0:18

Hello, I am Daniel Bloodworth,

0:21

we are Easy Allies and this is

0:23

the Easy Allies Podcast. This week I'm

0:25

joined by Isla Hink. Hi. Up

0:27

on this desk. Hi. We've

0:30

also got Michael Damiani. Hello,

0:33

you should be playing Rebirth right now. We

0:35

should all be playing Rebirth right now. Damiani,

0:38

I suck at blocking. Teach

0:40

me how to block them. There's a materia that will help

0:42

you do that. Yeah, I have it and it doesn't

0:44

help. The level, it

0:46

has to level up. It's

0:49

the precision blocking one or is there another one

0:51

that? Steadfast block, you want that

0:53

one. I have that one too. When

0:56

it's maxed out you take like no damage. Interesting

0:58

block. Also Queen's

1:00

Blood is so good. Nice. Anyway,

1:02

start the podcast, sorry. In

1:05

the control room again it all happened. We got

1:07

Don Casanova. Hello, hello, hello. And

1:10

Huber and Gabi are both out this

1:13

week. But

1:15

friends we're going to talk about what's new,

1:17

what's news and what we've been playing. We're

1:19

talking about that Bellatro. Hell yeah.

1:22

We're talking about some Pokemon stuff. Sure.

1:25

We've got that January sales report. Oh sick.

1:29

I put some time into that Roguelite mode

1:31

for Splatoon 3. And

1:35

yeah, it's been a brutal week

1:37

with a lot of layoffs and other related

1:40

items to cover. And

1:43

because I've been jamming stuff in all

1:45

this week, skipping

1:47

the wrong question this week, no question this

1:50

week. Going right into Isla

1:54

playing Bellatro. Oh my god dude.

1:56

We're obsessed with this game. Bellatro

1:58

is so good. I slapped

2:01

it on my steam deck. I

2:03

was just in vacation in Hawaii. Got

2:05

a bad sunburn on my chest, but I'm okay

2:08

now. And yeah,

2:10

so I was playing Bellatro in

2:12

the hotel room. I think I still have

2:14

pretty gnarly eye strain from playing

2:17

so much. Oh, from so much? Well,

2:19

and rebirth. But like, I

2:21

was playing this on the plane. I was playing it on

2:23

the thing. It's only 64 megabytes. My

2:25

friend Jason Wishnov was gushing, but he

2:27

was like, it was pretty impressive. Obviously,

2:30

there's not a whole lot of graphics going

2:32

on, but that's still pretty good. Yeah,

2:35

well, that's a funny thing because I

2:37

saw one of my contacts. They were

2:39

like, I uninstalled it. And

2:41

then they were playing it the next day, and they're

2:44

like, I thought you uninstalled it. I was like, yeah,

2:46

I reinstalled it. It's not a barrier. 64

2:49

megabytes is not a barrier. Uninstalling it

2:51

does nothing. Literally is less than a

2:53

second. So for the uninitiated Bellatro, what

2:56

is it? Well, it is a poker-themed,

2:58

rogue-like game, rogue

3:00

light, whatever, where

3:02

you go on runs to

3:05

try to beat antis,

3:07

which, you know, it's just a

3:09

theme for a level. That's just, I had to look

3:11

it up. I was like, what

3:14

is antis seven mean? And it's just like

3:16

level seven. Because I was

3:18

like, I'm not paying an antis, so I don't know what's

3:20

happening. But yeah, so you

3:23

have cards. Every run, you start

3:25

fresh, and you try to get as high

3:28

as you can. I haven't

3:30

beat anti-8 yet, but after that, I

3:32

guess it kind of opens up, and you go beyond

3:35

that. And

3:38

it gets insane, I hear. The

3:40

difficulty jump is bananas past

3:42

there. I

3:45

need pointers from Jason, because he says he's

3:47

a Bellatro wiz. But I'm just doing okay.

3:49

Yeah, of course he is. Of course he

3:51

is. There's a lot of math on

3:54

his side. Yeah,

3:57

Jason Wierst of the game developer, if you don't

3:59

know. I forgot there came an echo. Anyway,

4:03

so yeah, you go and you try to

4:06

make hands, you get new little

4:08

cards and you can add and remove cards from

4:10

your deck to try to make your

4:12

deck stronger. You can get

4:14

Joker cards which build up and

4:18

change your strategies. Some

4:20

of them are like, get a

4:22

times 12 multiplier if

4:25

you play a hand that only has three

4:28

cards in it, or less, right? So

4:30

it's like, it would change how

4:32

you are strategizing. And if you

4:34

get a bunch that like, proc

4:36

on top of each other, you can get planet

4:39

cards that upgrade the efficacy of

4:41

a certain hand, for

4:43

example, as well. So if you've gotten two

4:45

pairs, upgraded a bunch,

4:47

and you have a Joker that gives you a big

4:49

multiplier for two pair, then

4:52

you're gonna try to lean into getting a bunch of pairs, right?

4:55

Same if you're trying to do a

4:57

straight or whatever. And

5:00

it's one of those games that sounds really

5:03

stupid and simple to talk about, but

5:05

when you're playing it, it just works.

5:09

Right. It's so good. Because

5:12

I feel like the experience I've

5:14

seen is like people just installers,

5:16

like yeah, whatever, and then

5:18

it's the next morning. Then four days have gone by

5:20

and you're like, what's happening? And your

5:22

eyes hurt still. I

5:25

turned down the CRT effect also. My

5:29

eyes still hurt from playing the

5:31

scene so much. But yeah. The

5:33

CRT effect on a Steam Deck is kind of funny to

5:35

me. Yeah,

5:38

because I've only played it on my Steam Deck, so. Yeah,

5:42

I don't know. This game rips. It's

5:46

the ultimate one more run game. You

5:49

don't wanna stop. Every

5:52

time I stopped, I only stopped because my battery

5:54

ran out. Okay. And

5:57

I was trying to plug it in while I was, you know,

5:59

but it was. I heard

6:02

it sounded like people had a hard time

6:04

getting their first win, but then once you

6:07

get your first win Then it just starts

6:09

to like snowball. How does that they probably

6:11

mean beating? anti-8 It's

6:14

funny because like my first two

6:16

or three runs were really

6:19

really good weirdly I made

6:21

it to anti-7. I think like both

6:24

times the first couple of times I played after

6:27

the tutorial And

6:29

then the bunch of my runs after that

6:31

were way worse like I would die in like six or

6:33

whatever Because I just didn't

6:35

have as good of RNG

6:39

or whatever. I don't know that didn't get the

6:41

same cards didn't get the same stuff you can

6:44

choose different decks to start

6:46

with that do things like plus one hand size

6:48

or plus one discard or plus You

6:51

know this and that and the other thing there's

6:53

a whole bunch of them and you your collection

6:55

increases as you find

6:57

new things and

7:00

so you sort of That's

7:02

the kind of robe light element of it is

7:04

that you're unlocking more

7:07

things progressively and Some

7:09

how is that you just like get them from a

7:11

win or do you get cash from one and then

7:13

buy them some? They they unlock in different ways a

7:15

lot of them are like get 75 things

7:18

in your collection, which means like use

7:21

Oh Packs and jokers and

7:23

cards and and effects and stuff like that

7:25

some of them are like get 10 Card

7:29

enchantment types or whatever, you know stuff

7:31

like that generally is how you unlock them

7:34

And then you don't you don't

7:36

really start with money unless you use a certain deck

7:38

that like gives you start with $10 or whatever So

7:41

you just get them by doing that and then

7:43

when you start the game over sorry, you can

7:45

choose that deck or whatever um

7:49

Yeah, and certain jokers have different rarities

7:51

So like it's more or less

7:54

rare that they'll show up on your run But you can

7:56

do other things to increase the chances of rare stuff to

7:58

show you know, all the whole kitten

8:00

caboodle, the whole thing. And

8:03

yeah, you have discards, which is unusual,

8:05

and your hand size is kind of

8:07

variable. You end up with, you

8:09

know, seven or eight cards usually to

8:12

pick from, and you're trying to make the best hands.

8:15

And a lot of times you'll make like

8:17

one really good hand and just like

8:19

win the blind on that. Or sometimes

8:21

you use all four or five of your

8:23

hands to try and do it with smaller

8:25

things. So like, it starts on

8:27

anti one, level one is like the

8:29

small blind is $300 or whatever, which

8:31

you can pretty easily make in a

8:33

hand or two. Because you have no like,

8:37

any jokers or anything really to start out with. And then

8:39

by the end of it, you know, the blinds are like

8:41

40,000 or like,

8:43

I hear later after like I hear in like

8:46

anti 10 or whatever 12 when it like super

8:48

gets hard, there's like $2 million blinds and

8:50

stuff. And I'm just like, I can't even picture

8:52

that like the best I've, I think

8:54

I've gotten like 40,000 in a hand

8:56

once and I was like feeling really good about myself.

8:58

And then Jason's like, I needed 2 million. I was

9:01

like, what? Like, how's that

9:03

possible? So it seems

9:06

like there's definitely like a whole lot

9:09

of other depth that I

9:11

haven't even scratched the surface on yet, you know, and

9:13

I've played maybe like, I don't

9:15

know, I was on vacation. So it's like, I played probably like

9:18

six or seven or eight hours of it because you know, part of

9:20

that was on a plane. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I

9:23

mean, you had thoughts. I

9:26

mean, I'm looking at this. I mean, I'm

9:28

always intimidated by card games, but I enjoyed

9:33

Queen's blood. So these look like, but

9:35

like the thing is this completely different

9:37

you describing and me reading it like

9:39

they're like, obviously, I, you know,

9:41

I'm biased against card games or like they have

9:44

a lot of variety. I can tell that at

9:46

least that they play differently. This

9:48

one seems like the enhancing stuff

9:50

is like, like,

9:52

yeah, it's about, you mentioned RNG versus whether

9:55

there's anything you do like prep wise. And

9:57

since it's you, you earn

9:59

cards. But you like don't earn anything

10:01

else I guess is that what you were saying

10:03

like you can like increase your collection of cards

10:06

But you can change like so

10:08

I mean you know I've unlocked

10:10

like four or five decks you know so Okay,

10:13

this may change, but like the

10:16

stuff. I've unlocked is different

10:18

decks Generally that you start

10:20

the run with and some of them

10:22

give you extra hand size or hands

10:24

per turn or disc cards or like

10:27

I think one of the ones I have gives

10:29

you $10 to start the run stuff

10:32

like that, so it's like things

10:34

like that yeah, and I They

10:37

may or may not have different amounts of cards in them when

10:39

they start I think so far They've all just

10:41

started regular 52 cards, but you

10:43

can change that throughout your run Okay,

10:46

so you can control. It's

10:48

a fun mix of the

10:51

RNG is just like what card will you draw

10:53

like a normal card game and What

10:56

will show up in the shop? But

10:58

beyond that like you know We're

11:00

within that I should say you can exercise

11:03

as much control as you can exercise to like

11:05

try to control what's happening But yeah, okay

11:09

Then the two other questions I have

11:11

some reading the steam page on this Tarot

11:14

cards yeah in here and planet

11:17

card. Yeah, so tarot cards Enhance

11:20

an individual card and

11:22

planet card enhances like your whole like hand

11:24

is that how it works or my misunderstanding?

11:27

That's pretty close yeah Tarot

11:29

cards usually yeah enhance like a card some

11:31

of them. There's a bunch of different effects,

11:33

but one of them just like You

11:36

select two cards, and it'll make them both

11:38

bonus cards which give you extra

11:40

multiplier or extra chips

11:43

So like you do a hand

11:45

and face cards and aces give

11:47

you 10 or 11 chips And then

11:50

every other number gives you that amount of Numbers

11:53

chips so like an 8 card gives you 8 chips

11:55

whatever And then you

11:57

have a multiplier applied to that so

12:00

So like if you're playing

12:02

two pair like I was saying before and

12:04

like if that's base level 20 chips times

12:07

two you would get 40 chips

12:09

for that. Forty dollars, forty points,

12:12

whatever. So like the

12:14

basic goal of the game is just to increase that

12:16

chip number and increase that malt number. So

12:19

tarot cards can do that. They can

12:21

do different effects like making

12:23

cards, stuff like steel cards where it's

12:25

like okay if you keep this card in your

12:27

hand and don't play it, it'll add a 1.5

12:30

multiplier to your

12:32

whole hand. And so you get

12:34

all kinds of wacky strategies and they all have

12:36

synergies like that. Planet

12:38

cards basically up

12:40

the effectiveness and you level

12:43

up how powerful a

12:45

type of hand is. So

12:47

like you level up straights or flushes or

12:49

full houses or pairs or high card. And

12:53

so like a high card is the crappiest

12:55

hand you can have and

12:58

still like get something out of it. And

13:00

like base level it's like 10 chips times one or

13:02

something like that. But you could level it up to

13:04

be like more powerful. It

13:06

still isn't going to be as good as a straight

13:08

flush but you can make it

13:10

stronger if you wanted to. But maybe you get

13:13

a joker effect that's like hey do a high card and get a

13:15

billion points and you're like okay. From

13:18

the anti-z you played, which of the

13:20

three would you say is like the

13:22

most important to being successful? Joker cards,

13:24

tarot cards, or the planet cards? You

13:27

really need to have a good combination of

13:29

all three. But

13:31

in my early games I just

13:35

happened upon a perfect synergy of

13:38

a really good couple of joker cards that were

13:40

proccing on the same things that I

13:42

was able to upgrade with planet cards.

13:46

That run I think it was full houses

13:48

or three of a kinds or something like that, like

13:50

kind of medium rare. So I was able to like

13:52

discard and draw cards and get it

13:55

fairly often. It might have been

13:57

straights. But like so I had... Like

14:00

two or three jokers that were proccing on that

14:02

giving it more chips and malting it and then

14:04

I'd upgraded it to like level Three or four,

14:07

you know and like I almost beat the the

14:09

base game on like my second run Which

14:13

makes every other defeat feel so much worse,

14:15

but right But

14:17

yeah, you just kind of get lucky sometimes, but

14:19

it's all strategy, too Anyway,

14:24

I feel like the launch was definitely one of those games where it's just

14:26

like Play it. Yeah,

14:28

get it and play it and it's easier than hearing about

14:30

it. You know, cuz it's like kind

14:33

of hard to Describe it. Yeah,

14:35

well, well, I was still hoping to cuz

14:38

like this is like full-on Huber bait Oh,

14:41

yeah, like get him on a like a talking

14:43

about this without Huber feels like religious Like

14:46

he's gonna love I don't know if he's played

14:48

it yet, but he's gonna love it Don Have

14:50

you played this you would love I didn't have a

14:52

chance to play it at all Yeah, I haven't even

14:54

cracked the seal you intend to you and Huber need

14:56

to play this like this is this is like It's

14:59

like it's like darkest dungeon or

15:02

or rogue rogue legacy, but

15:04

poker Yeah, like it's it's

15:07

it's the most Huber bait that

15:09

ever happened And

15:13

Yeah, if there were like shit

15:15

there might be like bonds in there.

15:17

I don't know I haven't unlocked everything right

15:21

Nice Moving

15:25

on to some headlines Last

15:28

week we had a Nintendo Direct but Pokemon likes

15:30

to do their own thing So

15:33

we had a Pokemon presents this week Oh

15:36

done on the anniversary of When

15:39

Pokemon red and green were first released in

15:41

Japan Started with

15:43

a lot of quick updates on mobile games Don

15:45

you can just go ahead and play this I

15:47

queued up this cafe remix trailer just because it

15:49

was really cute But like

15:51

yeah Pokemon go is getting some

15:53

characters from the new series is

15:56

coming to Netflix the concierge series

15:58

Pokemon horizons Oh, yeah, because

16:00

concierge is already out. Have you seen concierge?

16:02

It's so cute. Uh,

16:05

yeah, I think so. Anyway, it's really cute.

16:07

Yeah. Ryko, Entei, and Siakun are

16:09

coming to Pokémon Sleep. Pokémon

16:12

Masters DX is getting an update. Every

16:14

time Pokémon Sleep makes you laugh. Yeah,

16:17

the cafe remix is getting

16:19

events. Pokémon Unite

16:21

is getting characters, etc. And

16:24

it was hilarious because even in the trailer, or

16:27

in the present, they were like, moving

16:29

on after all

16:32

the mobile games. Moving on. Anyway.

16:34

Yeah, I'm like, I'm over here, I'm

16:36

like, what is Pokémon Cafe? It looks

16:38

kind of cute. Oh,

16:41

I think it was more of a puzzle game, right, Damiani? Which

16:43

one? Pokémon Cafe. I

16:46

get them all mixed up. But yeah. I

16:49

think it is. Damiani. Sorry, I was up front.

16:51

I'll give you behind the scenes. I get told blood. I

16:55

have a cursory following of these Pokémon things

16:57

because there's so many of them at this

16:59

point. And I'm just like, you

17:02

know what? Where's the big

17:04

stuff? Have they done... We'll

17:06

get to it in a second. There's just too much. I'm

17:09

glad that people enjoyed it, but that

17:12

stuff doesn't feel like it needed to be... I guess it's Pokémon

17:14

present. It's Pokémon

17:16

Day. Yeah, that's insane. They're celebrating Pokémon.

17:19

Yeah. I mean, I get it. They're

17:22

just doing little things in every Pokémon game. But

17:24

you also said, even they were kind of

17:26

like, all right, moving along, it's like they

17:28

know what's up. But I think it was

17:30

more that they were excited to talk about

17:32

the biggest thing at the end, obviously. Yeah,

17:35

between those two, this is a very interesting

17:37

announcement. I'm curious to get your

17:39

take, Damiani. So you can roll

17:42

this. They're doing a Pokémon

17:44

trading card game pocket.

17:46

Wait, what? So... So

17:50

it's just a phone game of the paper

17:52

card game. Yes, and they show... I mean,

17:54

everybody else has one. ...that opening a pack

17:56

like a hundred times in this trailer, like

17:58

they just love showing that... that finger

18:00

going across the screen and slicing open

18:03

that pack that's the dopamine blood they

18:05

know what they're doing and the notification every

18:07

time you get a pack too they just keep

18:09

showing that but yeah

18:11

it is a digital version of

18:13

the card game with some

18:15

differences they seem to really

18:18

really really be emphasizing the collection part of

18:20

it yeah I was like can you play

18:22

yeah so there are they called them quick

18:24

battles that you can do but

18:26

they say it's a simplified rule set it's not

18:28

the full rule set in the in the trailer

18:30

he was like trying

18:33

to listen to this woman he's talking to

18:35

but he noticed he got the notifications are

18:37

he's like trying to look at his phone

18:39

while still like nodding at her like uh-huh

18:43

very real anyway but

18:45

yeah so you do see some some smaller

18:48

battles they have a thing in there too

18:50

called immersive cards oh

18:53

and those are like basically they like

18:56

they create like a diorama out

18:58

of the artwork honestly

19:00

that's kind of pretty sort of like let you

19:02

travel through the art a little bit yeah these

19:04

are awesome I love this kind of sick yeah

19:07

yeah I mean this is stupid but this is

19:09

kind of sick and then they say you get two

19:12

packs per day for

19:14

free just raw yeah but then

19:17

if they're for free then what kind of and

19:19

it's getting primarily developed by DNA of course with

19:28

you like creatures and Pokemon company involved

19:31

I feel like the UI of that game

19:33

is very strange like the background just being

19:35

that kind of like milky white hmm it's

19:38

kind of weird just the pack floating in the air

19:40

yeah yeah it feels I don't know it feels like

19:42

there's I don't know what else you would do but

19:44

there isn't like a table when you're playing against

19:47

somebody oh okay yeah which they did not show

19:49

in the trailer they

19:51

did show a little just a little very

19:53

quick yeah but that's why I mean it's

19:55

like the emphasis is so much yeah they

19:58

know what they're getting into They

20:00

even showed kind of like behind the

20:02

scenes of when they Like

20:06

with creatures like when they make the physical cards

20:08

They're showing them like kind of like evaluating them

20:10

on the cardstock and all of this And

20:13

so like we just you know We put a lot of work

20:15

into the real cards and yeah We're trying to make it feel

20:18

just as special as we can on the phone to and buy

20:20

it again buy it a second time I mean they get me

20:22

with magic. I buy them in the game and I buy

20:24

them in real life Yeah

20:27

Cards they showed off look pretty good They do

20:29

yeah, especially with the effects to enhance them that

20:31

you can't do with a practical card So

20:34

that's you know, pretty nice that they put that

20:36

effort in here Yeah,

20:40

it's good that they you know, they're

20:42

keeping this going and stuff the first

20:44

time they brought trading card game to

20:46

digital format Was it like was

20:48

it GBA or Gameboy Color? What was the first?

20:51

Oh, yeah, they've got among you boy Yeah,

20:53

boy like color and then like they had

20:55

the online one like trading card online that

20:57

ran for like forever I don't even

20:59

know if it's still up. I'm sure he's down since

21:01

they have this going right now The

21:04

original magic online is still going so

21:07

Yeah, it's just good to

21:09

see them put this on, you know,

21:11

other devices It's only on like an

21:13

iOS and Android But you know, it's

21:15

like people are like maybe put this

21:17

on even more platforms, but probably not

21:19

I mean, this is like it's not

21:21

coming to switch No,

21:24

I mean it's very like a phone design and

21:26

it's being done by DNA. Although they did unite.

21:28

So Yeah, I was like it

21:30

could I mean absolutely could come to switch There

21:32

were some switch games that use the vertical orientation

21:35

as well. So I mean you can micro transact

21:37

on there just as much But

21:39

also like the big one is like if they ever get

21:41

it like Dane to put one of these things on like

21:43

PC at some point Sure, you know,

21:46

it's like you're straight in card game online

21:48

was on Windows

21:50

so they put there on there. So will they

21:52

do it again? It's like will you give us

21:54

access to this like so will this one come

21:56

to PC? Will this come

21:58

to switch? But you know keep

22:00

your eyes out on that if that if that

22:03

comes over but yeah I mean the train car

22:05

game is huge So this is like an you

22:07

know a nice way to like keep it going

22:09

in a digital form and also Past

22:11

few years like physical cards. It's been a pain in the ass

22:13

to collect. Yeah, you know if you're trying to get into it

22:16

It's just you know Scalpers and

22:18

collectors have been like fighting, you know over

22:20

them left and right So your newcomer trying

22:22

to get in kind of sucks. So this

22:24

is maybe like the next best thing and

22:27

You know, you won't have like the physical

22:29

tactile, but at least you know They're putting

22:31

in the effort It seems like with the

22:33

the card designs and the effects so that

22:35

you get something very aesthetically pleasing. That's kind

22:37

of cool Yeah, I really

22:39

enjoy that. I mean magic arena

22:42

is my like only real Point

22:45

of comparison on something like this, but I like the like

22:48

Animations of characters coming in and voice lines and

22:50

all that stuff on the battlefield. I wonder how

22:52

much they're gonna do For that

22:54

in here, but those immersive cards are cool. I

22:56

like that. It's a fun idea Chat is saying

22:58

the original Pokemon TGC online is still up. Okay,

23:01

rain Sun. It says it shut down last year

23:04

Although it says progress is carried over so I

23:06

guess maybe there was a new version released I

23:08

don't again. I defer to you chat. I don't

23:10

follow the the trading card game at all, but

23:13

Yeah, I like does that mean it

23:16

might be transferring to this new one or they

23:18

get to start clean That's that would be like a

23:20

quick there's a slightly newer version of the client for

23:22

the old one. Okay So they

23:24

have the PC version running with this do you

23:26

I guess the question will there be any interfacing

23:28

between the mobile version and this I wonder if

23:31

you'll get like a Bonus

23:33

pack or something, right? Yeah, cuz they didn't they

23:35

didn't allude to that at all But

23:38

it's still you know, they haven't announced

23:40

the release date either just this year But

23:44

what you do follow Damiani we

23:46

got our next big

23:48

boy Yeah, although still

23:50

kind of a spin-off Pokemon legends

23:53

Z to a following up on Arceus

23:57

In a way. Yeah. Well, yeah, they are

24:00

Established what we love us thought that

24:02

legends would become a new franchise. Yeah for although It's

24:05

not a pass game. So as far as we

24:07

have like I guess I mean we're guessing here

24:09

It's not a pass game, but at least

24:11

not in the far past where we could

24:14

tell like Arceus was yeah I mean, there's

24:16

some hints that it may actually be futuristic

24:18

rather than Yeah, yeah, and

24:21

then they got that logo. I mean I've seen lots of

24:23

like fun memes like, you know people just call

24:25

it pizza I Saw

24:28

a Pokemon legends Zelda because it looks like green

24:30

Z a and I'm like, yeah They watch they're

24:32

gonna make it like Zelda like even

24:34

though it's not The important thing

24:36

from this is that after

24:39

all these announcements We do not have

24:41

a mainline Pokemon coming out in 2024

24:43

right first time and I don't know

24:45

when but that is a Good

24:48

sign in terms of good development

24:50

team game freak Maybe taking a

24:52

little bit more time to develop

24:54

these games probably saw

24:56

like how Scarlet

24:58

and violet kind of like push the boundaries

25:01

of You know, it's sold

25:03

very well people liked it But it felt like

25:05

the consensus was man He just like put a

25:07

little bit more polish on this spend a little

25:09

bit more time Like this would have sold well

25:12

if you spend another six months or nine months

25:14

or whatever on it Anyway, like why why the

25:16

rush like it could be even better Yeah,

25:19

and I that's that's part

25:21

of it. That's like the copia man. Sirs

25:24

that hey They're actually finally listening and even

25:26

you know, you could argue what this is.

25:28

This is a legend This is not technically

25:30

mainline but Arceus

25:33

was a very big game an original new

25:35

concept So we're kind of expecting, you know

25:37

big things from this as well So I

25:39

do think this is an ambitious project and

25:41

I think it does need to take its

25:43

time The other thing is a lot

25:45

of people were looking at this presentation for

25:48

any indication for Nintendo to be

25:50

kind of tipping their hand at

25:52

where Switch's successor might

25:54

be falling and there are people

25:56

who thought if some kind of Pokemon was released in

25:58

this fall then it's like, oh,

26:01

that's like a holiday title. They're shoring up

26:03

Nintendo sales. They're gonna help it push past

26:05

the milestone of becoming the best-selling platform of

26:07

all time. And they're good through the holiday.

26:10

But now it's this, there's nothing in the

26:12

holiday for Pokemon as far as we know,

26:14

and nothing from Nintendo first party as far

26:16

as we know yet. It's like, hmm, that

26:19

is a very wide gap. And we have

26:21

all these rumors. So it's like, is this-

26:23

A picky one gap, yeah. It's like, would

26:25

this be a launch title or a launch

26:28

window? Which historically, they don't do that for

26:30

the Pokemon company. They do not play those

26:32

games out right away. They like to have the

26:34

install base built up. So would it be potentially

26:37

cross-gen? But also this, I

26:39

mean, this game, it's

26:41

like they didn't show off anything but

26:43

like a concept video. So

26:45

it'd be very telling if we see

26:48

anything in action that's gameplay-wise in the

26:50

coming months, because there's a lot of

26:52

people who think certain games can't be

26:55

shown off yet, even if they're cross-gen,

26:57

because they have to officially announce Switch

26:59

to Successor and be like, this footage

27:01

is running on the new hardware. Right.

27:04

This could easily come out in the

27:06

first quarter of next year and still

27:09

fit into this upcoming fiscal year. And

27:11

the Switch successor could fit into that fiscal

27:14

year as well, and it all adds up

27:16

with all the reports. So that's totally possible.

27:18

But it would be one hell

27:20

of a launch title or launch window title to

27:22

have a Pokemon Legends,

27:24

like this game, at launch, that

27:27

would be massive and would ensure

27:29

whatever amount they're trying to sell

27:31

in that timeframe would probably sell,

27:34

unless it's, especially they don't

27:36

make it cross-gen. They don't make it cross-gen, you're gonna have to

27:38

buy that new hardware. But it's a lot of questions. Well, because

27:40

the new hardware will have a whole other gimmick. That's why they

27:42

can't show it too, is we don't even know what the whole

27:44

thing is gonna be. Well, and the other question too is, we

27:48

don't know what cross-gen looks

27:50

like. Right. They've talked

27:52

a lot about emphasizing backwards compatibility with

27:54

Switch games and that kind of thing.

27:56

So it could be like you

27:59

buy a game. And it's you

28:01

know it's kind of like what the the

28:03

Xbox you know it's like smart

28:05

smart delivery or whatever I

28:08

mean they use some interesting wording they

28:10

said switch Platforms or switch

28:12

like switch family of system. They say

28:14

that anyway in that's that's been ongoing

28:17

Yeah, okay, like alright. That's a

28:19

catch-all But they're like on the

28:21

official announcement page on Pokemon calm

28:24

it says really things simultaneously worldwide

28:26

in 2025 We're like well that

28:28

just means everywhere in the world

28:30

But like when is a poke you mainline Pokemon

28:32

game been staggered like a staggered

28:34

like worldwide release So like that seems

28:37

very interesting to say that like when

28:39

you hear it in other contexts. It's

28:41

like mostly Oh, it's releasing on like

28:44

all platforms worldwide So I

28:46

I think they're being a little bit cute with their

28:48

wording here on purpose to be hey We

28:51

were being as ambiguous as possible Possible, but

28:54

yeah, who knows like honestly to me

28:56

it I see this and

28:58

I think dang yeah Maybe maybe the switch

29:00

successor is not coming out to like you

29:02

one next year because they want to

29:04

put this on Onto that

29:06

and have it like be cross-gen who knows

29:09

but for the concept itself. We're going back

29:11

to XY the the callous region We're

29:14

going back to Lumio City Like

29:17

the main like circle like yeah city area

29:19

of times in Hawaii Yeah,

29:21

Paris, France, so we're getting a lot of that

29:24

and is it just going to be this city

29:26

and You know they're just

29:28

gonna scale that up because you remember our

29:30

case was Massive like all these

29:32

huge environments you got to go through with

29:34

a hub environment Isn't gonna be

29:37

that where the city's like I mean people making

29:39

fun of it saying like is it just gonna

29:41

be like Midgard Final Fantasy 7 works like just

29:43

a giant like sprawling city Well it does even

29:45

it does sound like that because there's yeah because

29:47

I was reading something and saying that like it's

29:49

not gonna Let you go out to the entire

29:52

region so No,

29:58

it's the reason that's wrong actually Oh,

30:00

okay. Yeah. Oh, so

30:02

yeah, yeah, go ahead. So yeah, so

30:04

that to me makes me feel

30:06

like they are focusing more

30:09

on that city itself. The other thing

30:11

being these things that they

30:13

threw in the trailer about like

30:16

the urban redevelopment plan and

30:18

the people in Pokemon living

30:20

together. So I

30:22

really wonder if it's going to

30:24

be some like crazy multi-layered map

30:26

that you're exploring around rooftops

30:29

and using different Pokemon effects to

30:31

get higher up skyscrapers or maybe

30:34

you jump into a fountain and go into

30:36

some sewers. There's

30:38

a lot of potential that you could actually do with

30:40

the full cityscape. Yeah. I

30:42

mean, we had that city environment with

30:44

like Rhyme City and the Detective Pikachu

30:47

game, but they're very sectioned off. So

30:50

we've never really had like a giant city to

30:52

walk through. It was like showing in the movie

30:54

of Detective Pikachu. That would be kind of cool

30:56

to just go through a living city

30:58

or giant town for once in one of

31:01

these games. Arceus, we were

31:03

in the past, so like it, that hub

31:05

environment was a little bit of a town,

31:07

but I didn't feel as alive as

31:09

I probably could have. So if they're going

31:11

for something like this, it could be unique

31:13

concept where it's urban and like you're going

31:16

on exploring and dealing with Pokemon in urban

31:18

environments instead of like more natural environments. As

31:20

you said, like going through buildings, going inside

31:22

of buildings, going like maybe underground going on

31:24

rooftops, as you said, who knows what other

31:26

like clever things they're going to throw in

31:28

there. But it's, you

31:31

know, it's very intriguing if it is going to

31:33

be confined to a city environment. I'm very curious.

31:36

I'm also curious if it's going to be

31:38

structured, as we said earlier, just like the

31:40

first one, if it is going to be

31:42

like mission based, like, but like a lot

31:44

of about it is going out and capturing

31:47

and, you know, documenting Pokemon.

31:50

It's like, you know, there are battles, but

31:52

like a lot of it is just like

31:55

the exploration factor, the engagement with your environment.

31:57

Will it relies heavily on that? And what

31:59

kind of. quality of life refinements will

32:01

they make on top

32:03

of that as well. So I mean

32:05

I'm pretty excited for this especially if

32:08

it's gonna be on like new hardware

32:10

and a launch title like might

32:12

be like the most excited I've been for like a Pokemon

32:14

in a while. X and Y I

32:16

really liked X and Y reviewed it back at game

32:18

trailers. Kyle Bossman was

32:20

like over my shoulder constantly when I was

32:22

doing that review. He kept asking

32:25

me what score I was giving it and I was

32:27

like go away Kyle. He's

32:29

like so he's giving it. I was like stop. I

32:32

gave it a 9. But the big thing yes

32:37

I saw chat we were getting to it

32:39

mega evolutions are coming back to show it at the end

32:41

of the trailer this was a like people

32:44

now like love it I felt

32:46

like people that went back and forth on this

32:48

for the longest time but now it seems they're

32:50

like back in vogue so yeah they're

32:52

coming back maybe because everything we've seen since people

32:54

didn't like what they've done so it's like now

32:57

I give us back mega evolutions these we'll

32:59

take those pretty good. Explain that's

33:01

about to right is actually like

33:04

temporarily evolved beyond the regular evolution.

33:08

Yeah mega evolution it's

33:11

further increases ability I'm reading the

33:14

description here you

33:16

need like the keystone Pokemon they hold

33:18

a megastone for the species and

33:20

then they mega evolved during the battle I remember

33:23

like what was it like it was a Mewtwo

33:25

was like the like the big one Charizard oh

33:27

wait every Pokemon never mind I'm wrong every Pokemon

33:30

capable of mega evolution has one mega

33:32

evolved form with the exception of Charizard

33:34

and Mewtwo both have two so

33:36

yeah they were those were special

33:38

ones but yeah that was that

33:40

was like a big deal when it happened I

33:43

remember that was like the start of them trying

33:45

like something a little bit like crazy with like

33:47

one of the gameplay hooks I'm like oh they're

33:49

really gonna go with this and the evolutions

33:52

of Pokemon like we like anything

33:54

that takes some of like your favorite

33:56

Pokemon and does something new with them not just like a

33:58

you know just a pea- But mechanically,

34:01

like what abilities can I learn? Like how

34:03

is it like impact like the battles? Because

34:06

battle systems are the ones that like we constantly

34:08

like feel are kind of like the same over and

34:10

over throughout each generation with just like a little bit

34:12

of tinkering here and there. So

34:15

like this is like maybe like a misremembering,

34:18

but to me, this is the first. Oh

34:20

crap, like they're trying at least it's flashy.

34:22

At least this is like standing out as

34:24

something different. Even if on a superficial level,

34:27

it's not terribly, you know, revolutionizing

34:30

the formula of the battle system in

34:32

Pokémon. Yeah,

34:36

I'm very, yeah, again, I'm very curious that the

34:38

whole people in Pokémon living together, because like you're

34:40

saying, it's very, it feels very detective

34:42

Pikachu, that description. When

34:45

it had like, it was funny,

34:47

because when it first sketched the town,

34:49

it almost looked like an Edwardian period

34:51

or maybe earlier. And like, that

34:54

got me like, oh, is this especially

34:56

with like things being covered over and like it

34:59

was very monarch, the like paper

35:01

and stuff at the beginning. I was thinking like, oh,

35:04

is this when it like when when people

35:06

in Pokémon like first started cohabitating really like

35:08

in an urban setting? And then I was

35:10

like, it would be kind of

35:12

cool if I doubt it, but like, it'd

35:14

be kind of cool if they explored that

35:16

like the legal and emotional and

35:18

societal ramifications of like, like,

35:22

basically like co mingling, you know, like, and

35:24

then you got metaphors and back alley, so

35:26

greta kits. Yeah, like,

35:29

like, hey, if they drew through

35:31

here, hey, bud, society, you know,

35:33

yeah. Also forgot x no,

35:36

I was the first one that Shane went away

35:38

from sprites for all

35:40

like three. Oh, Pokemon.

35:43

So that was another big deal. I forgot

35:45

about that. I've

35:47

just pictured these little

35:49

like, like playing dice or whatever. And

35:52

really see. Yeah.

35:55

So obviously, we

35:57

haven't even seen the game yet. Just

35:59

the concept. trailer so we'll have to see

36:02

where it goes from here because they

36:04

can't show us what's on the super

36:06

switch blood right okay next

36:08

up I gotta put

36:10

a couple of hours into

36:12

no rest for the wicked

36:15

this is the action RPG

36:17

from moon studio the makers

36:19

of Ori yeah and this

36:21

thing is pretty sick we're

36:23

sure a little of the character creators where you

36:25

start off like we give this like total

36:28

freakazoid proportions thing yeah

36:33

and what's interesting is you don't

36:35

really change your body proportions you

36:38

just kind of change your face but

36:41

but yeah it's you know as you

36:44

might expect like really cool kind of

36:46

that blending of like these are

36:48

3d models but it's very

36:50

hand-painted style or whatever and then

36:53

Don you can go ahead and move

36:56

on to the the opening cinema on

36:58

this thing is just fully

37:00

fully gorgeous like

37:03

just the the lighting and everything

37:05

that they've got going on and

37:08

and there's

37:11

good like pretty good

37:13

character acting and stuff here you you

37:16

kind of get this introduction where the

37:18

the old king has passed away and

37:20

everyone's kind of you know

37:23

they're sort of paying their respects and then

37:25

talking about the future and

37:28

the the new king coming up is basically

37:30

is like alright well I'm gonna

37:32

go and basically

37:35

take over it seems what

37:37

is what do you think the pestilence is spreading

37:40

so they're saying that you know

37:42

the world will be reborn and then

37:44

he like just see a bunch of

37:47

ships going going out to to

37:50

take over these different areas but

37:52

then yeah like not long

37:55

after this you basically get like washed

37:58

up on a beach and you

38:00

punch some crabs and stuff like that.

38:02

Classic. Classic. And

38:04

then if... Sorry,

38:09

Don, you can actually skip to the next clip for

38:11

this because this first clip is a little bit on

38:14

the slower side. But

38:17

yeah, the gameplay itself

38:20

is like... It's

38:23

this interesting mashup

38:25

almost of... It's

38:28

somewhere between Diablo

38:31

and a Souls game. So

38:35

you've got the top down look on

38:38

the world. They said in

38:41

the preview materials that

38:43

the world is curved a bit, kind

38:45

of like Animal Crossing to add to

38:47

the perspective. Don

38:52

Donny hates it.

38:54

But then your

38:56

attacks and everything are very

38:58

deliberate. You've got a stamina

39:00

meter. You've got

39:02

a whole weight system going on. So you

39:04

have like, depending on what kind of armor

39:06

that you're wearing, you have a light normal

39:09

and heavy mode. And

39:12

it's interesting because your dodges

39:15

really change based on

39:17

that. So like when you're light, you get like

39:19

this quick little dash and

39:22

then medium, the normal, you have more of

39:24

a roll. And

39:26

then the heavy, there's still a roll, but then you

39:29

also get this thing, which I think is interesting because it

39:31

gives you a little bit more of an incentive to go

39:33

heavy, is if you

39:35

hold both trigger buttons, you

39:38

can actually like stampede into

39:40

a person and knock them over. That's

39:43

kind of cool. But

39:46

yeah, you have to really pay pretty close attention

39:48

to animation and

39:50

all of that stuff, like figure out when the right

39:52

time is to get in and attack

39:55

guys. There's also

39:57

a fair amount of

39:59

stuff. amount of exploration,

40:02

like I think this like emphasizes

40:04

exploration a lot more than even

40:06

Diablo normally would because there's like

40:08

all these little pockets of areas

40:10

where you can like clamber

40:13

into like this little hole

40:15

or crawl across cliffs or

40:17

like if you run at

40:20

if you run at a ledge, it

40:23

will your auto jump kind of like in

40:25

like Zelda Ocarina of time. So it's like

40:27

you find a ledge and you run and

40:30

you'll you'll hop across it. And

40:32

so there's like a lot of chests and stuff that

40:34

you can find that way. And then

40:38

trying to think about what

40:40

else Oh, and leveling up, it's

40:43

got a lot of the

40:45

same kind of like souls kind

40:47

of ways that you you assign

40:50

skill points. So you

40:53

every level, it seems like you get three skill points.

40:56

And then you've got your health and you've

40:58

got your stamina. And then

41:00

you've got the different things

41:02

that scale with different weapons. So you've

41:05

got strength index and int in faith.

41:07

Okay. But then you also have like

41:10

a little mushroom hat. Yeah, yeah, I found

41:13

this mushroom guy and he was kind of

41:15

a pain in the butt case. He was

41:17

throwing fire bombs a lot. But

41:19

I found the mushroom hat. Another

41:22

thing that was interesting with the weight is

41:24

that it seems like sometimes when you

41:27

eat certain foods,

41:29

it will temporarily boost

41:33

like your weight because I would actually like

41:35

go back and forth. Yeah. But no, it's like

41:40

sometimes like temporarily like make you lighter. Oh.

41:43

And so I would have these things like I

41:45

you know, I would eat like some mushroom stew

41:47

or whatever. And like, okay, I'm I'm a little

41:49

bit lighter now I can do the past. You

41:52

got a little energy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's

41:54

it's interesting. There is there

41:56

are a lot of like little like resource

41:59

points and stuff. So you pick up things

42:01

like axes that you can't

42:03

use in combat as well as like pickaxes and

42:05

like fishing poles and stuff like that so

42:08

that you can get like wood and Like

42:12

different types of like metals and like and

42:14

and fishing that you can you

42:16

can buy recipes and then you can cook the recipes

42:20

With with different effects and

42:22

that was actually one of the things that like I'm like having a

42:24

little bit of a heart hard time with

42:26

is like when I got to the boss fight

42:28

is That like I was

42:30

burning through food And

42:33

when you go back to the checkpoint when

42:35

you die like it doesn't reset to the

42:37

state you were in It

42:40

was like no like all of that food that I

42:43

burned is burned gone Yeah, cuz there's

42:45

also some things you with when you

42:47

die it affects the durability of your

42:49

weapons as well So

42:51

when you you die you lose weapon durability and

42:53

then eventually you have to start repairing it And

42:57

then same thing with like you're different Like

43:01

your your armor and stuff like that, but

43:04

it is especially like early on where

43:06

this starts off it was pretty

43:08

tricky trying to find that balance of

43:12

You know, I've got better armor,

43:15

but it's making me too heavy and and

43:17

figuring figuring all of that out There's

43:21

also There's

43:24

a little bit of a stealth system tour if you

43:26

can manage the sneak up on somebody you can get

43:28

a good Backstabbing on them Won't

43:31

always necessarily kill them, but you can stab

43:33

them and then knock them over And

43:36

then yeah that that boss was just

43:38

like a real like super freako Like

43:43

just this big huge honking

43:45

thing there's like eating

43:47

bodies on the battlefield or whatever Like

43:54

the enemy and lost

43:56

designs here especially really crazy. Yeah.

43:59

Yeah like He kind

44:01

of swings around a lot. So it took quite a

44:03

few tries for me to figure out like when

44:06

it was safe for me to move

44:08

out of the way and block with a

44:10

shield and Afterwards, I read

44:13

the preview guide and was like, you know, you

44:15

can parry him and I'm like, okay. I

44:19

was not brave enough to try to parry this

44:21

crazy dude But

44:25

I did see a couple of other weapons There's

44:29

like I had like a regular sword

44:33

There is you can hold the button to

44:35

charge Do a

44:37

stronger attack that way. There's also if

44:40

you Hold

44:42

the right bumper There's

44:44

like a set of attacks they call runic

44:47

attacks and so

44:49

basically have that orange bar between your

44:51

XP bar and your health bar and

44:54

When the orange bar fills up then you can

44:56

use your runic attacks And so basically you hold

44:58

our our one to toggle and then you can

45:00

execute that and the one with the main sword

45:03

I was using was like a like

45:05

a kind of dash in and uppercut

45:08

But you still have to time it. Well, it can be

45:10

totally interrupted And so then

45:12

you've let's burn your meter and got hit

45:15

at the same time But

45:17

I also had found like a pair of

45:20

little stabby daggers Okay,

45:23

good I thought you might

45:25

like but then you don't have your shield but obviously you don't

45:27

usually use the shield I

45:29

also found like a big old honking

45:31

claymore. So if you're into

45:34

that great sword kind of build you

45:36

can go at that Because I

45:38

was wondering like the the movement and attacking and

45:40

stuff Seemed pretty deliberate in the first

45:42

footage that we were seeing like it didn't even look

45:44

like you were running But I think now

45:46

you're kind of dashing all around and stuff. So

45:49

it seemed like you were just RP walking I

45:51

guess some of the time. Um Yeah,

45:54

I mean so like you gonna hold so you

45:56

yeah, so it's a button to to dodge and

45:58

then you can hold it to run But

46:00

it burns stamina pretty fast, it looks like. Yeah,

46:04

like, what's interesting is that I think

46:06

that you can still dodge

46:09

when you have no stamina, but

46:12

you're just, then you're not recovering. Like

46:14

it's stopping you from recovering. So,

46:17

I think that's kind of an interesting

46:19

concession there. Yeah. But,

46:22

yeah, trying to think about

46:24

what else there is. Oh

46:27

yeah, I did pick up some rings

46:29

too, so I got a feather ring.

46:31

So like, that helped me with the

46:33

equip load there. Like accessories. Yeah, definitely

46:36

has the nice little

46:38

shortcuts with like knocking down ladders or...

46:43

I'm transfixed by this B roll. You

46:45

almost won't... Okay, there you go. Yeah, knocking

46:47

for a bridge. But

46:50

yeah. But

46:52

so far, yeah, it's

46:54

feeling pretty good. Cool. It

46:57

looks really freaking cool. It's beautiful. Yeah,

46:59

yeah, like the character interactions and stuff are really

47:02

gorgeous. And

47:04

you know, this is going up

47:06

after they just had their own live stream and

47:09

they've got other people streaming it and stuff too.

47:11

Cool. So you can see

47:13

some other people play through this section. Do

47:15

we have a date or anything on this? As

47:18

of my right now, I don't think that

47:20

we have a date. But

47:23

I don't know what they've announced during the

47:25

stream. They might have actually announced the

47:27

date already by the time you're watching this. But

47:32

it's looking promising. Obviously I love

47:34

Ori, love the gameplay feel of Ori and I like

47:37

what I feel from this so

47:39

far. Yeah. You

47:41

just, you know, you have to

47:43

be... You have to

47:45

learn those attack patterns and stuff, you know. But

47:48

it's, like I said, it's a little bit on that slower

47:50

pace to where it makes sense. Like, okay, swing,

47:53

swing, swing, and then back up. Yeah.

47:56

Because somebody's going to come at you with something. Cool.

48:04

Dummy, you had any questions? Since I know you

48:06

liked Ori, but you're not as

48:08

much into these top-down action RPGs

48:10

as often. I mean,

48:12

it is incredible that they can make something that looks

48:14

like this coming off of Ori. It

48:16

just, gameplay-wise, is so

48:19

drastically different than Ori, yet

48:21

it just shows

48:23

how talented they are. So good

48:25

to see it's coming along nicely.

48:27

Yeah. Yep, I'm

48:30

definitely eager to

48:32

play more now. All right, let's

48:34

get into that January sales

48:37

report. I'm

48:39

a little bummed it happened on a week that Huber's

48:42

out, but once in a while. We're talking about poker.

48:44

We're talking about sales reports. Yep. Don't

48:46

go on vacation, Huber. It's

48:48

OK. It's OK. He's celebrating family birthdays.

48:51

It's all good. Yeah. From

48:55

Sirkana, Matt Pescatella. Projected

48:58

total market spending grew 15% in January,

49:02

compared to a year ago, reaching $5.1

49:05

billion for the month. But

49:08

he did note that this January is

49:10

a five-week period. Last January was a

49:12

four-week period. Very sneaky.

49:14

One of those, it's not sneaky. It's

49:17

just that things line

49:19

up differently some years. Yeah. He's

49:23

also been doing these engagement trackers,

49:25

looking at monthly active users. You

49:28

know who topped that? Who? Palworld.

49:31

Oh, of course. Topped that monthly

49:33

engagement tracker on Steam. On

49:36

Xbox, it was in third place, behind Fortnite

49:38

and Call of Duty. Wow. And

49:41

Shrouded also did well. Yeah, I've heard

49:43

that's doing really well. Yeah, seventh on

49:45

Steam for monthly active users. That's huge.

49:47

That's really good. January

49:50

hardware spending fell 4% compared to

49:52

January 2023. Makes

49:55

sense. Growth In Xbox

49:57

hardware dollar sales was unable.

50:00

You are set declines across other

50:02

platforms. Rpf I was

50:04

best selling on both in units

50:06

and dollars. Switch. With second

50:08

and unit sales x box of second

50:10

in dollar sales. Ah

50:13

oh yeah this is one of the big ones in

50:15

the for Come up later. With

50:17

thirty nine months in the market. Life.

50:20

To date, unit sales a Playstation

50:22

Five are now tracking seven percent.

50:25

And. Had a Playstation Four, Space

50:27

Mom and sixty eight percent above

50:29

the Playstation Three Has yell time

50:31

for P S three young way

50:33

behind places into Brownlee Guy would

50:36

love to see the Playstation Two

50:38

comparison. Cause that

50:40

is that. Played the fastest

50:42

now but yet still. Feel.

50:44

Story Pm for was doing really

50:47

well. I'm young the and

50:49

be a three it took this price

50:51

Got something to get people there are

50:53

it honestly to get them. Spending

50:56

on accessories increased forty five percent

50:58

compared to January twenty twenty three.

51:00

Game Pad: about. Didn't. I

51:02

had to anything I forsee birther. oh yeah

51:04

I. Didn't. Bad spending increased

51:07

by over fifty percent year on year

51:09

with the Duel Sense Eds being the

51:11

best selling accessory has been them That's

51:13

our censored for New Months Yeah, Thrift.

51:16

On. Playstation said he has an hour

51:19

or so lessons right? plans. dress

51:21

her of ah so in terms

51:23

of funny tracking things are they

51:25

moved the Playstation Portable. From

51:27

the hardware category to the accessories category they're

51:29

trying to figure out what to do with

51:31

this thing. I would say that that actually

51:33

makes sense. Yeah because if you can do

51:36

a me when the my itself need a

51:38

main unit to use it so it is

51:40

by nature an accessory did a very flashy

51:42

accessory. ah it ranked so things are hard

51:44

to get. Be a lie right? Warfare came

51:46

out on with cross aids in i don't

51:49

need a portal but. Yeah.

51:51

Couldn't get one I tried. I

51:53

looked like as every. Everywhere

51:56

can run around fifth among

51:58

video accessories and country they're

52:00

spending. Largely. Because.

52:02

They. Didn't sell and what they can may up

52:04

right now they're gone. out the door says they

52:07

come in. Or

52:09

another which surprised me. manipulate like we

52:11

are. Only I could we have disastrous.

52:13

Yeah, we're on. Holiday I think.

52:15

honestly thy Gn review. Because

52:17

that's what I saw that as a tell me

52:19

there's some to this thing where he was like

52:22

I was surprised like this things actually pretty good

52:24

you know. I think maybe that turns

52:26

of people around? Certainly. Impacted me.

52:30

Miss Get into the top

52:32

twenty. For. The month though. We

52:35

have one two, three, four, five,

52:37

six, New. Games and this

52:39

January or January and then said what

52:41

the hell happened to January Alive and

52:44

I feel that January with that. There's

52:46

a lot of games, a hero other

52:48

anyway and diverse to is not January

52:50

however you know how diverse to news

52:52

all pretty for next month. Or

52:54

the Us combine physical and digital dollar

52:57

sales of held Adverse To during it's

52:59

second week. More. Than

53:01

doubled. The. Last week Volume.

53:04

That. That know area and mutual

53:06

area. Regarded. That's

53:08

of legs. Such great word

53:10

of mouth. Again, Sick? Yeah.

53:12

super word of mouth on that one. But.

53:15

That is a February I am

53:17

Ram survive. The. New games

53:20

where of. Are. Deck a

53:22

second A don't own a the uptake

53:24

a baby that second place persona years

53:26

forth So they reload Prince of Persia

53:28

Last Crown. Prince of

53:30

Persia with The Thirteenth. Yep. Earth.

53:33

Suicide. Squad with lots of

53:35

a suicide bottom third place.

53:38

Oh did I. Be.

53:40

Interview with Morning Cel though Elzer and

53:42

on Uber was playing either numbers we

53:44

would it's for going to be. First

53:47

are. a number one's called it

53:49

has to be yeah scholar dog an

53:51

affidavit it is to add as but

53:53

it is that closer holiday as so

53:55

that i have to be the suggests

53:57

that needed like a mega taught in

53:59

january Like yeah, Call of Duty every

54:01

year. There's one more that you should get

54:03

in one more that you probably will Well,

54:06

what was the one that you were playing?

54:08

I can't uh the the the the Sega

54:10

series not Persona the other Sega game Like

54:12

a Dragon Infinite well, there we go. Gosh,

54:14

7th place. Hey, wow, that's really good. Where's

54:16

that moment door chart blood? I

54:20

got a moment door. Dang it Our

54:24

other new one is Chuchutsu

54:26

Kaisen Cursed Clash at 19

54:28

points Oh, wow. Yeah,

54:31

anime game. The power of

54:33

anime. The power of anime. Well, Bandai Namco's

54:35

getting rid of anime games That

54:39

was the joke when they said they're

54:41

consolidating on like established IPs. Someone's like

54:44

what about license games? Yeah Like

54:48

well because like they don't make like some

54:50

of their anime games haven't been very good

54:53

lately So I mean I'd say like always

54:55

been the case. It's a It's

54:58

a crap. It's a crapshoot man. Yeah, some of

55:00

those games are good Some of them are whatever

55:02

your your your anime games your your

55:04

Call of Duties is your Pokemon's your

55:07

Madden's They don't have to be good. Well,

55:09

I mean actual anime license versus like

55:11

anime s games like tails, right? Right,

55:13

right But they're

55:15

gonna be licensed games like one-piece and

55:18

Dragon Ball. Well Dragon Balls like Generally

55:21

still decently. No matter what they do with

55:23

it, but the Naruto and the One-piece

55:26

games seem to maybe not sell

55:28

as well as they use especially Naruto

55:31

cuz they're like just shoving Boruto. Sorry

55:35

But I

55:38

heard that bar sucks and that people

55:41

like bar to suck. That's what I

55:43

heard I heard

55:45

people like Boruto suffer drift on

55:47

their PlayStation. Yeah They get have

55:49

normal PlayStation controller. Here's you say

55:51

more tone is like And

55:54

they don't like meaningful kills or shotguns or

55:56

poker games. That's right bonds

56:02

Um, about that Tekken

56:04

8 though, Tekken 8 surpassed a

56:06

million on its first day. Wow.

56:09

Uh, two million in its first month, so that's pretty

56:11

good. That's really good. That's good

56:13

to hear, especially after what Harada said

56:16

about the development of cost of Tekken

56:18

8 being like, how many

56:20

times more expensive than Tekken 7? Two

56:22

times, almost three times more than Tekken 7.

56:25

Wow. And like, how much more expensive did

56:27

the games make today than they were in the 90s? Yeah,

56:30

you said ten times that. It's

56:32

like, yeah, that's like a million sounds great,

56:34

but you know, is it enough? Like this

56:36

is the question we're going to be asking

56:38

now, especially with all the

56:41

layoffs that have been happening and the,

56:43

like everyone doubling down on established IPs,

56:45

playing it safe, only making safe bets,

56:48

is a million per game enough?

56:50

Is five million enough? It's like, I

56:53

don't know. Like, is there even a magic number

56:55

that's even safe? Like, it doesn't, might

56:57

not even matter. Yeah, I mean, obviously

56:59

it just comes back to budgets and marketing budgets and all

57:01

that stuff, but that's the thing, like with

57:04

the Suicide Squad thing, it's

57:06

like, yeah, it's not meeting

57:08

our expectations. And I'm like, everyone

57:10

tried to tell you. Everyone

57:13

tried to tell you on that. Still third

57:15

though. Yeah, that's the thing. It's

57:18

still third. The

57:20

active users have gone down

57:22

pretty steeply. But again, like

57:25

when I was playing it, it's like, this just feels like a single

57:27

player game, but then you would

57:30

maybe go back for a second playthrough. Yeah.

57:33

It's real weird. That's a weird game.

57:35

But then the other problem that the

57:37

problem the WB has is that Hogwarts

57:39

sold so insanely last year that nothing

57:42

that happens this year is going to

57:44

look good as a comparison

57:46

point. Like you just can't, you

57:48

can't compete with your own self. That's

57:51

why some of these issues with the layoffs

57:54

and the stock markets and all this stuff,

57:56

that's why they're kind of ridiculous because you're looking

57:59

at these. short-term markers

58:02

and games take four, five,

58:04

six, seven, eight years to put out.

58:06

And it's like, yeah, your short-term marker

58:08

is gonna look weird when

58:10

you haven't put a GTA game out

58:13

forever. Well, blood, you can rest easy

58:15

because business people are known for their

58:17

long-term thinking. That's

58:20

the problem. That's the problem. Yeah,

58:23

we'll see what we're Suicide Squad ends up next month.

58:25

I think that'll be like the telling story that we

58:27

probably already know the answer to. I

58:30

would guess not in the top 20, but who knows? Anything

58:33

else that you wanna poke at?

58:36

Like, I mean, I was at, oh.

58:39

What's that? Holdering on there. Oh, Eldering is at

58:41

14th. Yeah. I was

58:43

just gonna comment on Persona that they, I

58:45

know it's a re-release

58:48

remake, but still

58:50

very shocked it got like that high. No, like the

58:53

newer entries do top

58:55

the charts. Like Persona 5 did. What,

58:58

did this one hit seven? Persona was

59:00

fourth. Fourth? Like a dragon was seven.

59:02

Right, okay, okay. And here's one

59:05

of my theories on this, Donny Oni, because both

59:07

of them were the fastest selling in their series.

59:11

But both of these series have

59:13

been very aggressively put onto

59:16

Game Pass. Yeah. So

59:19

I think this is sort of paying

59:21

dividends for them towards like, they've gotten

59:23

people a space where they can easily

59:25

catch up on these long series

59:27

and get people in the doors. Like I've always

59:29

been curious about Persona, but I've never tried it

59:32

kind of thing. And

59:34

now they've tried it, they

59:36

love it. I've never played Persona 3.

59:38

Oh, there's a remaster, cool. Yeah. And

59:41

there you go. Now it's the fastest selling Persona

59:43

game ever. That's a good point. I

59:46

wonder if do like the Tails games and

59:48

Xenoblade and all that, they should do that kind

59:50

of thing. Sales or

59:52

something. Tails

59:55

I think has been on Game Pass. Yeah. I

59:57

don't think like comprehensively, but. Xenoblade obviously wouldn't be, but. Yeah.

1:00:00

Tails doesn't sell like these though.

1:00:02

I mean anything reading into this.

1:00:04

I mean obviously like a

1:00:06

dragon The you know, it's

1:00:08

like it's great that it's like charting. I think

1:00:12

my I my takeaway from this is

1:00:14

that when persona six launches if

1:00:17

they're smart and make it Multi-platform

1:00:19

and not PlayStation exclusive It

1:00:22

is a serious shot at number one and

1:00:24

be like breaking some records for that series

1:00:26

if they do that Because persona

1:00:28

three was Multi-platform and

1:00:31

it charted and it's a remaster.

1:00:34

Yeah, it's like yeah I mean,

1:00:36

it's a very it's probably like in the

1:00:38

running for like the most popular

1:00:40

You know the modern three not just like

1:00:42

the entire persona series But like it would

1:00:45

probably give five a run for its money

1:00:47

and four But I

1:00:49

still think six is like primed. Yeah

1:00:51

shatter records if they're smart about it.

1:00:54

Yeah It'll

1:00:56

be I know it won't hit this

1:00:59

high probably but it would be very funny if

1:01:01

black flag is on this next month Oh,

1:01:03

right Well,

1:01:08

I mean just thing we're skull and bones lands

1:01:11

do yeah So

1:01:21

here's the full list 20th place we had God

1:01:24

of War Ragnarok I'm

1:01:26

still going. Yeah Nineteen

1:01:28

is a jujitsu Kaisen Eighteen

1:01:31

is Mario Kart 8. Oh,

1:01:33

it's getting closer slipping off for

1:01:35

that time for that Mario Kart

1:01:38

9 switch to announcement right alongside

1:01:40

it 17th Minecraft Mm-hmm

1:01:44

Then 16th Gran Turismo 7

1:01:46

still doing really well there

1:01:48

Wow pop back up from 21st 15th

1:01:53

Mortal Kombat one starting to dip

1:01:55

down a bit. Oh Yeah,

1:01:58

that's another thing that WB had last year so

1:02:00

they had like a one-two

1:02:03

punch there yeah not sure what else they like

1:02:05

Mortal Kombat well it sells well it tends to

1:02:07

like only stay up for a few months and

1:02:10

then drops off yeah like like a lot

1:02:12

of these fighting games like do that I

1:02:14

mean yeah I'm gonna be the ones like

1:02:16

sells the most in terms of like yeah

1:02:18

yeah even though yeah people are really into

1:02:20

Tekken and Street Fighter it's like Mortal Kombat

1:02:23

seems to outsell them yeah I would wager

1:02:25

in case the king of sales there and

1:02:27

then like smashes in different class because

1:02:29

it's not just a fighting

1:02:32

game 14 we got Elden Ring 13 we got

1:02:34

Prince of Persia 12th Avatar hey Don

1:02:37

don't hang it in there you go Don 11th is Super

1:02:39

Mario Brothers Wonder 10th is Spider-Man

1:02:46

2 9th is

1:02:48

The Last of Us Part 2 popping up

1:02:50

from 167 so I guess they're putting

1:02:56

the new version in

1:02:58

with this version it's

1:03:01

got that's gotta be the last of us part

1:03:03

2 remastered has got to be this

1:03:05

is not remastered they just says

1:03:07

the last of us part 2 but it came

1:03:09

out January and it popped up from

1:03:11

167 yeah yeah yeah yeah they

1:03:14

have to be so that's a weird one eighth is a

1:03:23

sports FC 24 7th is

1:03:26

like a dragon 6 is Hogwarts 5th

1:03:28

is Madden 4th is persona

1:03:31

3rd is suicide squads 2nd

1:03:33

is Tekken 8 and 1st is Call of Duty

1:03:36

modern warfare 3 congrats

1:03:38

to call of duty congrats to call

1:03:40

of duty shadow

1:03:42

the earth tree bump for Elden

1:03:44

Ring that's what I was thinking

1:03:46

that's gonna go back yeah come

1:03:48

back up for sure dip just a

1:03:51

bit and we'll come back

1:03:53

I'm thinking about like okay I'm

1:03:55

on like New Game plus plus plus or something

1:03:57

on my main character it's like I should probably

1:04:00

That was gonna be like my yeah like

1:04:03

like my May project is to like get

1:04:05

back in it. That's right. Alright

1:04:07

we're at the end and I'm like

1:04:09

I'm good and I just gotta go

1:04:11

walk over to the spot and teleport

1:04:13

over and activate it. Like I'll try

1:04:15

it obviously but I made that mistake

1:04:17

with Dark Souls 2 where I went

1:04:19

to the DLC on like New Game++

1:04:21

and it was like real hard. Yeah

1:04:26

there's no way to branch your character or de-level

1:04:28

them or something. It would be interesting if they

1:04:30

gave you that option. Like

1:04:33

if you could go into the Elden

1:04:35

Ring DLC and like hey do you

1:04:37

want to like bump the levels down? Go

1:04:39

to the Magic Pool. I think that would actually be really

1:04:41

nice of you. You could level certain areas up in Dark

1:04:43

Souls 2. Yeah that was very

1:04:46

cool. I love Dark Souls 2. Everybody shut

1:04:48

up. Dark Souls 2 is good. Ooh. I

1:04:51

don't know who everybody is. I'm right here way out of shit.

1:04:55

The new Elden Ring DLC will boast a

1:04:57

leveling system similar to that of Sekiro so

1:05:00

you won't be able to grind your way. Oh.

1:05:03

Ooh. Ooh. A new

1:05:05

Famitsu interview started that. Uh oh. Ooh. I'm

1:05:08

not even... It's not gonna matter. You're just gonna

1:05:10

get your ass kicked. That's interesting.

1:05:14

Well then I guess in a weird way New Game++

1:05:16

wouldn't matter because they would be the same. Yep.

1:05:20

It's not gonna matter. I mean

1:05:22

I guess that's good if it doesn't matter. We'll

1:05:25

see. I don't know. I don't love

1:05:27

that. Yeah. I just

1:05:29

need to find the new broken meta. Go fast before

1:05:31

they nerf it. There's a lot of weird questions there

1:05:33

for sure. Ah. That's

1:05:36

confusing. I don't love that. Okay. We'll

1:05:39

find out. Yeah. Let

1:05:41

me solo her. Please show up. Let me solo

1:05:43

her. Yeah. Let

1:05:45

me beat that snake person. We've

1:05:49

got more to come but if you've been enjoying this

1:05:51

show so far please stay tuned to like and subscribe

1:05:53

and ring that bell on YouTube. Also

1:05:55

leave us a review on those podcast apps.

1:05:58

It helps us. stay

1:06:01

connected. Alright,

1:06:03

I finally got a little bit of

1:06:06

time in on this Splatoon

1:06:08

3 side order DLC. It's

1:06:13

pretty cool. It is basically, if you're not familiar

1:06:15

with this thing, it is a roguelite

1:06:19

mode that they've added to Splatoon 3 and yeah, you

1:06:24

go to this other area and then like, Pearl

1:06:27

for whatever reason is like, encased in

1:06:29

a drone and she's talking to you

1:06:31

and you're going up floors and fighting

1:06:34

all these new enemies and stuff. They're

1:06:37

called Gelatins. They're

1:06:41

like fish skeletons but like in

1:06:43

inky, you know,

1:06:45

like blackness. So it's like

1:06:47

yeah. Gelatins. Gelatins. Like jellyfish

1:06:50

skeletons? Yeah. That's funny. And

1:06:53

yeah, and each one

1:06:55

of these levels is very,

1:06:57

very quick. Like I was beating some of

1:06:59

these levels in like 16

1:07:02

seconds or whatever. Oh. There's

1:07:05

different types of objectives and so

1:07:07

sometimes like, yeah, you'll have like

1:07:10

the same objective but on a different level

1:07:12

or whatever. So there are some

1:07:15

where you just like have to defeat like the

1:07:17

spawn points. There are some where

1:07:19

you have like essentially what look like

1:07:23

like billiard balls that you have to get

1:07:25

into different like

1:07:27

holes and they have to like sit there

1:07:29

long enough to like actually sink in or

1:07:31

whatever and then. This is very

1:07:34

weird. Yeah. Yeah.

1:07:36

And everything is desaturated. Yeah. Color

1:07:39

wise. But yeah, so you

1:07:41

kind of work your way up the floors doing all these

1:07:43

like mini levels and

1:07:45

then each level you

1:07:48

get a chip, a color chip that goes

1:07:50

into your palette and

1:07:52

these do all sorts of

1:07:54

different things. So like some

1:07:57

of them will like increase your

1:07:59

bonuses. from streaks, some

1:08:01

of them will increase

1:08:05

like your range of your weapons or your power of

1:08:07

your weapons and things like that. Some

1:08:09

of them will make your ink poison

1:08:12

to different enemies. And

1:08:16

then as you're going up the floors, some of the floors

1:08:18

will have vending

1:08:20

machines so that as you're getting currency within a run,

1:08:23

you can buy stuff in the

1:08:25

vending machine, including extra lives. Like let it die.

1:08:29

Yeah, and so you can get some chips from a

1:08:31

vending machine or you can also get some extra lives,

1:08:33

but you're limited. You're stuck. Like

1:08:36

you start off with like just one life and

1:08:38

then between runs you can go to Marina at

1:08:40

the bottom of the tower and you

1:08:42

can buy things from her with pearls that

1:08:45

you get at the end of

1:08:47

the run. Basically it converts all of the

1:08:49

things that you got in that run into pearls and

1:08:52

then you can buy those like that's the roguelite part

1:08:54

of it. You can buy those permanent upgrades. Oh, again,

1:08:56

they're permanent. You can have two lives going

1:08:59

in rather than one life. And then, you know,

1:09:01

I think might max out like four or five.

1:09:04

Do you ever just have moments where you

1:09:06

realize that that like you've

1:09:08

dedicated a huge portion of your life to

1:09:10

video games and video games are weird as

1:09:13

hell? Like I'm looking at this and listening

1:09:15

to you talk and I'm just like, I'm

1:09:18

why am I'm just nodding and like agreeing like

1:09:20

this is all normal. I'm like, what we do

1:09:22

for living. There

1:09:25

are boss battles. So like

1:09:27

every 10th floor you'll

1:09:29

have a boss battle and those are kind of randomized

1:09:31

as well. So I've done this one with

1:09:34

like this giant like Mick clan

1:09:36

kind of thing. And so it

1:09:38

looks like a huge metal ball that

1:09:41

you have to like crack open.

1:09:43

And then once it's cracked open, then you

1:09:45

can actually do damage to it. But it's

1:09:47

also spawns a bunch of other enemies when

1:09:49

it's cracked open. And

1:09:52

then there was another one that was like, there's

1:09:54

like a bunch of spinning platters on

1:09:57

top of each other and you like each one was wider. So it looked

1:09:59

kind of like. like a funnel and you

1:10:01

had to like basically destroy each

1:10:03

layer. But

1:10:07

yeah, so it's been fun. It's

1:10:09

one of those things where it's like you

1:10:11

feel like you're having an easy

1:10:14

time until you aren't. You

1:10:16

will just die. Like once you get overwhelmed,

1:10:18

it's like, oh, now I'm dead. I'm like, oh crap. Now

1:10:21

I only have one life left unless I can

1:10:23

get to a vending machine between floors. So

1:10:27

yeah, it took me a while just to like even

1:10:29

beat one boss. And

1:10:32

so I haven't been to the top of the tower yet. But

1:10:36

I also know that so yeah, with

1:10:38

the palettes, the palettes are also based

1:10:40

on your weapon loadouts. Okay. So

1:10:43

there will be a palette for the dualies. There's

1:10:45

a palette for this like color palette or yeah.

1:10:48

So it's, it's a cut like a multiple play

1:10:50

on words. So like, it looks like a color

1:10:52

palette in terms of like, you've

1:10:54

got like a bunch of squares that are

1:10:56

opened up. And like each one of

1:10:58

the chips that you get

1:11:01

from a floor, you slot into the

1:11:03

palette. And then that builds up. So

1:11:05

like, if you get multiple chips of the same kind, you'll

1:11:09

extend that effect. You'll make that effect better. So

1:11:11

like your, like say your armor will go from,

1:11:13

you know, like 100 to 110 to 130 stuff

1:11:18

like that. There's

1:11:20

also palettes for stuff like poison

1:11:22

ink that'll like, so any

1:11:24

enemies that are going through your ink will take

1:11:26

damage over time. Or there are

1:11:28

other ones where like they will, they won't take

1:11:30

damage, but they'll be slowed down. And

1:11:33

when you hit them, if they're in your ink,

1:11:35

you'll do more damage to them. Okay.

1:11:38

So lots of different effects like that.

1:11:40

Do they stack on top of each other?

1:11:43

Do you have to pick one or the other? Yeah,

1:11:45

so when you do a floor, you

1:11:48

basically choose between like

1:11:50

three different objectives. And

1:11:53

so those could be different difficulties,

1:11:55

but they also give you different color

1:11:57

chips. Okay. So that's when you sort of

1:11:59

decide is like, okay. Okay, I could do this hard one and get this

1:12:02

chip or even sometimes you'll get double chips, which

1:12:05

is nice, but it's harder. And

1:12:07

like some of the hard ones I was doing and like

1:12:09

just trying to like keep up is like, oh crap. And

1:12:14

so it's like, that's the risk. It's like, will you

1:12:16

even survive this hard one or should you go, you

1:12:18

know, like if you're down to one life, it's like,

1:12:20

maybe I'll pick an easy one until

1:12:22

I can get another life back. Or

1:12:26

some of the other objectives. Oh, there's like a tower thing.

1:12:28

So like you shoot the tower and it moves along a

1:12:30

track and goes through checkpoints and like

1:12:32

it keeps, and you basically get

1:12:34

it to the end of that track. And

1:12:39

then all the

1:12:41

enemies are brand new. The

1:12:44

story is a whole new thing that

1:12:47

you meet up with the basically Pearl

1:12:50

and Marina from Splatoon 2. So

1:12:52

you get to interact with them this time around.

1:12:56

And yeah,

1:12:58

I'm trying to think about what else there is

1:13:00

there. Oh, there are some that are like similar

1:13:04

to the multiplayer where you

1:13:06

have like the zone defense. So

1:13:08

you have to put your color down and then

1:13:10

defend it from the enemies coming in. And some

1:13:12

of those were some of the harder ones that

1:13:14

I had to do because it's like, I would

1:13:16

get one, you'd have to like control two zones

1:13:18

on opposite sides of the map. And

1:13:21

like, you'd have to like go at them from

1:13:23

above. And

1:13:25

so I would get one zone back

1:13:27

and then they would be guys on the other side. And

1:13:29

then it'd be some sniper shooting at me from

1:13:31

the top of some tower. I'm like, all right, your

1:13:37

drone is a whole new thing too. So

1:13:40

that Pearl is controlling this little drone

1:13:42

flying alongside of you. And there are

1:13:44

a bunch of power-ups for her as

1:13:46

well. And so- That's

1:13:48

what you were grabbing onto to like- Yeah, so

1:13:50

you can use her to float down from high

1:13:52

spaces. But then

1:13:54

she can also have different weapons

1:13:56

that she's equipped with and

1:13:59

different- Buffs to those so it's

1:14:01

like they'll take less time for certain

1:14:03

cooldowns for certain weapons or

1:14:05

just less time for cooldowns overall and

1:14:11

Yeah, I'm trying to think about is there anything else how's

1:14:14

the music? The

1:14:16

music has been pretty good I'm

1:14:19

trying like but that's the thing is like when you're

1:14:21

in these situations like a lot of times like it's

1:14:24

because the levels are so fast

1:14:28

Like you don't get time to appreciate the music you

1:14:30

like you just like in and out like I gotta

1:14:32

do this But

1:14:35

yeah, there was there's a some cool music during

1:14:37

boss fights What do you

1:14:39

start off? There's basically it's almost like a

1:14:41

tutorial tower to start things off and

1:14:44

kind of introduce you to the story and everything

1:14:46

So it's like you do ten floors at first

1:14:49

and then you get the title screen And

1:14:53

then after that that's like 30 floors to

1:14:56

get through the whole tower but

1:14:59

it it like I was saying it encourages you

1:15:01

to To

1:15:04

do it with different pallets, which means

1:15:06

doing it with different weapon loadouts so

1:15:10

You get rewards for getting to certain

1:15:12

benchmarks on the tower But

1:15:16

you only get those once per loadout

1:15:19

So Yeah, so yeah, there's definitely

1:15:21

encouraging you to do it multiple times I'm curious when I

1:15:24

get to the top of the tower what will happen and

1:15:26

like what it takes to roll

1:15:28

credits and all That good stuff. Yeah, but

1:15:31

And yeah reading this description.

1:15:34

So this whole mode is

1:15:36

based off of a Splat

1:15:39

fest event and the results of a

1:15:42

splat fest event like What

1:15:44

like yeah, yeah, no, there's a

1:15:47

chaos in order I

1:15:49

think Yeah,

1:15:52

yeah, so like they yeah, so they took a

1:15:54

splat fest event and incorporated into like the lore

1:15:56

That's kind of cool. It's really cool. I love

1:15:58

that kind of yeah Yes, because

1:16:00

basically what's happening is there's like a

1:16:03

VR simulation that Marina has created, but

1:16:05

within that simulation, this like

1:16:09

AI entity called Order has taken

1:16:11

over. And

1:16:13

it's like sucking people into VR

1:16:15

and sapping their wills. Classic.

1:16:20

So you have to take down Order. Yeah.

1:16:25

And rescue all the people that are imprisoned

1:16:27

in virtual reality. Anyway,

1:16:29

I feel like I was like all over the place of that. If

1:16:31

you die in Splatoon, you die in real life. But

1:16:38

yeah, just that kind

1:16:41

of trying to get better

1:16:43

every time. It just it hurts so bad like when you

1:16:45

climb up to one of those boss fights and

1:16:47

you're like, I got this. Like two more layers

1:16:49

left on this guy and then like all of a sudden you

1:16:51

get overwhelmed and you're out of ink and you're like, dang

1:16:54

it, I'm dead. Yeah,

1:16:58

so I think it's the thing is like it mixes elements

1:17:02

of like the regular single

1:17:04

player with some elements of like the

1:17:06

Salmon Run co-op a little bit because

1:17:08

you just have that like sense of

1:17:10

just like there's just like this nonstop

1:17:13

barrage of enemies coming at you and

1:17:15

you have to kind of learn how to deal

1:17:18

with them. Yeah. Next

1:17:23

up. All right, let's get to the rough news.

1:17:26

The bad news. We've

1:17:30

been talking about this almost every

1:17:32

week this year. The layoffs going

1:17:34

on in the industry and this

1:17:36

week has been a doozy to

1:17:39

say the least. We've got a lot to go through. I

1:17:43

don't know if we have anything really new

1:17:45

to say necessarily other than things. Why are

1:17:47

the CEOs pertaining to these companies specifically? Yeah,

1:17:50

they just kind of get you updated on what's happening.

1:17:52

So the biggest one is PlayStation.

1:17:57

They are laying off 900 employees across. PlayStation

1:18:00

Studios including Naughty

1:18:02

Dog, Insomniac, Gorilla,

1:18:05

Fire Sprite, people

1:18:08

at the main PlayStation HQ, Studio

1:18:10

London, it's just gone. The

1:18:14

teams that came up with like the Itoi and

1:18:16

SingStar and all that and have been a big

1:18:18

part of the VR stuff, it's like nope, they're

1:18:21

just gone now. Apparently

1:18:23

there's a Twisted Metal game that's been

1:18:25

cancelled. And

1:18:28

then like I said, the VR stuff is clearly

1:18:31

taking a hit which has not seemed to

1:18:33

have been a priority for Sony for the

1:18:35

last year since they launched PSVR 2. It's

1:18:38

weird they put out VR 2 and

1:18:40

then like barely heard anything

1:18:42

about it. Right. Is

1:18:44

it a report or is it confirmed that they're trying to

1:18:46

get it maybe to bring it to PC? There

1:18:50

have been talks about that but I have

1:18:52

not seen anything. They

1:18:54

haven't said anything concrete. If that's true, it

1:18:56

seems like they're just willing to give it

1:18:58

some kind of life but hasn't achieved the

1:19:00

results they've desired. It's

1:19:03

weird because it's like it's

1:19:05

one of those things where it's like yeah it's

1:19:08

not going to achieve results. You didn't put any

1:19:10

chutzpah behind it but then at the same time it's like

1:19:12

well you didn't put

1:19:14

any juice behind it because obviously nobody

1:19:17

was buying it. I don't know. Right but it's

1:19:19

just like a horse, chicken and the egg thing. Why even put out PSVR 2

1:19:21

at all? Exactly. Especially

1:19:23

if it's not backwards compatible. Like you had a launch,

1:19:25

you had a big launch and then it kind of

1:19:28

disappeared other than third parties. Very

1:19:31

strange. Yeah. Now

1:19:33

they fired everybody. Yeah. But

1:19:36

that's the thing, especially between Studio

1:19:38

London getting shut down and Fire

1:19:40

Sprite which they bought just a

1:19:42

couple years ago losing

1:19:45

people. It seems

1:19:48

like they are moving away from VR. Which

1:19:52

it already seemed like that. But

1:19:56

Insomniac is one of the crazier ones

1:19:58

because Spiderman 2 is the one. is

1:20:00

the fastest selling PlayStation game in history and

1:20:02

it sold 10 million copies. Just

1:20:04

got a bunch of awards and

1:20:08

they're losing people. So if

1:20:11

you're not doing well, you might get laid off if you

1:20:13

are doing the mail. You might get laid off. Yeah.

1:20:16

Well, it might get laid off. It's weird too,

1:20:18

because it's like, is

1:20:20

this because the way that games companies

1:20:23

used to go is like you hire on

1:20:25

for a project and then once the

1:20:28

project is out, you let all

1:20:30

the freelancers go. Well, that's a contract. That's a

1:20:32

different than people. That's how they used to do

1:20:34

it. Long term people in the studio. I mean,

1:20:36

there's a lot of contractors and there's still a

1:20:39

lot of problems with that. Yeah. But this is

1:20:41

different from that. This is employees staff that's getting

1:20:43

fired. Right. Laid off. Yeah.

1:20:45

They don't tell anybody about the contractors. It's

1:20:47

crazy. Oh yeah. Cause you just

1:20:50

get like, go sometimes as a contractor,

1:20:53

but yeah. But

1:20:56

yeah, so that's why it's particularly enough.

1:20:58

I also wonder because it's

1:21:00

only been a couple of years since they purchased

1:21:02

Insomniac as well. So I'm

1:21:04

very curious. The question we wouldn't

1:21:06

know the answer to is if

1:21:09

Insomniac were still independent, whether

1:21:12

they would be going through this.

1:21:15

Right. Yeah. Like is

1:21:17

this a redundancies thing on like

1:21:19

larger corporate level or some weird?

1:21:21

Oh yeah. Totally larger corporate thing.

1:21:25

But we also just said that PS5

1:21:27

is outpacing the PS3 and the

1:21:29

PS4. Right. Like Sony is not

1:21:32

doing bad. Yeah. But they

1:21:34

are spending a lot

1:21:36

of money. It's

1:21:40

weird. Like it's just so weird.

1:21:42

Like banging, like banger years, banner

1:21:44

years, and everyone's just getting fired.

1:21:47

And it's like, like,

1:21:49

I don't think it's AI or anything. Like I don't

1:21:51

think people's jobs are being replaced. They're just letting

1:21:54

people go and they don't care. I don't know.

1:21:56

Right. They over hired during COVID too, but. Yeah.

1:21:59

Definitely. one of the things that's been cited.

1:22:01

That's what they're claiming, yeah, that's what they're claiming.

1:22:05

Ah, quit buying people, quit acquiring people,

1:22:07

quit acquiring companies if you're just gonna

1:22:09

fire everybody. Yeah, I

1:22:12

mean, those

1:22:14

are like the big culprits,

1:22:16

but there's also people who are talking

1:22:18

behind the scenes saying that they're

1:22:20

just hearing companies are doing this because it's

1:22:23

like everyone's doing it, so it's like cover

1:22:25

to just start doing it so they could

1:22:27

shed people. Because they're sharing

1:22:29

value for their shareholders. It

1:22:31

gives them an appearance of being responsible or whatever.

1:22:34

Yeah, well I mean that was the most bleak

1:22:36

thing was like, and people were commenting on this before

1:22:38

when Microsoft laid a bunch of people off, but

1:22:40

like they're reporting it on Bloomberg

1:22:42

and the ticker, the stock ticker was

1:22:44

actively going up as they were announcing

1:22:46

more layoffs. And it's like that's

1:22:49

the shareholders, Huber, that's who you're

1:22:52

mad about, it's the board,

1:22:54

it's the number, yeah. Just,

1:22:58

yeah, this has been

1:23:00

sending a really shitty message to anyone

1:23:02

who wants to get in this industry

1:23:04

that everyone is getting

1:23:06

laid off. And

1:23:09

the people are still around, they're wondering if

1:23:11

they're gonna keep having a job

1:23:13

down the road because everyone just keeps

1:23:15

saying like, oh it's not over, there's gonna be a lot

1:23:17

more, and it's gonna be a rough ride for a little

1:23:19

bit more of a year or so. And

1:23:22

all these people getting laid off, it's like where did

1:23:24

they go? And

1:23:27

there's so many people trying to like

1:23:29

vie for the few positions that are open, it's

1:23:31

just, I don't know when

1:23:34

we're gonna see the effects of

1:23:36

all this. I mean, losing

1:23:38

so many talent, how many people just exit altogether

1:23:41

and just never come back to this industry? Did

1:23:44

they take this opportunity to just leave? How many talented

1:23:46

people are just going? What does it mean

1:23:48

for the

1:23:50

composition of these workforces? We haven't

1:23:53

seen the numbers breakdown of who's actually being

1:23:55

letting go. And is it also affecting diversity

1:23:57

in the long term? Like we have like

1:23:59

I have no idea because they don't share

1:24:01

these numbers So you see like the raw

1:24:04

numbers of people who are let go So

1:24:06

I think it's be a few

1:24:08

years before we see like the impact of this

1:24:10

But also at the same time the other headlines

1:24:12

are that these companies are like they're

1:24:15

putting all their chips into Established safe bet

1:24:17

so right they're not taking risks and they're

1:24:19

cutting a lot of projects So it could

1:24:21

also be they are just scaling down and

1:24:24

but that's also just as bad like it's because

1:24:26

now we're just gonna get fewer

1:24:28

games safer games and Some

1:24:32

of the even the ones you're like, oh, that's even if you're in

1:24:34

the mindset like that's great It's only the games I care about and

1:24:36

they're just gonna keep going on It's like well They're just gonna get

1:24:38

like stale and old if you don't

1:24:40

have like new ideas like reinvigorate them like it's

1:24:42

just gonna get like so matter of fact that

1:24:45

It's not gonna think it's gonna get boring at

1:24:47

some point right like you need those unique creative

1:24:49

new ideas be infused into those

1:24:52

projects and Yeah, my

1:24:54

gut is that this yeah like a few

1:24:56

years ago to see like man like that

1:24:59

was a disaster for us and we're still like

1:25:01

reeling from the effects of it and Yeah,

1:25:05

I don't know what to say like

1:25:07

other places have better

1:25:10

protections and or the force companies to

1:25:13

explore other at all avenues before they

1:25:15

can lay off people and I

1:25:18

mean It's you know, we're seeing

1:25:21

that like over in like Specifically

1:25:23

in Japan that they have to

1:25:26

you know, the company has to severely be

1:25:28

at like financial risk Yeah where they can

1:25:30

be consider laying off anyone and like that

1:25:32

means like executives taking huge pick up like

1:25:35

everything has been done and there's Oversight here

1:25:37

and like someone brought it down like showing every

1:25:39

country about like notifications for like you're about like

1:25:42

in the youth Like was it UK and Europe?

1:25:44

They're like they're getting they get

1:25:46

a notice says like the government has been informed that

1:25:48

we want to get rid of your position But

1:25:51

you're still here for now Like we'll let

1:25:53

you know and it's like other like Japan

1:25:55

like you're protected because we can't let you

1:25:57

go That's a US day of shadow-dressing drop,

1:26:00

you're fired. It's like what? It's like

1:26:02

something has to, and it's not just

1:26:05

this industry. It's like

1:26:07

a lot of other industries. I mean, right now it's

1:26:10

gaming and tech, you know, who knows what it'll be,

1:26:12

you know, in the next few years. So it just

1:26:14

speaks to like, you know,

1:26:18

probably need more, you know,

1:26:20

more unionization to protect like

1:26:22

employees. And I mean,

1:26:25

infinite growth is not sustainable.

1:26:27

Like I, we can't have

1:26:30

downturn times. And it's like, this is

1:26:32

the, this is like the thing, you

1:26:34

know, there has to be some other

1:26:36

solution to this because even, you

1:26:38

know, they probably don't care, but

1:26:41

like, sure, you're maybe like securing, you're showing up

1:26:43

your profits and stuff, but like, your

1:26:45

products are going to suffer. And

1:26:47

like, at the end of the day, it's like

1:26:49

your, your company might like in the long term

1:26:51

fail because of this decision. You like basically this

1:26:54

is a decision you're going to look back on,

1:26:56

but then some of these like high level people,

1:26:58

they have their golden parachutes just like, bye. Like

1:27:00

I don't care. Like I'm out of here no

1:27:02

matter what. And I'm getting paid. So that was

1:27:04

one of the things that was like really like,

1:27:07

I, it's, it's weird

1:27:09

to like necessarily say what the heck

1:27:11

was going on here, but it's just like, they're

1:27:14

saying Jim Ryan was just

1:27:16

at a studio London,

1:27:18

like London five, five days before this

1:27:20

announcement, like, and they like celebrated his

1:27:22

retirement and everything. And then

1:27:25

there's an episode of succession where

1:27:27

this literally happens, by the way,

1:27:29

like a character goes to a company they

1:27:31

acquired and they're like, Hey, this is great. We love you. You're all

1:27:33

good. And then he fires everyone like three days later.

1:27:36

Yeah. Yeah. Well, he literally hasn't been

1:27:38

around for a long time, but, um,

1:27:40

but yeah, it's like, it's weird to

1:27:42

like, he was just there and celebrating

1:27:44

and like knew behind the scenes. He had been

1:27:46

talking with the rest of the team about

1:27:48

all this stuff. It's like strange.

1:27:52

I also think one of the maybe

1:27:54

positive consequences we see going forward

1:27:57

is more independent studio.

1:28:01

more seriously considering maintaining their independence

1:28:03

rather than getting a payday and

1:28:05

being acquired by a

1:28:07

bigger studio publisher. I

1:28:09

think you're gonna see more people turn that down. We'll

1:28:12

get into it. There's

1:28:14

some positive sides on that, but there's also

1:28:16

some very, you know, people

1:28:18

are having a hard time finding any kind

1:28:20

of funding right now as well. It's horrible

1:28:23

out there for everybody. Everything

1:28:25

is taking a downturn right now, and it's like, there's

1:28:30

so much short-sighted thinking happening, and this

1:28:32

is the result of different kinds of

1:28:34

short-sighted thinking from a couple of years

1:28:36

ago where it's like, oh,

1:28:39

we're in an upswing, let's hire up, you

1:28:41

know, and not think about

1:28:43

the sustainability of that. Let's be in

1:28:45

the competition between Sony, Microsoft, and Embracer Group to

1:28:47

buy as many companies as we can. To buy

1:28:49

as much, yeah, and it's like, hey, are

1:28:52

we actually thinking this through? Like, are

1:28:54

we projecting ahead five, 10 years? Are

1:28:58

we hiring a number of

1:29:00

people that we could sustain even through a

1:29:02

down period? Obviously not,

1:29:04

obviously not what they're doing. I

1:29:06

like what- I wonder if the report looks

1:29:09

good though. The quarterly report for shareholders looks

1:29:11

good. Right, and I like what Miyazaki said

1:29:13

about, I don't know if you have that in there,

1:29:15

but he was saying that

1:29:17

they just hired talented people and they're keeping

1:29:19

them. Right, yeah. That's how they

1:29:21

don't find, I mean like- That's how they're able

1:29:23

to turn out something like- Whether or not there's

1:29:26

a lot of crunch at that company, I don't

1:29:28

know, but like- Not that that rebirth, they just

1:29:30

talked about that as well. Right. They

1:29:32

kept the remake staff, they didn't let them

1:29:34

go. Like they kept their staff. Well, and

1:29:36

there's something else that I see happen too

1:29:38

where it's like, and this has been since

1:29:41

time in Memorial, but we learned about

1:29:43

this in film school and stuff

1:29:45

where our teachers were like, hey,

1:29:49

don't charge shitty

1:29:51

super low rates because

1:29:53

it's actually bad for everybody because

1:29:56

you're undercutting the market, which

1:29:59

will lead- to the people in the middle

1:30:01

all getting gouged out and new,

1:30:04

lesser skilled, like straight

1:30:06

out of college talent like yourselves, like

1:30:08

myself at that time, they were talking to

1:30:11

me in college, you know, we'll fill

1:30:13

in these gaps. But like,

1:30:15

you don't have the, like,

1:30:18

longer wisdom, basically,

1:30:20

like your wisdom stats not super high because

1:30:23

you're starting out, right? And it's like, like,

1:30:25

should your rate be as high as someone who's

1:30:28

a 20 year veteran? No, but like, you

1:30:30

shouldn't undercut everybody else just to get

1:30:32

in, you know, and that's what it feels like

1:30:34

this is happening is like the C-suite is

1:30:37

staying in place because they're

1:30:39

the old fogeys who were just like

1:30:41

an oligarchy taking over everything and staying

1:30:43

and not leaving power, not ceding power,

1:30:46

not aging out and stopping being

1:30:48

a fucking part of things. But like,

1:30:51

you know, they fire everyone in

1:30:53

the middle, hire cheap talent from

1:30:55

wherever, you know, and then just fire

1:30:57

them again and get the new cheaper talent. And it's

1:31:00

just like, that

1:31:02

isn't fostering confidence. One,

1:31:05

it's not long term thinking. And

1:31:07

it's just like, you're not going to get like,

1:31:11

can new talent come up with huge

1:31:13

and amazing new innovative ideas? Obviously yes.

1:31:15

But like, there is definite value to

1:31:17

experience too. And like, hanging

1:31:20

on to talented team members is so important

1:31:22

for that. And it's just like, well, even just the,

1:31:24

you know, like, whether you're a student or a student

1:31:27

or something with From Software, like they're talking about,

1:31:29

like, just the fact of like, they've already worked

1:31:31

together. They already know how, right, who to talk

1:31:34

to you and like, as a team, right, like,

1:31:36

where to go and how to get that. That's

1:31:39

why that's why two years ago, three

1:31:41

years ago, when when a bunch

1:31:43

of the people that are getting hired or

1:31:45

fired now were hired, you know,

1:31:47

that's part that's a different that's the different side of

1:31:50

this foresight coin, right? Where it's like, you

1:31:52

have to hire intelligently to hire people

1:31:54

that will fit in with your team

1:31:56

will will fit in with the culture at

1:31:58

your place. don't hire

1:32:00

too many people. And you know,

1:32:02

like even if you like,

1:32:06

obviously, very easy, everyone would run a great

1:32:08

company, right? Like, shit, we're not great at

1:32:10

it. But like, you

1:32:13

know, you got to play those those

1:32:15

dice and like, think through all the

1:32:18

angles and be like, okay, we're a

1:32:20

little short staffed right now, we can

1:32:22

hire contract work that knows it's a

1:32:24

contract, you know, to shore that up, instead

1:32:27

of hiring a bunch of staff and firing

1:32:29

them a year later. It's just, I

1:32:32

don't know, like, people are so short

1:32:34

sighted, it blows my mind. And like,

1:32:36

everyone getting fired now is going to

1:32:38

have ramifications later, like like Damiani was

1:32:40

saying that like, who knows what's

1:32:42

going to happen later? And like, eventually,

1:32:45

yeah, will everyone lose confidence in this

1:32:47

sector entirely? And like, will the bottom fall out

1:32:49

and like all the investors will dry up? Like,

1:32:51

I don't know. Like, it's

1:32:53

all crazy. Let's

1:32:55

get to some of the other ones, because I think some of these are

1:32:57

going to hit on some of the things you're talking about. EA.

1:33:02

Next up, laying off 670 people. And some of

1:33:04

the reasoning here

1:33:09

is, is some of the stuff is a

1:33:11

little weird, because they're saying they're now

1:33:14

they want to move away from licensed

1:33:16

IP to original IP, which

1:33:19

is great news for the people that

1:33:21

are starting on Iron Man

1:33:23

and Black Panther. They also

1:33:25

just cancel some other like, they just

1:33:28

cancelled the Star Wars, right, right with

1:33:30

this. That was in development at

1:33:32

respawn. I okay, take this

1:33:35

with the grain of salt, because this is just

1:33:37

something I like, saw fly by. And I don't

1:33:39

know that the full truth

1:33:41

to but I had heard that there was a person

1:33:44

who had just been hired after being

1:33:46

laid off from Blizzard, or

1:33:49

the Star Wars project. And so now they're getting laid

1:33:51

off. Oh, no.

1:33:53

So there's the other somewhere out there.

1:33:55

There's a person who's like, collecting the

1:33:58

exodia of getting laid off. Like

1:34:00

they get hired and then fired and hired and

1:34:02

fired like the least lucky person

1:34:07

Ridgeline games that was established in 2022 one of

1:34:09

the a studios Marcus

1:34:13

Leto who used to be with Halo back

1:34:15

in the day. Yeah, he was heading that

1:34:17

up. He decided he's leaving Okay,

1:34:19

and they're just now they're closing that

1:34:21

whole studio down geez and they were

1:34:23

going to be working on the campaign

1:34:26

for the next battlefield So

1:34:28

now criterion is now going to be heading that up

1:34:31

And then some of the Ridgeline team are

1:34:33

going to move to ripple effect, which

1:34:36

is another one of EA studios

1:34:38

here in LA Was

1:34:40

previously dice LA or whatever? But

1:34:44

yeah, the whole thing about moving to original

1:34:46

IP. I'm like, what do you EA? What

1:34:48

are you talking about? Like you've just like

1:34:50

run all your original IP into the ground

1:34:52

anything you have right now is dead space

1:34:54

But right and also

1:34:56

didn't I ask didn't they just make the

1:34:58

opposite of that announcement like three years ago,

1:35:00

right? Or somebody did yeah, you do have

1:35:03

a pick battlefield in apex and you have

1:35:06

Dragon Age and Mass Effect eventually

1:35:08

whenever those happen But

1:35:12

race for that it does feel like they're

1:35:14

going back and forth. Yeah And

1:35:18

also like Bioware can't be printing money

1:35:20

like no there's

1:35:24

There, you know right now. It's like the payoff

1:35:26

will be whenever Dragon Age comes out But

1:35:31

yeah, so it's just I don't know what's going on

1:35:33

there They just they feel like they're flip-flopping also somebody

1:35:35

pointed out that like they bought back Like

1:35:38

a ton of stock last year and it's like

1:35:40

well if you hadn't had done that you could

1:35:42

yeah afforded to keep people on People

1:35:45

don't matter blood money matters It's

1:35:48

weird De

1:35:50

goode fabric makers of salt sea

1:35:53

chronicles mutat zione sports friends. They

1:35:55

are halting Production

1:35:57

effectively shutting down the studio entirely

1:36:00

After they had failed

1:36:02

to find funding from

1:36:05

investors or publishers, they

1:36:07

may return in some form if they

1:36:09

can get funding in the future. But essentially

1:36:11

at that point, it would probably be like a

1:36:14

full new team. Like

1:36:16

call everybody up and like, hey, are you working for

1:36:18

me yet? Super

1:36:21

massive. Makers of Until

1:36:23

Dawn and the Dark Pictures Anthology is losing about

1:36:26

90 staff. That

1:36:28

one hurts. About a third of the studio. Yeah.

1:36:31

I love those games. Damn

1:36:35

it. Also love Deck

1:36:37

9 Makers of Life's Strange True

1:36:39

Colors and the Expanse. They're

1:36:43

laying off 20% of their staff, about

1:36:45

30 people. Damn it, that

1:36:47

Expanse game was good, dude. Apparently

1:36:50

the leadership there did take pay cuts as well

1:36:52

to reduce how many people they'd have to lay

1:36:54

off. Well, that's something I guess.

1:36:56

But they already lost 30 people last year as well.

1:37:01

Jason Schreier is reporting that Rockstar

1:37:03

is implementing a mandatory return to

1:37:06

office as they

1:37:08

head into the final stretches of GTA 6,

1:37:10

which many of you is essentially soft layoffs.

1:37:13

Yep. Right. Some

1:37:15

people simply won't or can't move to

1:37:17

wherever the offices are. And

1:37:20

so those people are basically just going to have to quit

1:37:23

so they wouldn't get severed. Which is like, yeah,

1:37:25

more insidious because you don't get severed. Or the

1:37:27

negative publicity of all that. Right. Oh,

1:37:29

that's dirty. Yeah.

1:37:33

Star Citizen developers, Cloud

1:37:35

Imperium is reportedly laying off

1:37:37

unspecified numbers of employees. How?

1:37:40

Games not even out yet. So much money

1:37:42

from that game. What? Record

1:37:44

funding? How? This is a

1:37:47

similar situation where they're like return to office kind of thing. And

1:37:50

then some of the people had said that,

1:37:52

yeah, it was framed as a relocation. And

1:37:55

they also went up further to call the

1:37:57

studio highly toxic. The

1:38:00

person who said that said that yeah, yeah one of

1:38:02

the people that did a lost their

1:38:05

job Well,

1:38:07

that's a bummer Blake

1:38:10

Hester has been laid

1:38:12

off from game informer or down to like

1:38:15

five or six staff writers Already

1:38:18

operating with way too small of a team Just

1:38:22

out of nowhere game Yeah,

1:38:24

GameStop decided to lay him off. They've gone through

1:38:27

layoff after layoff and have not been able to

1:38:29

replace those people. I mean

1:38:33

Would you want to go we're sure you're just

1:38:35

gonna get laid off every five minutes, right? Yeah,

1:38:37

that's what's well I mean, but it's not even

1:38:39

that it's like they don't have the positions right

1:38:41

like they're having to run more and more of

1:38:43

their operation off of freelancers, dude

1:38:46

that That's the other half of

1:38:48

this like it's happened to each of us over

1:38:50

the years it's happened to so many friends of

1:38:52

mine where it's like the

1:38:55

Your somebody's position like somebody gets

1:38:57

let go from a position right?

1:39:00

But then management expects those same

1:39:02

duties to still get done right? So

1:39:04

like he was he was one of the

1:39:06

senior person ends up doing five people's jobs

1:39:09

It's insane like oh

1:39:12

man Yeah, I

1:39:14

remember GT when Chris was like three dudes And

1:39:17

I was like you poor bastard like come on And

1:39:20

then you have our consequences here some here's some funny

1:39:24

not funny consequences After

1:39:27

letting go of most of the

1:39:29

development team behind them fighting herds in

1:39:31

December including QA Publisher

1:39:35

modus games decided would still be a

1:39:38

good idea to release an unfinished final

1:39:40

patch with paid DLC Apparently

1:39:43

the characters can execute

1:39:45

infinite unbreakable combos and

1:39:48

the patch also causes game freezing bugs You

1:39:51

don't need to a that cue though fire all

1:39:53

those guys Quote we've literally

1:39:55

been waiting almost three months for this day,

1:39:58

so we could tell you this character is

1:40:00

not done, ban her or play

1:40:02

on a different version. Who needs

1:40:04

developers to develop your game, right? Whoo.

1:40:10

Huh. Well now

1:40:12

I'm depressed. Yeah. So now, positive

1:40:15

side of things. After

1:40:18

success of Alan Wake 2, Remedy

1:40:21

has reached an agreement with 505 Games. Yes.

1:40:24

To give them control over control.

1:40:27

I saw this, I was like, this is so good. They

1:40:31

can basically do whatever they want with control now? More

1:40:34

or less? This transaction will enable

1:40:36

us to negotiate better deals for

1:40:38

current and future control games. Current

1:40:40

and future control games. We can

1:40:42

now weigh up the options between

1:40:45

self-publishing and new publishing partners for

1:40:47

Condor and Control 2. At

1:40:49

the same time, we are in a better negotiating position than

1:40:53

before as Control is an established brand and

1:40:55

Alan Wake 2 has been successful. We

1:40:58

are confident that these factors combined will enable us to

1:41:00

get to the right partner, deal structure

1:41:02

and risk reward profile that

1:41:05

benefit Remedy and are the best fit

1:41:07

for the control franchise. We will evaluate

1:41:09

and negotiate with potential future partners over

1:41:11

the coming months. Hell yeah. So

1:41:14

505 basically has, you know, will

1:41:16

continue to be part of control

1:41:19

and get royalties and stuff to the end of the year.

1:41:21

And then after that. Oh, just to

1:41:23

the end of the year? Yeah, then it's over to

1:41:26

Remedy. I wonder if they still have

1:41:28

like right of first refusal on if

1:41:31

they're gonna even take new deals to them or not.

1:41:33

Like I wonder if they would just have, just. Yeah, I don't

1:41:35

think so. I think that, you know, and

1:41:37

the sort of bittersweet side of that is, you know,

1:41:40

505 and their Pyre and company have

1:41:42

reportedly been going through issues. True. Which

1:41:44

we talked about in the past few weeks. So

1:41:47

like they have an incentive to sell what

1:41:49

they can sell. I

1:41:52

love control, dude. Control is like one of

1:41:55

my favorite Remedy games and I'm really excited

1:41:58

that they can. Yeah. the ship

1:42:00

a little bit. They got that LN-WIC-2 paycheck. Yeah. Like,

1:42:02

all right. Control. Let's

1:42:06

buy our stuff. Let's own our stuff. Yeah.

1:42:08

It's good to own that stuff. Jason

1:42:11

Schreier is also reporting

1:42:13

that Savor Interactive is

1:42:16

breaking away from the Invasor

1:42:18

Group in

1:42:20

a 500 million dollar deal to become

1:42:22

a privately owned company. Right

1:42:25

alongside them, Gearbox is

1:42:28

not far behind. Should close the deal next

1:42:30

month to

1:42:32

get un-embraced. Having to buy your

1:42:34

freedom. Buying your own freedom bag.

1:42:36

Holy shit. Who's the

1:42:38

first one? Savor? Okay. Yeah, Savor has

1:42:40

like 3,500 employees. Yeah,

1:42:42

yeah, yeah, yeah. Do all

1:42:45

kinds of stuff. But yeah,

1:42:48

yeah, it was crazy to me when I

1:42:50

heard that Gearbox got embraced. Yeah.

1:42:53

So I was expecting them to be one of the first ones to like,

1:42:55

hey, you know what? We're out. We're

1:42:57

not gonna let you shut us

1:42:59

down. Yeah. That's wild. The

1:43:03

one thing to be aware of and keep an

1:43:05

eye on though is that those moves themselves, good

1:43:07

results and more layoffs. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we're independent

1:43:10

now. We don't have the... Yeah, we just spent

1:43:12

500 million dollars buying our company back. We got

1:43:14

a layoff, half our staff. Yeah, I could see

1:43:16

that. Yeah. So we'll see. And

1:43:19

then lastly, Toys for

1:43:22

Bob, who there's

1:43:24

a lot of uncertainty with what's going on with them

1:43:26

after the Microsoft layoffs. People were like wondering, are

1:43:28

they shutting down the studio? What's going on? Yeah.

1:43:32

They are actually also

1:43:34

going independent. So

1:43:36