of those studios started negotiating with
Xbox to go independent in an attempt to avoid complete closure,
and Double Find was successful in these negotiations, along with
South of Midnight studio Compulsion Games. As a newly independent studio, however,
Double Find has found itself having to cut costs to
remain a going concern, which it says has led to
layoffs Double Find Today, Double Find Productions let go of
twenty three members of our staff. As a small, tightly
knit team, these actions are not taking lightly taken lightly.
Speaker 2: Only the survival.
Speaker 1: Of our of our studio would ever make us consider
such a painful action. Our transition to becoming an independent
company also means becoming a size that we can sustain. See,
I mean, I think everyone knew this was part of it, right,
Like the idea here of Microsoft, Oh, we're laying off
these people and then we're going to let these teams go.
Speaker 2: Well, those are also layoffs.
Speaker 1: Those are job cuts that no longer exist that a
new company, newly formed as independent will have to sort
of create out like out of thin air.
Speaker 2: For the most part, not entirely.
Speaker 1: Obviously, having the infrastructure there to take a studio independent
and start making stuff well ensure some of those jobs
can transition.
Speaker 2: But the money's gone.
Speaker 1: The money was coming from Microsoft and now it disappeared,
So they were always going to have to probably make
these cuts. So it's like, yeah, double fine, is lay
enough twenty three staff? This is still part of the
Xbox layoffs though, right, that's right?
Speaker 3: What are we so is the implication that there is
no new backer here? Or I mean sounds like no, right,
if there is nothing to support staffing these twenty three
people that are having to be let go after this independence.
Speaker 1: Yes, so that's what it seems to be the case
for both Double Fine and Compulsion that they quickly were
able to extricate themselves from Xbox from Microsoft, but any
conversations that might have been involved with new publishers, new
financial backers, or very early and are nowhere near completion
when it came time to actually make these the jump
to independent.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, if.
Speaker 1: There's money waiting in the wings, it's not like it's
it's probably not happening anytime soon. And so yeah, they're
they're kind of out there on their own, which means,
you know, I believe that Double Find took all of
their IP with them, right, So they're they're selling video games, right,
they have income from that, and that's it. That's probably
what the budget that they are sort of giving themselves of, like, hey,
we make a certain amount of income from selling our
catalog games. We can rely on that, and then if
we want to staff back up or grow again, it
will really have to come from getting a big third
party partner to come in with some money to publish
one of our games, and it's not easy to do that,
right now, that's kind of all you hear, is like
how difficult it is to find that cash?
Speaker 3: No, and I don't know how much reporting there is
on the specificity of their IP ownership either, right, Like
does it does it mean, like you know, fully sort
of being able to capture all the revenue from the
legacy library of stuff like the or is it only
stuff since acquisition? Like what is how does all that work?
I think the thing everyone you know should not lose,
should not should be still able to take away from
this is that it is like you said, the you know,
the sort of fallout from Microsoft's decisions, right, Like, this
is a thing that was brought on by that. I
don't want I don't want them to get away with
any sort of like you know, avoiding negative press after
this is announced, because this happened because of the divestment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they clearly we're trying to shape this
in such a way, Like going back I think to
the leaks about hey, these these teams.
Speaker 2: Might get closed down.
Speaker 1: Oh no, they're in negotiations to sort of go independent,
and like they framed it in such a way that
when they did go independent, it will it.
Speaker 2: Looked like the best case scenario.
Speaker 1: It looked like, okay, yeah, these these teams aren't going
to get shut down. So you know, you would see
the boot looking fanboys out there being like.
Speaker 2: Sarah, I heard it was going to be a bloodbath.
This isn't a bloodbath.
Speaker 1: These things aren't closing, and it's say, oh, honey, you
just can't see that they really did pull wool over
your eyes or you're happy to help them do it.
And yeah, the money that was going into this industry
from Xbox, into these studios evaporated, and that meant that
was always going to mean job cuts.
Speaker 2: And it's like this.
Speaker 1: Distracts from the fact that there's other unsung cuts happening,
including that we keep saying it a bunch of contractors,
a bunch of contract studios getting completely the rug pulled
out from underneath them, and those people, those contract studios
have jobs that they are cutting that will not be
counted toward the eventual what was at thirty two hundred
total that Xbox is saying that they are going to cut.
It's like, oh, yeah, so these cuts are way worse already.
And yet we're still celebrating the fact that this team
now has to go out but is essentially the worst
time to find funding for a game in a very
long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I also got to stop seeing this fucking quote. I
gotta stop seeing this quote the most significant restructure and
Xbox stop saying so I don't want to that implies
some sort of like achievement, that implies some sort of
like awesome thing. Just shut up, shut up. I don't
want to hear that anymore.
Speaker 2: Stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a sort of no humanity in these uh
in these quotes, and that one feels especially sort of detached.
Speaker 2: From from what is actually happening here. You know.
Speaker 1: They also call it stuff like this is the reset,
and everyone, I think asks the right question that reset
to what what is what is the thing that Xbox
considers to be zero that they are going to reset
to and build back from?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Right, reset implies a rebuild, right like reset replies like
wiping the slate clean and like, you know, going to
some sort of rehab of sobriety and like you know,
getting a new start on life. It doesn't mean like, oh,
we murdered everyone. That's not the reset, Like, come on, right, Yeah,
and the.
Speaker 1: Vision still is very fuzzy on how they get to
that rebuild or whatever. Right now, it still feels like
the goal is cut as much costs as possible, make.
Speaker 2: This lean for whatever purpose, whether that.
Speaker 1: Is just to make just to spend less money on
this thing, or to make it easier to eventually offload,
which continues to feel like a possibility here. Meanwhile, Xbox
had some issues where Xbox Live I guess I don't
do they even call it Xbox Live anymore. Their internet
services went out. There was a big outage, and people
obviously during this could not launch a bunch of like
digital games that they owned that required sort of authentication
through servers. There was issues with like, you know, talking
to friends or whatever. All these problems with the Xbox services,
but it also affected physical games. If you had a
disc and you put it into your system, it also
tried to reach out to a server and said, hey,
you can't play this, and Xbox like, hey, that's actually
not the way it's supposed to work, and we are
going to fix that in the future. So Microsoft now
says physical game, our physical Xbox games are subject to
entitlement verification. Although discs are supposed to remain playable offline.
During Sunday's nearly day long Xbox outage, some consoles failed
to use the saved entitlements that normally let those disc
discs launch without contacting Microsoft. Yeah yeah, some of those.
Yeah they failed. Excuse me. An upcoming system update is
intended to prevent that failure from happening again. Xbox CTO
Scott Van Valet attributed the broader outage to an external
licensing service. So we kind of got some details about
this yesterday and didn't know exactly what it was. He said,
the company will conduct a full post incident review, hard
in the dependencies used for signing and game launching, improved
detection and containment, blah blah blah, and communicate more clearly
during future events.
Speaker 2: Toms like that. I know. Yeah right. It's like, okay, buddy.
Speaker 1: People just want to play their games and you're out
here being like this is the next broader outage will
be better.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So that does feel like they're still trying to make
it feel like, yeah, discs have a special access path
towards you being able to play them because you have
a physical verification thing you can put it in the
system and it should just work.
Speaker 2: Uh, and you know, it.
Speaker 1: Does feel like Okay, yeah, that's that's what people want
to hear. It didn't work, And it does feel like
you Xbox are about to go the pathway that PlayStation
is setting out right now of at the very least
extremely de emphasizing of physical media, if not fully pulling
that out of the next system. But they're they're they're
saying the thing where the hey, no, your discs should
have that functionality going forward, and we're sorry it didn't work.
Does this like feel like a weird moment to remind
everybody that disks function that way when it doesn't feel
like the future of discs themselves is very certain.
Speaker 3: I mean, it couldn't happen at at at a more
suspicious time, right, Like yeah, it's it's certainly not encouraging
in any sense I think, you know again, and knowing
what we know now about not being able to trust
anything that comes out of that camp at all, you
just I guess have to kind of live in this
very precarious situation of like, yeah, this demonstrates the fragility
of having physical media and the reliance on that working
with what is being called an external licensing service, which
implies that like Xbox doesn't have that in house, they
like somehow have a third party service verifying all and
authenticating like discs, and that system talks to the Xbox
network and gives them the okay even though these things
are supposed to work without having to call home.
Speaker 2: I don't get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know. It's certainly
not a good sign. If you've got hardware with a
disk drive. I feel like that is now this valuable
collector's item. Don't get rid of that, hold on to
that thing. Yeah, certainly not an encouraging forecast for our
you know, software ownership future.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I still feel like if if Xbox is
serious about this reset or whatever and re establishing its
platform as a place for people to buy buy games,
and that you know, specifically the console, they're they're making
a bigger deal about Xbox console exclusives.
Speaker 2: Games they'll be on PC but then not on PlayStation. Uh.
And the reason you do that is to sell more
Xbox consoles.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: So it's like, Okay, they're they're serious about that side
of the business. You supposedly they are presenting their themselves
as being serious about it. Well, one thing you could
do in this moment clearly is to say, hey, we
are going to be different than Sony when it comes
to physical media and support it for longer. No promise
is about forever, but support it for longer. And they
have a sort of reverse Xbox One PlayStation for a
moment where they could say we're we're the disc side
of the of the argument now, and so if you're
mad at Sony, come to us. And I don't know
all these opportunities to do that, and they haven't said
that yet when they were like, hey, we're going to
decide today four hours later that we are going to
make years of more exclusive like moments before Summer Game
Fest and kind of change the language on that if
they're willing to act really fast on stuff like that,
but not on this. To me, it sounds like no,
Microsoft is going to keep going in that direction of
discs will be deprecated as well, and it's unfortunate, like, oh,
I thought these companies were still competing. That would be
such a moment of competition. It doesn't feel like that's
in the cards, right.
Speaker 3: It doesn't. And again, this really all goes back to
the trust that they completely obliterated in front of the
entire world, yes, back in June. You know, it's the
same story over and over again. Forgive me if you
hear wood chipping going on in the lawn. They are
we're good, kind of which we said, chopping up some
trees from storms we've had. Yeah, it is us. There's
just no like trust. There's no faith invested in any
of the things that are coming out of their mouth.
So I hate to just sort of like paint everything
with such a broad brush, but like, this is the
reality of it now, and I don't think anything will
really change that dynamic. I think the proof will be
in the pudding, you know. And I don't care what
they say. What matters is what they do, and those
actions will speak louder than their you know, sort of
like messaging whatever pr sort of stuff they are putting
out there. That's what's going to resonate, That is what's
going to be tangible, and we'll be able to sort
of conduct analysis on the other side of that stuff. Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Don't know.
Speaker 3: I just can't see a future where like they are
somehow capturing the good guy energy of being the physical
media you know brand like, honestly, do you do you
see that? Do you see that happening?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I mean no, no, it's you know, it's there was
a five percent chance, just because I could see them
talking themselves into Like I could see Asha Sharma going
to copilot being like, all right, what are the opportunities
for today to make a make a difference here to
I kind of get people excited, and Coviolt would be like,
there's something about physical disc over at PlayStation maybe if
you took the different tach Like I could see her
talking herself into it and on that side of things.
Speaker 2: But clear anything wrong.
Speaker 3: I didn't like that, resigns.
Speaker 2: I'm talking like that, respond that's gonna cost us money.
Disk drives her bad.
Speaker 1: We are already losing money on our consoles, as we
will talk about in a story later in the show. Everybody,
all right, let's see here. Uh you know, let's get
to this one before we take the break. Your Coonambi
wants a new silent Hill every year.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think they they're at a point where it's like
that's actually a prop it's not a threat. That's exciting, uh,
Gabe Gerdwin, Kurt Indovino over at GameSpot Road from Kurt.
Speaker 3: Kurt's delivering this message specifically to me.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's like a telegram at your door, and he's
singing it here. Over the past few years, we've seen
a major revival of the Silent Hill franchise, with twenty
twenty four Silent Hill Too remake offering a spectacular reimagining
of one of the series' most beloved entries, while titles
like Silent Hill f and Townfall propel the series forward
and seek to redefine what a Silent Hill game can be.
Turns out, having so many Silent Hill projects developed at
the same time was a deliberate strategy set by Konami
and a way to prove to fans that it's serious
about the franchise. Speaking to game Spot at a media
roundtable event, Konami producer motoy Okamoto made it clear that
the company views Silent Hill as a major part of
its business. The main reason why we decided to have
multiple titles in the works, like three games in the
works at the same time, was because we wanted to
convey to the players that Konami is serious about coming
back into the gaming landscape. A part of the strategy
behind that was to work on multiple games at once
so that we can have annual releases or have an
annual release of a new Silent Hill game every year.
That way players will know that it's not a facade.
We're serious about coming back into the gaming space and
providing players with new games.
Speaker 2: Say, but like having this idea of like, okay, first of.
Speaker 1: All, recognizing that the Konami's sort of standing with gamers
had slipped quite a bit because it did seem like
they had abandoned that traditional audience.
Speaker 2: Recognizing that Silent.
Speaker 1: Hill is a very good way of sort of countering
that if they can do multiple games. But then being
able to do multiple games and so far make them
all pretty good, at least the big ones that I
know that like interactive television show thing was kind of
a joke that people hated, But I don't know what's
Silent Hell without one.
Speaker 2: Of those as well.
Speaker 1: But to have like two out of the three so
far hit really hard, and now we have the third
one upon us and seems like that that could be
excuse me, that could be good as well. I think
Konami's serious, and I think they moved exactly what they
were trying to prove here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the proof is in is in what's coming out?
And Jan and I actually just took a look at
town Fall. Video is up on the site now and
the YouTube channel. Uh it's you know the way I
kind of we discussed it, and the way I kind
of put it was like, oh, it almost seems like
they're kind of like franchising out Silent Hill, where it's like, oh,
what kind of some hell you want to do? What
kind of and uh, screen Burn, which which developed Townfall.
The way the story goes, I think, And Jan, you're listening,
keep me honest if I say something completely out of pocket.
They kind of just pitched this ta Konami, this this
idea of the story, and and I was like, Yeah,
this this dope, go for it. So I like the
idea that like Silent Hill, can have a new kind
of flavor on top of whatever story, Uh people want
to tell a team wants to tell. I think that's
really interesting. I think that rules. That's a smart way
to go about doing it. And what we saw, what
I watched of the b roll and what Jan has
played and has reported back, like they are doing kind
of they're pushing the they're moving the needle in the
way that I think is kind of smart and new
and fresh, especially with the sort of like pocket TV
mechanic that they've got going on in town Fall. I
think that's really smart. Uh yeah, I really dig it.
And this sort of design seems like it would lend
itself to this cadence of a new Silent Hill every year.
You know. It's like it's like the new Madden, you know,
and they just changed. They're just got update in the roster. No,
it's more than just updating the rosters, new locations, new stories,
but still having that same DNA. This is uh, this
is smart. You gotta give them credit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's.
Speaker 1: It's what we've kind of been saying for years, even
before Coonami like showed back up on the scene. With
this recent strategy, it's like, hey, it seems like Capcom
over there has got it all figured out right. They
have a way to at least every other year or
ever like one point five years to have something in
Resident Evil, whether that's a remake or a new game,
and then it also has it's got all of its
other pillars with Monster Hunter or whatever, and it delivers
on those relatively frequently. And then it's trying some other
stuff here or there. Why doesn't every publisher sort of
try this overall strategy?
Speaker 2: And Konami, I think, looked at it.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, yeah, we actually should do that, and
it seems like they're building up in a reasonable way
to that. They're not like they didn't go whole hog
and try all of it at once. They're like, hey,
let's focus on the most important part, which does seem
to be get one of your main franchises back in
order and get people believing in it again.
Speaker 2: They Capcom had.
Speaker 1: To do that with Resident Evil has easily succeeded, and
now it's like bouncing back and forth between the remakes
and new games, and I think Silent Hill obviously stands
to do very similar to that. And then it also
seems like I could follow a similar arc of Yeah, okay,
now that people believe that Silent Hill is this going
concern when they see a new one's coming out, maybe
more people will than ever will decide to jump aboard
the train. It's like, oh, I know that I can
trust Konami to continue investing in this, so I'm not
going to be wasting my time if I want to
get into something new and really throw myself into the
lore and go back and play all the old games,
because it's like, oh yeah, if I do that, there's
going to be a franchise waiting for me on the
other side.
Speaker 2: So it really just has worked out in about every
way that it could.
Speaker 1: Now I guess the question is can Kunami sort of
expand on this that, Like you said, they are franchising
a lot of stuff out there, working with a lot
of sort of external studios again in a wise way,
like I think the Neo Boards did the Silent Hill
f game and that was like a support studio that
worked with Capcom, and I think Squerannic's on a bunch
of stuff. But it's like they have experience working with
these like Capcom, this successful publisher, let's go bring them
on board.
Speaker 2: That's smart.
Speaker 1: But the Konami also said they want to expand their
internal development as well. That's I mean this, there's gonna
be a chance that they hit a roadbump here. Do
you think they will be resilient enough to sort of
like keep pushing forward on the strategy.
Speaker 3: That's a tough question to answer, but I I mean,
I do think they are playing it in a way
that seems thoughtful, right and sort of almost like future proofing.
And I do think that's playing out right. I do
think they're being kind of rewarded for it so far.
Uh it's it's you know, it's tough to tell, right, Like, okay,
uh so every indication is sort of saying like, oh,
town falls at the very least will be a solid experience, right.
I don't know, there's a fourth game, hit a roadbump, right,
and then where are we there? Right, I think we'll
have to sort of take the temperature if and when
that that that happens. But I do think they are
playing it in a way that feels calculated and and
feels kind of smart. It is, you know, just going
off off the reception of of f and how almost
universally uh uh, you know a lot of that game is.
It's it's definitely confidence inspiring for sure. I think how
you will go out and say selfishly like the horror
genre is probably the one little bright spot in the
world of games right now that seems to really be
hitting a groove, having a third, fourth, fifth, win, whatever
you want to call it. So those people like me
were eating well now for sure, but the precarious nature
of this industry certainly can't predict what would happen if
a substantial you know, speed bump lays ahead, right.
Speaker 2: Yep, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Rich Batic gamepoints that that Konami also has a new
version of its e football game on switch that got
rid of all the micro transactions micro transactions, so it's
kind of just like a new pro evolution soccer game.
That sounds cool. I might actually do exactly that.
Speaker 3: There is something encouraging about the kind of like pushback
that the you know, that part of the world is
sort of like putting out there right like they're does
seem to be now at this moment, this tangible sort
of like oh, you know, the the US based kind
of like methodology business model is so toxic and shitty,
like what if like that wasn't the case, And that
is I do think cultural in a big way.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I think kind of great to see.
Speaker 1: I think it's a It just provides an alternative to
the strategy. I think it was kind of pushed by
Western studios, which was we are going to make the
fidelity higher and higher, and that is the one way
that you sort of stand out. And then as these
Western studios, especially ones in the United States, become too
expensive because you know, it's an expensive place to live
or whatever, but then you know the studios are ingrained there,
it's like, okay, wait to outspend the other studios here,
we'd have to like spend this much more time on it.
That becomes unsustainable. There had to be an alternative, and
I think a lot of these Western studios were like, well,
we're not We're not going to look at the alternative.
We have one way of doing things, and everyone else,
especially and especially it seems like in Japan, they hey,
let's come up with some other ideas. And obviously they
don't have the same cost of living necessarily, but because
it's that is a more more affordable country in some ways,
but that like even take that out of it, it
just seems like they're like, hey, we believe there's another
way to approach getting people excited about these games, and
it's working. I think ye just having meamoto out in
the past week, being like, you know, make games that
are that you care about, not that you're trying to
make globally appealing. That feels very different than a lot
of the Western studios, and it feels like that has
trickled down throughout.
Speaker 3: Japan without a doubt. I mean almost like overnight. It's
there's like this epiphany of like, oh wow, not being
shitty turns out that's a beautiful way to live and operate,
and you can be a business and not be shitty
and still make money and still be okay. So yeah,
it's certainly an indictment in terms of the American system.
But yeah, that is the story. That is a situation
we're in right now.
Speaker 1: All right, we are gonna take a break. When we
get back, plenty of more headlines to get into. We
will touch on those after this. If you want to
skip out on these ad messages, just go to GiantBomb
dot com slash join. You can get the ad free
versions of this show and the others right there. We
will be right back. All right, We're back with Game
mess Mornings. It's jurifom Jeff. Let's go ahead and get
into the next headline here. A Dragon Age trilogy remaster
may be impossible without rebuilding BioWare knowledge. This is from
Chris Scully and at VGC. Dragon Age fans hoping for
remasters of the original trilogy may have had those hopes
dashed by BioWare veteran and dragon Age series producer Mark Dara.
Dara was at BioWare for twenty three years and was
executive producer on the dragon Age series before leaving the
studio in twenty twenty during the development of dragon Age,
The Veilguard and An Excuse Me. In an interview with FRVR,
Dara was asked if he thought the first three games
in the series, Dragon Age Origins, Dragon h two, and
Dragon Age Inquisition would ever get the same sort of
remaster treatment BioWare's Mass Effect trilogy got with the release
of the Mass Effect Legendary Edition in twenty twenty one.
Dara explained that a trilogy of remasters, which he proposed
would be called the Champions Edition, was originally part of
the plan while he was at BioWare. I think what
you want is a Champions Edition. That was always my plan.
We're going to do a Champions trilogy. We're going to
retroactively turn this into like, these are three games with
three different important figures, and we're going to group them in,
collect them together. We're going to retroactively turn them into
a trilogy. The problem with this, however, is that this
is no longer a quote. The problem with this, however,
is that while all three Mass Effect games ran on
Unreal Engine three remaking remasters relatively manageable, the first two
dragon Age games ran on versions of BioWare's bespoke Aurora Engine.
Dragon Age Origins ran on the Eclipse Engine, which was
an advanced version of Aurora, while Dragon h two ran
on its successor, the Lyceum Engine, and then dragon Age
Inquisition ran on EA's Frostbite.
Speaker 2: I remember at the.
Speaker 1: Time when a legendary edition was happening, sure that people
were asking me about and then so will they do
Dragon Age after that? And what I was hearing internally
was always it's this problem. It is that when you
do work on Mass Effect one, it like carried over
to two and then to three, but.
Speaker 2: Three needed less work.
Speaker 1: So it's like they're kind of like really getting a
lot out of all the efforts that they were making,
and it would it would mad It made a lot
more sense, and it also helped then that Mass Effect.
Speaker 2: Was already a real trilogy.
Speaker 1: So they it didn't require as much work on that
side of things to make it make sense. Packaged up
like that dragon Age just didn't. So they once they
were presented with all those problems and especially the engine issue,
it's like, okay, well, we're not going to be able
to make that really make sense. Now they're at a point,
as Star points out, where all of the people who
had that institutional knowledge about how to work with those
previous engines are gone, So it would be kind of
an even bigger hill to climb to get this done,
making it less likely than the moment where they already
decided not.
Speaker 2: To do it.
Speaker 1: So this this feels like one where if they get
back around to doing a dragon Age trilogy sort of
collection or whatever, it's gonna be way down the line
where they were gonna fully like remake these games, and
we're kind of nowhere near that right now, right, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, yeah, everything's so fragmented with these different engines that
does not seem like I mean, this is almost like
a it's almost like a non excuses, but like an
explanation of like, here's here's how you need to be
realistic about trilogy, right I think.
Speaker 1: And A fans recognize that pretty quickly or like go okay,
that that that does make sense. It's you know, at
dragon Age, the last one there, dragon Age, the Vail Guard. Uh,
it kind of just missed on enough points of of
sort of being able to win over new fans that
EA is just not gonna pay it any mind.
Speaker 2: Like EA feels done with it.
Speaker 1: So the idea here that okay, maybe by Where could
eat like that, whether we talked on the bomb Bywear
could pitch a new game that feels like that won't happen.
By Where could pitch like a collection of these previous games,
similar to the legendary edition of Mass Effect. Even that
at this point, I think everyone internally would recognize that
that would be something that EA would not care to
hear about right now. So it's going to take quite
some time to sort of shift the fortunes of Dragon Age,
which is unfortunate because like when I was reporting on it,
I always noticed it's like, man, the fan base for
these games is feverish, and it's kind of unfortunate that
they won't be surf going forward, all right, clear, Obscure
Studio says it wants to bring it to switch to
but it's way too early to announce anything.
Speaker 2: This is from Chris Sculling at VGC.
Speaker 1: Clare Obscure Expedition thirty three studio Sandfall Interactive wants to
make a switch to part of the game, but it's
still in the process of seeing how feasible it is.
Following a recent post mortem event discussing the game in Yokohama,
Sandfall CEO and creative director Gilmbriouh, co founder and CTO
Tom Gillemaran Giman, Yes, and lead character Yeah, close enough,
and concept hartist Alan Renaud. We're asked by Automaton whether
they thought the game could run on switch To and
whether there were plans for report. The developers replied that
they did not want to bring Claire, or that they
did want to bring Claire of Scared to switch To,
but we're still looking at how to overcome the technical
hurdles involved in this, suggesting it takes longer for a
smaller team to figure these out. We are interested in
looking for a way to do it, but it's too
early for us to announce anything at this point. It's
a big technical challenge because we tried to do something
beautiful with the game, but of course the switch to
is not as powerful as the PlayStation or the Xbox
series X, so it's important thing for us to consider,
especially given the size of our studio.
Speaker 3: I just love that chord. It's like, yeah, like we
want to put it on the switch too, but switch
is not beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a table, you see. We made a beautiful game.
That's the problem here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't want to have to dumb it down
for the fidelity that only the switch to is able
of putting out. Yuck.
Speaker 2: Yep. They probably are looking very seriously at this.
Speaker 3: There's a billion of them out in the market, right right.
Speaker 1: Unreal Engine five is a little bit of a pain
to put on the switch too, but it's worked before.
I mean, listen, I played Expedition thirty three on the
Steam Deck and it looked rough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it was playable.
Speaker 3: I also think it's a I think it's a difficult
portable game. Yeah yeah, right right, and obviously switch to
you dock it. It's not portable. But like I get
what you're saying there. I think, uh, yeah, I don't know.
I mean, look, you just want this out. You want
a version of it that is serviceable, right, I don't
think there's gonna be any And presumably you are trying
to reach an audience that is just a switch playing
sort of audience that maybe would not have any kind
of like, you know, disappointment in the perhaps little lackluster
fidelity of a switch to version of claib Scirit.
Speaker 1: And I think it's like we've been surprised a bunch
of times now where not only hey, this game's coming
to switch to, I guess I didn't necessarily expect that,
and then a lot of those have been like, oh,
and it looks really good, it runs pretty well.
Speaker 2: That's happened repeatedly. I think it's going to happen here again.
Speaker 1: I think the point that Sandfal the people over at
Sandfall are getting at is we're a smaller team. It's
going to take a little bit more work for us
to accomplish that, unless we've again maybe bringing in a
port studio, which they might be doing, who knows.
Speaker 3: Right, Look, Sandfall, if you really want to feel good
about it, maybe you just call it, you know, clare
obscurit not so.
Speaker 2: Beautiful Expedition thirty thirty two.
Speaker 1: It's knock a down one. Yes, right, that's fair to
take a little bit of it on our away from it.
All right, let's let's wrap back to Xbox real quick.
There's a couple other things happening over there. Xbox is
reportedly losing around one hundred and fifty dollars on every console.
Windows Central's just Cording reports that Microsoft is losing approximately
one hundred and fifty dollars on recently manufactured Xbox series
X and S units, largely because of rapidly increasing memory
and storage cost Obviously more strikingly Accorded says Microsoft will
apparently continue losing money on each unit even after the
August first price increases happen, which, yeah, that makes sense,
not all, Like those weren't one hundred and fifty dollars,
so and then they also still expect RAM and storage
costs to keep going up, so they might be right
back at one hundred and fifty.
Speaker 2: Dollars a missing from every console they sell.
Speaker 1: As a rough illustration recovering a one hundred and fifty
dollars hardware loss solely through a thirty percent platform cut.
So basically, there were some math done about Okay, let's
say they're losing, they're subsidizing these consoles at one hundred
and fifty dollars, what would people have to buy in
terms of seventy dollars games to make up that subsidy.
It's like, oh, it's like seven or maybe fine, yes,
seven seventy dollars games is what people would have to buy,
and that's people aren't really typically buying that many pieces
of software per console. It's usually a little bit lower
than that. But of course, the real world use case
for a lot of people is way different. They're buying
first party games and they're getting game Pass and they're
getting they're buying games here or there, or they're borrowing games,
they're playing free to play games, so there's micro transactions involved.
I think one hundred and fifty dollars subsidy is not
where any of these companies want to be. That is
not an amount that they have been comfortable comfortable with
for a very long time, which is why the prices
do keep going up. But they're not going to be
solved by this most recent price increase that's already already
been announced. Are we expecting another round of price increases
in twenty twenty seven?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 3: I mean to what end?
Speaker 2: Right? Like?
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you you know, we we've already seen sales
start to be impacted. I don't know, I don't know.
There seems to be this like extremely wishful thinking throughout
the industry that somehow these things will rebound. There's just
really no evidence that points to that sort of inevitability.
I don't know, I mean to what end, Okay, you
rate another round of price right, like what I mean?
These are now items that are just wildly out of
the scope of a traditional consumer. They are becoming luxury,
elite items that you will tell your grandkids about if
you can afford to have children.
Speaker 1: Right, yes, And then of course it's like sets us
up for expectations in terms of pricing for the next gen,
which apparently is all supposed to coming across the board
from PlayStation and Xbox. And yeah, they're already losing one
hundred and fifty dollars on older hardware that is getting
up to eight hundred dollars or whatever. New hardware is
not going to be less expensive to produce. It's going
to be more expensive in every way it is. Yeah,
the pricing expectations I think from everyone for the next
gen stuff is through the like through the roof beyond
whatever one.
Speaker 2: Thought was possible.
Speaker 3: And also they fucking did this, yes, well absolutely, yeah,
they fucking did this. So I you know, we can
talk about this and keep it up until we're blue
in the face, but like this situation come you know,
not one hundred percent directly, but substantially. It was impacted
by their broader business decisions and the investment in AI
and the need to build uh you know, data centers
for endless data centers and all these things that require
the hardware that is forcing the price up for all
these things. This is their bed. They shit in it
and now they got to lay in it.
Speaker 2: Yep. Finally, Actually a couple more things here.
Speaker 1: Xbox and Ubisoft introduced one way console, the PC crossby
so Xbox and Ubi Suft are granting the Ubi Seft
Connect PC versions of thirteen games to people who own
their digital Xbox console editions. Basically, if you buy these
certain Xbox or certain Ubi Soft games on Xbox consoles,
you will then get access to the Ubisoft Connect PC
versions as well.
Speaker 2: It doesn't go the other way. So if you have the.
Speaker 1: PC versions of Assassin's Creed, Mirage, Assassin's Creed, Valhalla, Avatar,
Frontiers of Pandora, Far Crist Six Immortals, Phoenix Rising, principersha
The Lost Crown Riders, Republic everyone's favorite, Skull and Bones,
Everyone's second favorite, the Crew, Two's the Crew, motor Fest,
Rainbow six Extraction which everyone remembers, Rainbow six Siege, and
Watchdog's Legion. You will not get the Xbox version like returned, yes,
and the reverse way. I think, yes, that's how it is. Yes,
So but if you have the Xbox version, you get
the PC version. I don't know who this is really for.
Speaker 2: Jurff.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like what needle this is even trying
to move. I suppose that Xbox and Ubisoft, trying to
tighten their relationship, suggest something like one about the other.
I don't know, but they they were definitely like they
already had the situation where if you have Xbox Game
Pass Ultimate, I think you get a small version of
Ubisoft subscription service on Xbox. So they've had this close
relationship and it really doesn't seem to have helped either one.
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
Speaker 3: Nobody knows there U BEI selft login information, what do
you do?
Speaker 2: Oh my god? Right, who the fuck is being like?
Speaker 3: Oh second old, now I'm gonna download connect you. Oh,
come on live in the real. I don't know who
this is for. You're right, who are you people? Where'd
you come from? What your gaming habits are? Incredibly confusing?
I don't know. This seems like how did this even happen?
Speaker 2: You think? Right? Right?
Speaker 3: What sort of weird footnote? This is like when a
team like like trades and like you get like conditional
draft picks and it's like, oh, this is this is
a result of something like that.
Speaker 1: Right, and it's like it definitely feels like a conversation
that started under the previous regime and sort of just
carried forward under its own momentum or something. It was
so close to the finish line that they just they
just went through with it, because I can't imagine, like
this was like on ashes Sharma's to do list when
she started the job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm at I'm at the goal line, but you
gotta give me the crossby on on on Ubisoft Connect.
That's the only detail that I'll get this deal over
the finish That's what makes my world go round, please
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Speaking of confusing, I think Splatoon Raiders is currently the
seventh greatest game of all time according to user reviews.
On Meta Critics Right, Splatoon Raiders is currently the seventh
best game of all time according to Metacritic users. Metacritic,
while the review aggregation site is mainly used for tracking
review scores from verified critics and gaming publications, it also
lets registered users give each game their own score out
of ten. Those scores are also aggregated by Metacritic and
presented as a separate user score, similar to the way
Rotten Tomatoes has a Tomato meter for critics scores and
the popco Meter Popcorn Meter for audience scores. At the
time of writing, Splatoon Raiders has a Metacritics score of
eighty one, currently placing it sixty fourth in its list
of the best reviewed games of the year. Its Metacritic
user score, however, is currently nine point three, making it
the seventh highest rated video game on the site of
all time.
Speaker 3: We should ask Mark, be like, Mark, what's going on
with Metacritic? What's happening? Have you ever seen anything like
this before?
Speaker 2: Mat Jackson?
Speaker 1: I think that the only explanation is Splatoon fans are
out there and they are real, and they're passionate, and
I mean, the game is good, it's it's good, it's fun.
I've been enjoying what I've played. What little bit I've
played so far. I do think I'm I will end
up maybe agree with Mike more than these user reviews.
But it seems to be like that doesn't matter. This
game is a new Splatoon game, and the Splatoon fans
love that. I don't know, is there any other explanation?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, was the last time we had like a
real positive brigade?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Right, go to town. You know what, you guys,
knock yourselves out. This is great. We're not gonna say nuts.
I'm not gonna stand in their way.
Speaker 3: It almost means nothing, So go nuts, right and a
fellows zero impact on any.
Speaker 1: Affects, nothing else, and at least in a negative way.
Speaker 2: Fantastic. Think you guys are doing great work.
Speaker 3: You're passionate about the thing you love. Positive brigading. Let's
bring it back. We're on the posey brigading arc.
Speaker 2: Let's see just real quick.
Speaker 1: So that means it's in front of the Legend of Zelda,
Ocaran of Time, middle Gear, Solid and Warcraft are three,
the Frozen Throne exp it's right behind Resident Evil Requiem
Core again. Number all right, let's keep in mind where
we're at with the Metacritic user reviews. The number five
highest rated game of all time of Court according to
Metacritic users is, of course, Corey in.
Speaker 2: The House, the Disney.
Speaker 1: TV show licensed game for DS or whatever it was, So.
Speaker 3: All right, maybe, yeah, maybe you put that user score
a little little lower down on the page.
Speaker 1: Maybe can you make it smaller? Maybe mess up they
mess up the currenting on it so no one wants
to look at it. You get a font swapping, maybe
make it all comic sense to reflect its importance. All right, Today,
Miss Fall Hunter is launching a PC at nine pm
A dispatch gets its Xbox release tomorrow Gears of War
e Dame multiplayer reveal.
Speaker 2: The Coalition is expected to show a.
Speaker 1: Classic four on four competitive multiplayer and a twelve player
PvE Horde mode ahead of a beta beginning August sixth.
All right, that does it for the headlines. I think
we have a question from earlier this week. Let's go
ahead and get the refreshed results right here. Let's see
what would you want from a final Fantasy Vix remake,
a massive multi game series, or one game that's forty
five hours with limitations. Obviously most people went with that
because they're not crazy. Eighty nine percent said they want
one game that's forty five hours with limitations, and eleven
percent said massive multi game series.
Speaker 2: So I don't think squaren exteds that talk.
Speaker 1: Themselves into doing that if if they want to approach
Final Fantasy six. All right, I have a new poll
question we'll get to. Actually, let's let's do it right now.
Are you playing Splatoon Raiders. I just want to know
yes or no. I want to see what this audience
is doing with that game. I just started that up.
I am enjoying it, but it does feel like, Okay,
it's one of those smaller Nintendo fifty dollars summer games
could get overlooked. It's not getting overlooked by the Splatoon fans.
And let's see how it's going for Giant On fans.
We'll get the results of that. Talk about it here
on Game this morning, on Giant Bomb tomorrow. Speaking of
Giant Bomb, Uh, it's it's Wednesday.
Speaker 2: I gotta go back to play more Cyberdillo.
Speaker 3: Oh buddy, you gotta you gotta pack there. We're doing
a fun thing after this. I don't think we can
talk about it just yet, but yeah, uh yeah, all right,
Well look I'm right there with you, because I myself
am playing a terrible game that is in no way
fun or hilarious. So that's that.
Speaker 2: What do you what are you playing?
Speaker 3: I'm playing cat Woman, man, I would drove god Catwoman.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I see your shirt, I see your Kirby with his
mouth wide open, and I'm just thinking it's a place
to put a cop, you know. I'm just thinking it's
a place to throw a cop.
Speaker 1: Just throw a cop right in there, man. Cat Jurfman
has been so special everybody. I we'll have more from
that very soon. You'll be able to start watching that
with us. Uh, probably next week is what we're aiming for,
So looking.
Speaker 2: Forward to that. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, it should be a pretty normal week.
Beyond that, we're gonna have a voice, small dump truck.
We're gonna have upf I think we're gonna play a
weird little party game on there.
Speaker 2: It'll be fun. And then we'll have it.
Speaker 1: We are recording a bunch of other stuff in the
meantime that will pop up on the site for both
free and premium users here very soon.
Speaker 2: All right, I think with all of that out of
the way, Yeah, let's do this.
Speaker 1: Jeff, thank you, so much for hanging out with me
today and talking about video games. Man, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: My pleasure anytime. Thank you for having me sir, Thank
you all for watching and listening. You are the best
audience in gaming.
Speaker 1: Until next time, have a good one, take care of
yourself and goodbye.