Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Mike's Beef with Xbox - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp — go to http://betterhelp.com/kindafunny to get 10% off your first month. Go to http://joinbilt.com/kindafunny to start earning points on your rent payments today. Mike's lost the faith -- plus, previews of Played Exoborne and Tokyo Xtreme Racer! Run of Shows - - Start - Housekeeping - ToTS: Mikes beef with xbox - Ads - Exoborne - Tokyo Xtreme Racer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Tuesday, January 28th, 2025. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside Forbes 30 under 30, aka the man of the Xbox jacket, aka Magic the Gathering, Poppy, Blessing, Eddie O. Ye, Jr. Good day, Greg. Good day. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you doing? Good. That's good. I'm glad to see you rocking this Xbox coat.

I love this Xbox coat. Yeah. Yeah. Usually we give up the ground to Tim. with the bomber jacket bullshit. Oh, no, I don't do that. No, no, no, no, no, I'm stealing jackets away from Tim. And also, the day that we got these, because we all have the Xbox jackets.

Yeah. And I remember what, except for Andy. Did Andy not get one? Give it back to the city. David to the city. Oh, yeah, you did. Right in the lime scooters, yeah. Yeah.

You know, I felt it slipping. I was like, I can't, I can't risk grabbing. I can't risk my life for this. Because if I were to have tried to rescue it, I would have taken a tumble into the city as well. How important is this free jacket from Xbox? Well, I should have just been smart and been like, put the jacket.

on before riding the Limescouver. I didn't think that. Yeah. Just hang in. And I remember when everybody was talking smack about this jacket and people were like, like, we all got the jacket and all y'all were like, oh, this jacket is not that good. I didn't say that. I didn't know.

I wasn't with you guys. I wasn't with you. I got there. I think Tim was maybe the only one saying that. Was Tim the one saying that? If it isn't from Amazon, you know, made in a sweat shop for $13. Tim doesn't like that. Because I really liked it.

I was like, man, this thing looks cool. Which generally, I was like, this is one of the coolest bomber jackets. I think I'm going to have in my collection. Yeah. flex on him. Damn, look at that. Oh, he's one of the His adventure shirt underneath him.

Yeah. Audio listeners, check out this video. How you guys? Listen. Next to him, of course, is the master of hype, Snowbike Mike.

What up, Bless. Good to see you, Andy, my main man, how are you? I'm doing great. Mike,

I shaved my ear. My ear's bleeding. You were shaving in the inside of your ear? Oh, yeah, God damn it is. Yeah, I saw, I saw a hair.

Yeah. And I was like, do you use the electric razor or straight razor? You should. I'm too. I take a point. I need to get it in your shade. Turn. Turn for me, turn.

Yeah. Look at it's bad. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Kevin, give me a bandit. You know, there's a lot of veins in the ears, you know, a lot of veins. Yeah. He's going to wear just a big cover over.

Yeah. Yeah. They bleed like crazy. I see we're doing there. Yeah. Yeah. But was it your electric? This time it's real.

There will be a wound there. No, it was, um, I, I bought some razors at a corner store. Huh. Just for the ears. Well, I was shaving my neck. Okay. And then I was like. Like, oh, there's a straight ear hair.

You did this at the office? Just right now. Yeah, okay. Yeah, a little while ago. Huh. Oh, Kevin's bringing me the band-aid. I'm gonna put a band-aid on the floor. Can I totally shave in our ears?

I mean, look at me. Look at right now. I'm overdue and I got the white hair. I normally do the pluck. But this was in the moment. Yeah, in the moment. In the moment. Oh, I see a stray thing.

Oh, that's it. Yeah, I've never thought about plucking or shaving my ears. Do I have a hair ears? Do I have a normal thing? You don't have a random hair going out of your forehead? where you're like, holy shit, where that giant hair comes on. It looks like a spider sort of implanted web in you. You just have like a weird white kind of like clear hair.

Yeah, some random ass hair somewhere. Oh. When you get old, that's what happened. I just don't know. Keep an eye out. Keep an eye out. You got to check some time. Oh, I've never checked in my ears.

Or like, I saw somebody. Like touch your ear and go, oh, I can feel a little hair right there. And then you try to get it. I have a toilet paper. I don't know where I'm telling you. It's an interesting feeling too. When you yank the hair out of your ear, interesting. It's so weird it is.

Yeah. It's like kind of painful. But it's kind of good. Yeah. You like it. It's like, oh shit. It's like when you pull your nose hairs. Nobody likes it, but like at the same.

You like, kind of. Kind of. Kevin, can I pitch something? What if we put like little compartments under here with coasters? Because I find that the coasts. Well, because the problem is that like the coasters always disappear somewhere. The coasters go back behind the TVs. Here they come.

Coming in out. Cover your drinks. Cover your drinks. Cover your drinks. It's going to be moving at all times. Kevin doesn't understand how bright the light is. It's just coming in from the pitch of black. They're just coming in.

Almost hit him in the head. That was pretty good. Could have made it way worse. If you didn't know everybody, this is the kind of funny games cast each and every week, four, sometimes five. Best friends gather on this table to talk about the biggest topics in video games.

We do it each and every weekday, whether it be reviews, previews, or just topics we need to discuss like today's. Of course, if you like that, we'd love you to support us with the kind of funny members. You can pick it up on patreon.com slash kind of funny. YouTube.com slash kind of funny games.

Apple and Spotify, $10 gets you all of our content each and every month. That's more than 20 episodes a week. So what, 80 episodes a month? Add free. And of course the ability to watch the afternoon podcast when we do them. And of course, well, let me just give you a tease here. Tees me. You can watch the afternoon podcast live as you record them.

Like tomorrow's aliens in review. Shell pumped up. And I'm going to tell you right now. I'm watching tonight. That's not going to, you don't want to. miss that one. Oh, man. You don't want to miss it. Is it going to happen? Oh, you don't even know. This is the one you don't know. Oh, this is the me and Nick thing you don't know about. Well, luckily, I won't be here. Where are you going to be?

You're not in any reason to review? Mr. World One. I thought that's one of the reasons we moved it. Tim knew this. Oh, okay. Well, you don't tell me things now. Man, think about it. What a living nightmare. It's going to be for Tim tomorrow then. Is Tim even going to be back? That's the big question. You know, our little sick boy, going to be sick. If Tim's not here tomorrow, I'm cashing in. Stars in the bank right here. And if he doesn't show up to play me, I can't help you. I can't help you.

That's an immediate forfeit. I get the start, right? Yeah, exactly. Of course, no bucks tossed away, no big deal. You can get the games cast each and every weekday on YouTube. com slash kind of funny games and podcast services around the globe. And where you get it, please, no matter where you get it. I'm just thinking of if you did that, like, you cashed in while Tim's not here.

And then I ask questions, you just get every question wrong. It's like, all right, we're, five questions. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, he keeps a star. Like, subscribe, share. Tell your friends and your family. Tell your auntie, your mama, your uncle. Come on. They got Twitch Prime. Of course, if you're watching live right now, we need you to be YouTube super chatting.

YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games to be a part of the show. What do you think of the topic we're addressing? And then the previews we're doing on the back half. How's keeping for you? You already got today, of course, live talk shows because that's all Kind of Funny does. Jerica and I talked about Phil Spencer's commitment to the series S on Kind of Funny Games Daily. After this, it's the stream of Kingdom Hearts 2 with Mikey. If you're a kind of funny member, of course, you can get today's Greg Way about the people we didn't hire.

And of course, thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twining and Carl Jacobs. What's that face? The people we didn't hire? Well, you should tune in and listen. You know? Are we allowed to talk about that? Is he allowed? Yeah, you can talk about potentials that he thought, man, these might be a good fit.

Maybe they went on to bigger and better things. Well, like, what if one of those people is like they're not onto bigger and better things? They're listening. They're like, wait, I almost got hired by. By KF, I could have had that job? Ask Greg. Now they're working at like, I don't know, some mom-pop shop that they don't like. They don't like the owner.

He's an asshole. What kind of shop is it? Is it close? They sell rugs. Oh, carpet. How does a rugs store stay in business? How about the alpaca store?

Can we talk about that really quick? The alpaca store. You never seen an alpacist store? No. Are they selling alpacas? Like, no, they sell like rugs. Oh, okay. And they sell dumb, like alpaca statues.

You're like, how does the alpaca store stay? Is this one up a store? Nobody's buying shit from the alpacist's A very local. Yeah. One specific alpaca store. At every tourist town you've seen. Every tourist town you've seen.

Kevin, can I get an amen on the alpacistore? It's true that they have one at Tahoe. Okay. The alpacist store? They will have those in like small wintery towns. Yeah. Like a Santa Fe or something? Santa Fe or Mexico for sure.

You know what I mean? A big sir California. They got one. Yep. Yeah. For sure. Is it, what's it called? Is it called the alpaca store?

No, no, that's just what they sell. Yeah, they just sell alpaca. I don't believe this. It's called something like Andes Mountains. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. I don't know. Just that doesn't sound like a real thing.

The logo's going to be our Patreon producers, Delaney Twining and Carl Jacobs. Today we're brought to you by Better Helping Built, but we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's begin the show with what is and forever will be. Topic of the show. Now, if you're a live chat person, you saw it happen before your eyes. Yeah. We had it up there. Mike's played Exoborn

comma Tokyo Extreme Racer There we're going to do two previews for you We still are, don't worry We're still going to get into We're to talk about it You've played Tokyo Extreme Racer too Yeah We're to talk about it, don't worry about it

But there's been something brewing Of course we did games cast Once a week for a long, long time And then we said, you know what, blow it up to it each and every day It'll allow us to be nimble To address things as they need to be addressed Yesterday

On Kind of funny content The One and Only Snowbike Mike Host of the Xcasts before Tim killed it against everybody's will. Came out here and talked about Phil Spencer, all the things he said in these interviews with Destin, with Paris, with Danny. And at the end of the segment, I go, awesome.

And are you excited about the Xbox's future? And Mike went, can I say when me and you were talking about the Phil Spencer stuff and Paris was in the call? That was the exact question I was going to ask Paris before he disappeared. Yeah, a cowardly move. They cowardly moved because he knew I was going to ask him. I was like, are you excited about Xbox's future?

So I'm happy we have Mike to answer. Yeah. So we asked that. We asked that to Mike and he was like, whoa, that wasn't what we were expecting. That's not how we thought that was. It sounded like someone let air out of a tire. Exactly.

Yeah. And then today for Jerica, when we were talking about Phil Spencer, Mike came out. I asked him again, he kind of dodged, he kind of got around it around. This is the,

this is the alpac store. That's the alpac store. That's the type of shit that's the alpacus store. Who you see Mackey? Co. Oh, I was so low.

You know, Kevin's just added. He's fixing it. Today, he came out. I asked a similar thing, and Mike said, I want to talk about that. We're doing, at the end of the week,

we have similar to how we did last week, we did what's the predictor, or talk about the rest of the PlayStation 5's life cycle. We're doing one of Xbox or whatever with Gary and Paris. But I feel like that's a different conversation than what we're having right now. Right now, we as a family, as a company,

as a community, need to know what is Mike's beef with Xbox? right. Wow. Yeah, I mean, I think this is kind of like a venting session and like gated out, you know, because over the past couple of months over the past year, Xbox has been in a different place. Xbox is moving a different direction. And some of us are totally on board for that. We see the future of the business. We're happy for the business. We're happy with that. But also there's players out there, maybe similar to myself, that have to make a decision, have to kind of start looking at the future of where do I stand as an Xbox player or just a game. gamer itself. And I'm a little worried about where I am right now. And so, you know, I want to start off by saying, I am very happy and I'm impressed with the vision of what Xbox is doing business-wise. Okay. But as a player now, I've battled with this blessed for the past couple of months. Sounds like a breakup. Do I, am I invested still in this ecosystem where I should be buying the next generation of Xbox or with the moves that they've been making with their first party titles,

Andy, should I move on to buy just a PlayStation? I can only buy so many consoles because, as you know, my big account is low. You know what I mean? So you can't just keep buying things. Or am I just a dedicated PC player? I also have to look at myself and say that. I have to look at myself and say, am I a dedicated PC player that gets the benefits of all the worlds because Xbox is going day and date?

PlayStation is clearly showing their hand that they're going to start putting more and more first-party titles on PC. is that the best place to play. But, like your PC is an Xbox. But, exactly. But my problem is, bless, is I have this worry that we're putting all these Xbox first-party titles over on PlayStation. Should I just be buying that console?

Am I too deep into the Xbox world that I can't get out of this? Because I have spent thousands upon thousands of dollars in this. Mike, if you would ask me seven years ago, should I just buy a PlayStation? I would have said yes anyway. Yeah. Like, I feel like this has been a thing that's been going on for a while. not Xbox putting their games out on other platforms But it's bigger than that, bless

Because this isn't just Do I go to the other ecosystem Which will eventually have my games? This is Will I forfeit my Xbox Live name? Am I going to have to become a dual sense user? Like it's a culture change But is it sacrificing your Xbox Live name

Because of the PC, you're going to be still Snowback Mike You're going to still be using all the Xbox stuff over there, yeah? But I just- Well, a lot of the games come to Steam And unless I'm using the Xbox app and using GamePass, which sometimes doesn't provide enough value, am I still using that Xbox? I mean, I do like how over the time it has become more and more clear. And they are doing a, I would say a good job of just kind of being more and more transparent with it where when all these talks were first happening, it was like, ooh, is there maybe going to be a game to come over? Oh, man, they're kind of hinting at some stuff.

And then now it's just, it's just Phil Spencer being like, it's not smart for us to keep all of our games only on one console. That's not the move for us. That's not our future. So I like that it's out there more. And I do think that, yes, your PC will now become your Xbox. Your PC will be the place where you are playing these Xbox exclusives.

And buying the hardware for you would just be like an extra thing to kind of have an extra piece of hardware somewhere around in case the PC version releases and is broken as shit or, you know, yeah, for sure. Please. Yeah, it's a weird spot, but this is the future for you now, Mike.

Is the handheld enough? Absolutely not. Is the handheld the thing that keeps me in this going, I'm going to buy that? Where's your Steam deck? Thank you. Steam decks and all this other stuff. Absolutely not.

You know, all characters and everything else aside, right? Like, I'm so excited for the, Xbox handheld. By the time the Xbox handheld gets here, it will be lapped by whatever the next steam deck is, whatever the next Rogg ally is, whatever the, like the weird talking or the things yesterday in the headlines and this, the other, in Paris came on. He was like, Xbox is going to go make an OS, Steam OS. They're going to be all over these things. It's like, if I can get that experience on those handheld already, why would I care about the Xbox handheld? It's too little too late. I think by the time, theoretically we'd get to it because Phil says it's years away, right, in this destiny interview. Like, Xbox is in making so many of the right moves, but they're not making the right moves to make you go, oh, I can't wait for the next Xbox. The next Xbox is exciting, again, for somebody like me that wants it turnkey.

I go, oh, the rumor was, yeah, yesterday, again, not the rumor, I guess, but the prediction from Paris on the show was the next Xbox will also be able to have another operating system or whatever, like, you know what I mean? So if you're booting launchers for anything, Epic Game Store, Steam, whatever it's going to be on the Xbox, for me, as somebody who just wants shit to work,

That's exciting. That's really cool. But like at that point, how good are the PC's going to be? We talked about this yesterday, right? Like I'm traveling this weekend. I got a review codes I need to go through. So our friends at Razor didn't send me one for advertising purposes. Just like, oh, I said, hey, can I get help?

And they sent me the Blade 18 laptop out there, right? That thing is so fucking impressive. I was playing games on it at my desk yesterday. And like, you've all heard me bitch about the widescreen monitor I use that doesn't have HDR. So to boot this thing up, play. cryptical path, which I've been playing on Steam deck and see how much faster it loads on this thing. It's one of those like, God damn.

Like, I can, that's a very impressive machine that I'm probably going to end up begging and begging not to be a loaner. Just let me keep it because it's better than my PC at home. And to Mike's point, like, I booted, I'm waiting on codes. I booted up Starfield on it yesterday. And to sit there, I'd be like, I know. Ha, ha, ha. But like, to boot it is somebody who's put so many hours into Starfield

and look at it. God damn, look at the detail. Look at how good Starfield looks on this fucking PC, this laptop. It's like, what is the point of having an Xbox series X when this looks that great? It could do all the things you're talking about. I think as long as things start to get more friendly with the Xbox GamePass app and Steam, once those start to get, we start to see a lot more integrations where it's not on Steam Deck right now, I have to kind of do some roundabout ways to get the Xbox GamePass app to work on my thing.

It's not the end of the world, but it's definitely not user-friendly. And that's something I would recommend. It's the point to me, right? this is my whole thing where I was asking you about it. And I'm like, until it's load the app and do the thing, I don't want to fuck with it. I'd rather ask about getting a laptop to travel with to make sure I have a better experience

than what the deck would be when so many of our review codes are not optimized for Steam deck. That's where the Rog ally would kind of come into place, or come into play, where the ROG ally would work like a PC where you could just open up the GamePass PC app or you can open up Steam and you have all your games there and it's a more powerful piece of hardware, but a little bit less

I guess streamlined, right? That's my thing is like, that's where I think an Xbox handheld comes in and gets really exciting to me because I own a Steam deck just got an ROG ally last week.

I boot it up, it boosts right into Windows and I'm like, okay, I'm going to have to watch some YouTube videos to figure out how to set up. I would love for this to boot up right into an OS as opposed to booting up right into like, you know,

something where I'm going to have to like figure out how to get the games I want to play and make it easy to get to those games or whatever. If it was just an Xbox handheld with an, Xbox OS. I think I'm at the point where even though the ROG ally, even if we're calling the ROG ally, like the top of the line as far as what it brings as far as power, right, it's more

powerful than this game deck. Let's say in the scenario, it's more powerful than an Xbox handheld. I think I still lean toward, actually, I think I might prefer getting an Xbox handheld just because I'm getting the OS. I'm booting right into that most likely. And then also, I know that the Xbox games that are going to be supporting this ecosystem are going to be optimized for this thing. And I think that's exciting. It's somebody who I'm looking at the Xbox, you know, studios that they have. And I'm like, we're getting to a point now

where I am looking forward to a bunch of games from these studios. Like, we talked about the first half of this year and what's probably going to be the second half of this year as far as, oh, wait, Xbox Game Studios has the stuff and I'm excited for South of Midnight and Avowed in all these games. I think one thing to bring into this conversation, I've noticed it from hearing you talk, hearing Greg talk even, right,

of you guys talking about why should I care about the next Xbox? And that still sounds anti- what Xbox has been establishing as what they are marketing as Xbox. I don't view there being a next Xbox. I think there might be a new Xbox hardware or a new Microsoft hardware, but I don't think they're

looking to sell 100 million units of the next Xbox like, you know, whatever it is, right? Like I think it is, hey, no, we are looking for a user base. So if Mike is playing on PC, we are happy with that, as long as he's playing Xbox. And I think that's the thing that matters

way more is like, I'm excited about the ecosystem. I'm excited about getting an Xbox handheld. If we get to a place where Xbox has like the little streaming stick, like a little Xbox Roku thing that costs $50, $100, like, as long as we keep building on that, for

me as a player, I'm like, yo, this sounds like the best case scenario. Smoke and Joe's 420 Superchats and says, Normans need an entry level priced console still. And that is still a real conversation. It's why the Xbox Series S is so successful. Why

they can't abandon it. And yeah, what you would hope the Xbox handheld would do if it was, here is a very cheap way to get in and you can plug it into your screen and it does this

and opens up that gateway to we get you as a user. And then if you are committed enough to go, oh wait, these can look better on a PC or an Xbox, whatever, you invest that money on that hardware and still stay in the Xbox ecosystem.

Yeah, Bless, I'm with you with the games, right? I think there's a two-part conversation going on here. I'm all in on the games. I believe in the first part. studios. I like where they're going. Some games won't speak to me, but there are a lot of games that do, and I like the idea of Game Pass giving me those day and date. But the issue is,

is we're halfway through a console life cycle right now, and we're unclear of what is next. Is it a true console? Is it just a handheld? Will you look at me and just say, hey, we built a PC? It's like, well, I already have a PC. So I guess I'm looking at it now. It's like, am I making that jump of, I'm going to commit to buying an Xbox console the next generation around? Or, you know, There's just the time of, hey, I have alternate paths of my PC. They're going to start streaming on my TV. Do I believe in that? Am I moving away from that console?

And I feel like right now, with the uncertainty of I don't see it in front of me yet, I don't know where I stand. I'm buying the next. I can't say I'm confident in buying the next console. But I think that's fine, though, right? Like, I don't think they care about you buy in the next console. But I'm worried because I keep investing in the platform. Right?

Like, is this time to be starting buying stuff in PlayStation? Should I be upgrading my Steam? library and just buying on the steam instead of buying games on the Xbox proper platform. That sounds like such an exciting problem to have as a player. Because like Mike, if you're telling me that like your issue right now, right, your beef is, oh man, am I going to have to buy PlayStation and play PlayStation and Xbox games? We're living in the best case scenario because that's what that's the world I want to live in. If we can get Nintendo in that too and I don't have to buy any other things, like that sounds like

the dream. Yeah, but I don't have that library built up. Right. So like when I jump over the PlayStation, I don't have that library already pre-installed. and built up. I feel they had a couple of games still come over. So now when you're like, oh, Mike, we're having just a blast on Monster Hunter Worlds and I'm like, I had that on Xbox. And it's like, okay, can't, should I re-buy this again? I have a problem. Well, we're going to be playing Wilds, right? And that's cross-platform. So you're fun.

Well, yeah, of course. I'm just bringing up those like older titles all of a sudden you jump on with your friends. You are such a different gamer than me. You have such a different experience than me. Does that happen a lot to you? And I also would you, like, would that have, are you, you're not like what I was at 13 where I'm trading all my stuff in. If tomorrow I was like, hey, we're all playing that aliens multiplayer game that we played for a while and enjoy it. I forget the name of it. We go back to a fair amount of games. Well, you still

have your system to jump into, right? Well, like, it's on PC now is what I'm noticing. I'm moving towards PC a lot more. But you still have your Xbox. It's starting to collect dust. I'm worried. Yeah, I think that's the moment inside of me. I think it's a very big positive, like, blessed brought up of like, now having those Xbox titles anywhere in this

ecosystem built in of you can play anywhere. Now I am moving towards of like, well, I am just a PC gamer now, right? Like, I'm not looking over towards that console because I have all of my experiences on my friends list, everything there, where this could just be my new place to play. So you don't see yourself sticking with the Xbox ecosystem, even on PC. Like, you don't like Xbox app?

I rarely use the Xbox app. Only if I want to really take the benefits of Game Pass, then I would use the Xbox app. But I would say 99% of the time the first click I always do on my PC is the Steve. Yeah, I'm the same way, but, you know, opening it recently when I was downloading Ninja Guide 2, the sort of re-release on Game Pass. One thing I really love about the Xbox, they got that time to beat. You could sort games by time to beat, which is really cool. We need more of that. And also, the future of Xbox would be super bright.

If I could buy an elite to fucking custom mod shop or whatever the hell thing, without the little black handles. I'm tired of the grips, like that. Get rid of the grips. The damn rubbers keep falling off. Feels better without a rubber. It does. It does. I can't tell you how many times

I'm just torn through those controllers. My controller at home right now. The bumper's always breaking. They're going to say you tore through rubber. Jesus Christ. He said it. And so, yeah, that's the fun, exciting part of my world right now

with Xbox changing and evolving. You kind of look at it as a player of like, where do I go, bless? Should I be just jumping on a PlayStation console? so I can get the best of both worlds. Should I stick on PC knowing that PlayStation games are coming over there as well? Xbox is their day and date. You can take advantage of the Xbox app.

And I just kind of move away from the console. It's hard to believe that because since 13 years old, I've been buying the original Xbox and the Xbox 360. Do you think we can get there with PC? Because I think I fully understand what you're talking about now, right, as far as like ecosystem and reasons to stay there. Yeah. Because I think I always viewed the solution to that is,

well, your ecosystem is still on PC, right? But I think the Xbox experience isn't there yet to be like, this is my home on PC. I'm with you that as soon as I boot up my PC. For a video game, I'm automatically going to Steam. And, like, Steam has such a chokehold on, like, the PC gaming experience. That is tough to think that, like, Xbox is going to be able to keep up as far as, like, giving me, I guess, a home in that way on PC.

Do you think there's, what do you think it'll take for them to get there? Do you think they can get there to make Mike go, oh, I don't need an Xbox console. I have a PlayStation and I have my PC and Xbox, like, you know, I am an Xbox player on PC. I'm not even worrying about Steam at this point. I think it's got to be the improvements to the Xbox PC app, which they've been doing.

I got to give them credit for that, but it's not perfect. It still needs time and it's still growing on that. But it is, of course, the first party output. You have to prove to me that the first party output is there so I can continue to hold on to a getting more and more expensive, GamePass subscription and going back to that all the time, right? I think the first reaction is I go to Steam. I look at the thousands of games that released that day.

Oh, there's one from Xbox and 30 from other third-party developers that I can just buy and I stick on that. Oh, a lot of point. Oh, my gosh. Who's letting that happen? You're going to browse that on stream. You've got to turn off like the not save for work filter. Well, you just can't hover over it.

You can't see the thumbnail, but you can't, don't hover over. I'll say though that the question that bus is asking of you Mike of the Xbox like will that Xbox PC app ever overtake the Steam app for you no no I don't think it it's a bad thing though right no I don't think so either but I think it's the same thing that epic game store you know that's the same sort of hurdle they've been trying to overcome for a long time and after being at a storefront I never opened dude after being at summer game fest and talking to like a couple of epic folks and being like what what is it that you want to scene. I'm just like, honestly, once the scene that came along, that was like any sort of last

hope for me to open the Epic game store, unless the game is exclusive there. Or, you know, I think Epic does a great job of putting some games for free that are awesome for people who don't have money to be buying a whole bunch of games, but maybe they have the Epic, you know, the app open or whatever. And then there, the weekly offerings or the monthly offerings, here are these free games. That's great. I love that shit. but it's just like it's so hard to pull me away from that same ecosystem as somebody who's only been playing on Steam PC games since like 2020 the start of the pandemic like that's not that long yeah so you got to imagine the people from 2012 2015 like there's no shot you have of sort of

stealing them so that's why I feel like you need to have when I open up Steam I need to see Xbox game pass as a game in that list to click on that and then up pops on the window all the game pass offerings because I feel like that's the it's sort of like if it's not there it's out of side out of mind for me. I needed to be right

there in order for me to go oh what's up at the store let me click on this as opposed to clink up another app which sounds like the most lazy shit ever but that's just the reality of how I operate on my PC yeah Mike I think what I'm understanding now about your predicament is that you're a man without a home

Or you're becoming a man without your home, right? Like, people are coming in. There are... I'm not going to move in, by the way. PlayStation and Steam are gentrifying your Xbox home. And, like, when you look down the barrel of three, four years from now, I totally understand your feeling of, okay, well, yeah, like, Xbox might be on PC, but when you boot up your PC, you're playing Steam.

Okay, well, if I'm going to play on a console, like, am I going to buy an Xbox console, or am I going to buy the one that has, like, PlayStation games and Xbox games? and you know I do understand the feeling of I have lived here all my life you know I have owned this this property like I grew up here and now y'all are coming

through and fucking I don't know big tech corporation wants to build a big office here and you are forcing me to move out because I look at my home and it's like do I want to keep putting money into this home when I can save money and go over here like that's the exact that's the exact predicament that you're in right now and I totally understand

where you're coming from I'm not ready to take the jump either blessed. Yeah. I love that console. I love that ecosystem. I like pressing the button here in the ding jumping in, seeing the homepage and navigating just like I would, knowing everything, and it's just like, where, in five years, where am I going to be on this? Is it smart to be continuing to invest in this?

Or should I just become a GamePass guy? Every now and then, I get it on Game Pass. I'll jump in and play a couple games, but I'm investing all my money into Steam or over on PlayStation, I'm just buying games there. I turn that son bitch on. I'm like, there's the Apple TV app where's the Netflix app

it's just my medium machine started severance last night Season 2 by the way Finally started season 2 No spoilers but like Watch episode 1 Alright we're off to a good start We're off to a fiery start

Can I tell you my dream Scenario right As somebody who of course came up You know played Nintendo And then play a lot of PlayStation right Like I'm to this day My home console is probably my PlayStation 5 Followed by my Nintendo Switch

Followed by Steam Which I'm playing a lot on Steam lately played first berserker Kazan on Steam I might play the whole thing Oh interesting what drew you to steam for it Say again sorry What drew you to steam for it? Oh because the demo

Isn't it? The demos ever though right? Oh is it demo is on PlayStation But check this out This is one of those things where The mind share the demos are on BC I had the homie Jsick Who's always often in our chats

I was like I'm not seeing this demo on on PS5 And I remember posting about this years ago Yeah Where you go to the thing You have to click the three dots to then go to the demo. Why the fuck isn't it the first thing you're seeing?

So that's another complaint. I mean, that complaint exists and persists. And last night when I was like, all right, Mike told me to get back on Silent Hill. I download Silent Hill with my portal, right? And it's like, cool. It downloads the Silent Hill bonus content. I'm like, what the, delete?

Go in, delete. And then I got home, or I did it from home to do it to the work on. Same fucking thing. I'm like, God damn, we're playing. If I'm actually doing the power rankings, right now, Steam is actually above Nintendo. I'm using my Steam way more than I'm using my Nintendo Switch.

When the Switch 2 comes out, that'll change. That might end up my number one. But like, you know, it is PS5, Steam, Nintendo, and then my Xbox is just collecting dust. My dream, let's say three or four years from now, is that it is going to be me with my PlayStation console. I'm going to have my PC for like if I want to play, like, you know, if I want to play in that fidelity,

if I want to get into that, play on my widescreen, maybe play on my Steam deck a little bit. Of course, my Switch 2 is going to be Switch 2 in. But then I do want, an Xbox handheld, where it is like, all right, cool, I'm booting up in Xbox OS, I'm playing my GamePath stuff. Like, that's my dream ecosystem right there of like my multi-platform. I'm playing everything and everything has its own purpose.

I don't know if that does much for you, Mike, as far as I mean, looking for a home, but like, yeah, I don't know how that hits for you, Greg, as far as where do you see. Right now, I'm so excited for where we're at and where we're going. And of course, it's because, you know, my home, the PlayStation didn't abandon me like Mike's home abandoned him. You know, they kicked him out. He's a man with no country.

He's over there. He's big boss. Um, no. For me, like, obviously, as somebody who time is, as long as anybody's listening to me or known me, it's been dominated by PlayStation because that was my beat to report on, right? Like,

that's just inevitably done that way. So nowadays when people come through and like, oh, do you want review code for this game? And I'm like, yeah, I look at the game and I'm like, give it to me on Steam. Does it run on deck? Give me a Steam deck code.

I love that. That, like, I'm finding those reasons to use these things I've bought, right? Like, that was my big moment. I'll never forget sitting at the kitchen table hovering on buy the steam deck. And Jen's like, just buy it. And I'm like, but what if I don't use it? Like, I'm going to be so mad if I spend $800, whatever, it was $900 on this stupid thing because I bought the biggest one. If I get this and I never fucking use it.

And so the fact that I use it for games independently on it, I do so much cloud streaming on it for Starfield. Like I love that ecosystem. I love the fact that I use it. I love that. That is my PC. Like I have a tower at home that we've had for kind of funny stuff. yet and if I need to do something hardcore on it, I'll do it. But having the deck there and like being able to plug it in, which I rarely ever do, but have in the past, like, I love that

that can just be my PC. I'm excited for whatever the deck two technically would be, right? I know we did the O-Led in the middle there, but whatever the next iteration of that would be, how powerful can be, what the battery could be. Like, I will be a day one buyer of that. I will, I will buy that and be excited for it. Um, I do hope in this, so anyways, right now, before I get this future, right? PlayStation 5 would still be number one. I would say deck is right behind it, where it is like I'm playing a lot of PC stuff. I use my PC a lot. Then behind that would probably be the Xbox.

Yeah, because of again, Starfield obsession, little things. And also looking at this year, where this year's going like with avowed. Like I'm going to put a lot of hours into that, right? We talk about all these things that are supposed to come this year, whether it be Outer Worlds 2, whether it be Fable. Like, they're speaking my language south of midnight.

Like these are games I'm going to play. You know, would I play them on the PC? I'm not against it. I want to transfer the save back and forth. But then we're into what Andy was talking about and what I've talked to Andy about of like, well, is the game pass going to work? Is it going to be weird with the deck, right?

Again, with the loaner laptop. It's like, okay, this opens up stuff I can play with and try that, see if I like that ecosystem more. But even that is exciting to me of, cool, I have a razor laptop out there that is awesome and everybody seems impressed with it. I don't know what any of the specs mean, right? 4080, awesome, great, whatever.

But it's like, that's turnkey right now, right? There's nothing I need to do to it. So that's fantastic. That's what I want. I want to be able to load the game and play and have a dedicated space and have the screen. It's going to be great on a plane. Awesome.

that's an exciting thing and the thought of well that save then works on Steam I mean come on what an amazing and I know this is so stupid but for me Greg the PlayStation guy what an amazing platform Steam is of cloud sinking saves

your things are over there this is going I play it on my deck I put it on the big machine I put it over with you right it's what I hope that Xbox figures out with them right of like okay cool how do we make the saves transfer

even easier because again Xbox is cool of the game pass PC I can get my Starfield thing and kick it over to Xbox and do it to the cloud. That's an amazing ecosystem as well. Like I have so much variety and choice right now that I am playing on more systems than ever.

Like that's new to me and I feel like I'm flourishing in that. Whereas in the past it's been PlayStation 5 code. Oh, we don't have it fine with a fucking Xbox, I guess, and I play. But, you know, we talked about it yesterday, I think, on Gamescast like our year-end wrap-up and yours was just like, cool, it's Hellblade, right?

Yeah. Mine was Starfield followed by Hellblade. And like, that was really all I play there. Maybe Dungeons of Hintraberg, too. But it's like, even that I think I got a steam code for because I wanted it on the fucking go. So, like, I'm eating. I'm so happy with everything.

The Switch 2 coming out and, like, the rumors of an Akarina remake? Fuck yeah. New Mario Kart, fuck yeah. I'm going to be all about these things. So it's like, I love the diversification. And to look into the future of what that means for me,

I love what you're talking about of, I think of what the future would look like. And my hope would be, it would be whatever the PlayStation is because I'm still a trophy and I'm still getting my single player games there, whatever the next Steam deck is, because I think it's such an impressive machine,

and I want my games on to go, and I think it's amazing. And then Paris put the honey in my ear yesterday. And so my hope would be that then it is this Xbox that is Xbox and is able to run Steam. And I am sending, I'm doing Steam Deck stuff, and I'm sending my save over there, and I'm off to the races and happy. Like right now, we're in a situation. And I think because of the... Oh, it's Switch to. I think because of the line of our work, right?

Just the nature of what we do. I love kind of trying to be ahead of the curve and hopping into these early access games. and giving my thoughts and opinions so people can either be guided and maybe, oh, I like Andy's taste in games, maybe this is something that's worth checking out, whatever. But right now, there's a beta for a game right now.

A little game called 33 Immortals. You ever hear that game? I've heard of it. Thunder Lotus games formerly made Spirit Fairer. 33 Immortals is that 33 player Action Rogue Light. That is just a bunch of people, raiding, bosses, all sorts of stuff.

and it's currently in beta on the Xbox Insider program and the Epic Store, no Steam. The odds of me giving that a chance? Probably the next to zero, right? Yeah. Because I just don't really have those, those aren't kind of within my reach. Like, opening up the Epic Game Store does not sound like something I want to do for this. And I probably don't know my password. And I think my password is through my PlayStation Network account.

And I was just like, if it was on Steam, easy. Easy download. I'm just not there right now with the Epic Game Store. I learned when we were streaming the Fortnite, like, Valerite mode, that's when I learned that I had a second, oh, yeah, it was a Valor mode. That's when I learned I had a second, Epic account. I was like, what did this? Everybody's got two.

Sometimes you just got two. Sometimes you have three. I want to give you some super chats before we got out of this because I still want the previews, Mike. I sent you, where did you go? Vegas. I went to Vegas. Fucking Jesus. Over here, okay,

Coba in a super chat says, isn't it unwise for Xbox to be asking for potentially three skews when Xbox game sales are lowest, waste for devs? I don't agree. I think the skew thing is interesting and like we're talking about the S,

but I think as soon as they say, cool, the S is just going to be the cloud machine from here on out, like the old stuff obviously, but clouded up there. I think, again, you're just trying to give people would there be the S,

the handheld, the X, whatever the new thing would be, just trying to give them entry points into this, let alone again, this screen is, a fucking Xbox, which I think is brilliant. It worked on my cousin who, you know, got an Xbox

game pass and is super into it. Why not, right? Shea Sleigh says, here it's called sheepskin gifts and alpaca, too. Thank you. What do they sell them there? Nico says, my worry is Xbox's

rapidly changing strategy. Yesterday, Bless, asked, why do people keep asking Phil the same questions about red lines? It's because the answers change every six months, which I do not agree with. I do not think every six months, Phil's changing an answer on if it's going to be exclusive, if it's not,

if it's whatever. I think there was, I think it was, Mike doesn't agree with me. A little bit. I mean, I agree with that. Yes,

I think it's become clear over time. There was a little bit of murky water at the beginning, right? I think it's just a big ship to turn. And it feels so rapid because you are four generations deep into an ecosystem. And now we are really moving and saying like, well, all these games that used to be exclusive that we used to sell the console on, they're everywhere now.

So it's kind of like a whiplash of sorts to try to go through right here. But it is happening. I think they have stayed true to their word of what is going on right now. You get kind of muddied waters of like, well, where Starfield, like, why not just say all these games are going to go?

Like, that's all you have to say. I don't know why we hold it back and keep our cards close to our chest. When you've shown that like these will happen. Halo is coming to PlayStation one day. Gears of War will come to PlayStation one day. Yeah. I just haven't heard that.

and it still feels whiplash. I think that last statement he said was kind of all you needed to hear of what I said at the beginning of the show is it's not in our best interest to keep to 100% say that a game will not go somewhere else. Like that's not in our business plan. That's not smart business for us. Where, yeah, I kind of agree where like, I don't know, I felt like a year ago that it was like, no, no, no, you buy Bethesda to sell your console. You don't put those games elsewhere.

like you buy that stuff to make you to bolster your hardware and make people want to buy an Xbox and now it just seems like that's all kind of the window because I feel like that comes from people like that comes from the audience but like I don't think they ever went we bought we bought Bethesda to only put their games on our console it may have been the way that they were slowly drip feeding what games were going elsewhere yeah it may have been the way that when hi-fi rush goes multi-platform were like oh they're so it's going to be these types of games I see Xbox And it wasn't just those type of games. It was always planned to be everything, but I think they wanted to not just blunt force hit us across the head with. Everything's up for grabs. You know, I think they wanted to kind of slowly drip it out. I think the one flag I will give,

because I think a lot of it is, you know, we've talked about this for years and years. And I think it has been the back and forth of, like, a group of audience being like, everything is going to go everywhere. And then the other group of audience, yeah, being like, hey, you buy Bethesda,

you're doing that. to sell consoles or whatever. And like it's to what we talked about yesterday as far as the fan and audience investment that they have in Xbox because it is like the almost like the not to me say this in a mean way, right? But like the last place mentality of,

oh man, I've been here and I've invested in this and I got to fight for it and I got to be involved and I got to make the business decisions for Phil Spencer, all that stuff, right? And so we're overly engaged with it. To say all that, right? I do think around this time last year

where there were the reports of certain games, was it last year or two years ago? I don't even remember at this point. but certain games coming to Xbox, there was like two or three games. I think it was the high-fi rush, Sea of Thieves, Grounded, yeah. And I think it was Sarban, Phil Spencer,

and like Matt Booty sat down and they did the podcast and we were like, oh, it's a podcast. It was like that scenario. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I think during that, it did feel like they were towing the line as far as, oh, yeah, these games are going to come to Xbox, but then I don't have to go back and watch it verbatim.

It did feel like they were saving room for, oh, but like these games aren't going to come to Xbox. I don't know if they ever said it verbatim, but it felt like a quick... You mean aren't going to go to PlayStation. Sorry, I'm going to go to PlayStation. Sorry, sorry. But it felt like there was like a turn at some point where it was, oh, actually, yeah, these games are coming to PlayStation. And I think that's the one piece of like where that didn't line up with like, you know, the words and their actions didn't necessarily line up.

But I think that might have just been the one-off scenario of like, oh, man, maybe y'all shouldn't have spoke on those. Or, and like, I think we've talked about this as well, Satie and Adela and Microsoft from the top coming down and being like, oh, no, there's no, there's no red. lines. Like, everything has to be able to come to PlayStation or other platforms so we can make this money. It felt like that almost got taken out of their hands. That is all correct. And so I actually want to go back to Nico's comment here where I was like,

I don't see it changes every six months. In that context it does. And I know that I'm splitting hairs here. My interpretation was more the flip. I read into your comment a flip of, it's exclusive. It's not like, I would, the way I would phrase everything we just talked about and how we talked about it

yesterday was that the message keeps evolving, that Xbox's business model keeps evolving, and Phil has to keep doing that. So the thing he said about, okay, these are Beth, I saw somebody shout out, you know, when they got Bethesda, but new Bethesda IPs would be exclusive or something of that effect. That is a changing thing. And yes, I stand down in that. I was incorrect. I was reading it a different way.

I meant the fact that it evolves, but I understand. And yes, to that respect, yes, it evolves. Yes, it changes. You are correct. I had another one I wanted to get in here before we get to an and break here we go Street Shadow says I see a lot of people say

we want one console or PC only world but what does that do to competition and how to generate new ideas and how does that generate new ideas it's true but again even when we say that I don't see it being we are getting down to one thing we are talking about the next Xbox being two things in one

possibly right maybe this is just a pipe dream we are talking about getting an OS onto this competing OSs we are talking about the ROG versus the Steam deck like I think even as we go to one if we went to one platform everything's PC you'd still have people making different things and working on ecosystems and different operating systems to try to be the best place to play yeah I think people are working with like a narrow view of what competition is because it's not like Xbox is going anywhere

at least for now right like I think Xbox still exists in that space as far as hardware right like you mentioned Steam Deck ROG ally PlayStation technically it's ROG I talked to a PR person who doesn't work there anymore and they're like

technically it is ROG we don't say ROG we don't say ROG we don't say ROG but like you have all these different pieces of hardware Nintendo's like you know doing their thing right PlayStation is doing their own thing

and I do think that the moves that Xbox is is making I think are going to leave PlayStation in a place and not just the Xbox thing right but like I think PlayStation in general

are in a in between a rock and a hard place of PlayStation can't be PlayStation forever in the way that they're operating currently. 100%. Because of the amount of money it takes to make games because of how long it takes to make these games that are more demanding as far as fidelity, scope, all these things, right? How much difficult it is to, like, how much more difficult it gets every generation to make a fucking video game, right? Like, that isn't going to stand. And so, like, yeah, like, I think the competition part of it is happening.

Xbox is making competitive moves right now because they're in a position where they have to. that is going to ripple over to PlayStation where they're going to have to look around and go shit we're being left in the dust. With every fiber of my being, I believe if Xbox can weather what they're in right now and not even the storm, just financial

world 2025 as we see everything happening, right? If you can weather this and have this vision, you are, there's going to be a day where it is suddenly a flip where it is like, oh, what is PlayStation doing? And it is that they are still so archaic and they are still their box and their exclusives and da-da-da. You will get to a point where this cloud strategy, every screen is an Xbox, we're partnering with PC,

we're talking to Steam, we're using OS. Like, you are going to have a day where that suddenly I feel like that clicks into place and you do look at PlayStation go, oh, you're fucked. You didn't do it fast enough. Now, they are going to PC with older games. Clearly, there's a pipeline. Clearly, when this would get to that point, they could flip a switch for lack of a better term.

It would be like, cool, yes, our exclusives are coming to PC day and day. but even then it would be the thing of cool hopefully my Xbox thing that boots on the side can do it right because that's what you're talking about you're talking about if what Paris is talking about of having a dual booting Xbox that suddenly I can play Spider-Man on my Xbox you know what I mean like that's an exciting proposition

when PlayStation would have to inevitably give up the ground or open up streaming or do whatever they do then your Xbox would be doing that as well which is a very fascinating conversation I'm really excited to see what the next generation sell is right We were sold this generation on the most powerful hardware available. Oh, there's a second skew to get into more people's homes. And what is this one?

Is it just a handheld? Because we are, Greg, I'm right on board with Xbox with the ecosystem in that cell of every screen can have your games, all of your purchases. But what are you selling me next one? What is this going to look like? Will people get up and go, I'm excited to buy that? Or will they go, I don't really need that? And there will be a lot of people.

There will be so many people who don't need that. Yeah. But then there are so many people like me and even less than me, right, in terms of their connection to video games, who would be like, oh, awesome. That gives me all of that and all of this. And yeah, it's not the best, isn't that the worst, but it's like even the Razor 18 laptop out there

that I'm having a great time with, right? And I'm excited to get really hands on with on this trip. It's awesome right now. I think about having that in the three-year commitment to it in three years, the memory card or the graphics card and all the stuff is outdated and it's not running games flawlessly. It'll be like, oh, I don't have the desire to do this. It's why I'm talking about the Steam Deck.

I'm excited for Steam Deck too. Sell me that, so I have a better Steam Deck experience where I could go and have a better PC experience right now. There's always going to be people like me who just wanted to work and turnkey. Final one before our ad break. Bobby Kai, Super Chat, and says, Mike, picture the next Xbox. A beautiful, spherical, rectangular-ish thing

with a button press and chime in all its glory, playing your Steam Library and Xbox Library, whispering in your ear, your home. I love it. I'm very excited to see if that's the sell, right? Are they really going to approach us in, you know, whatever years from now, let's just say five for fun. Five years from now, Phil gets on stage with Sarah Bond and the team,

and they go, we've created a box that does both. And you have the freedom now to choose. You can do whatever you want, go do it. Okay. Is that just not a PC? Should I just not be buying PCs? NZXT is just selling PCs by the wayside that are the exact same. same as this. Is that really going to be that much

cheaper than an NXT pre-built computer? Well, but it would run Xbox natively, right? Well, Xbox app on PC is already doing Xbox stuff. But you already don't like that. You don't like that. Well, that's what I'm getting at. It's like, are you just not selling a PC now? And are people really that excited about it? Can I ask you a question?

Tell me. Do you think it is possible for the next Xbox console to be the least selling Xbox console of all time, but also at the same time for Xbox as an organization to be more successful than they have in the last two generations.

I think that's what they're setting themselves up. Yeah, I think that's what they're going for. Yeah. I think that is your next move. I think we have to prepare for the next console to just not sell as much. That's 100% going to happen. But it'll be like you're mentioning

from a user base, from an install base, from a, we had this many daily active users on the Xbox GamePass app or whatever it may be that that's going, that's going to be where they're big success is. all right well speaking of a big success we are kind of funny and we've been here for 10 years doing live talk shows all day long and we couldn't do without your support please head over to patreon.com.com slash kind of funny YouTube.com slash kind of funny games Apple and Spotify and pick up the kind of funny membership where $10 gets you all of our shows ad free the ability to watch the

afternoon podcast like aliens in review tomorrow when Andy won't be here and of course a daily dose of me in a series we call Greg Way but right now you're not using membership benefits so here's a word from our sponsor. This episode's brought to you by Built. If you're a renter, I'd start taking advantage of Built if I were new. Here's the thing. We earn points on groceries, travel, and practically everything else we buy. But we should also be earning points on rent, one of our biggest monthly expenses.

Built changed the game by letting renters earn high value points on rent and around their neighborhood. There's no cost to join Built. And as a member, you'll earn valuable points on rent and your everyday spending. built points can be transferred to your favorite hotels and airlines and even the ones you haven't heard of. There are over 500 airlines and 700,000 hotels and properties around the world you can redeem your built points toward. Points can also be redeemed towards a future rent payment and unique experiences that only built members can access. So if you're not earning points on rent, my question is, why not? Start earning points on rent you're already paying by going to joinbilt.com slash kind of funny.

That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com slash Kind of Funny. Make sure to use our URL so they know that we sent you there. JoinBilt.com slash Kind of Funny to start earning points on your rent payments today. This episode's brought to you by BetterHelp. What do you want your 2025 story to be? Every January brings you 365 blank pages waiting to be filled in. In 2025, maybe you're ready for a plot twist, or maybe there's part of your story you've been wanting to revise.

Life isn't about resolutions that fade by fair. It's about picking up the pen and becoming the author of your own life. Think of therapy as your editorial partner, helping you write new chapters and create the meaningful story you deserve to live. Some of my best friends use BetterHelp, and they love how helpful it can be for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself. It isn't just for those who've experienced major trauma. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient.

flexible and suited to your schedule. And it serves over 5 million people worldwide. Write your story with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash kind of funny to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, help.com slash kind of funny. Betterhelp.com slash kind of funny. And we're back with a tragedy.

I've lost my phone. Mike's phone is trapped under the clear desk. It started simply as blessing, give me your phone to get my phone out. Then Nick came out with a metal pole and knocked it way deeper. And now it's just stuck in there. There goes my phone. It's stuck in between the desk and the glass.

We'll worry about that after the show. We'll get it out. Let's have some fun. Right now I need to hear about Exo-born Mike. You went to lovely Las Vegas, Nevada. I did. And I got to go to the HyperX Arena, which I'm very excited to talk about because I was my first time ever in there. We heard about it a lot last time we were there.

Yeah, big passion. for e-sports. So it was very cool to be there. But let's talk about ExoBorn, a new open world tactical extraction shooter coming your way very, very soon. Oh, look at this. There we got it.

Thank you, Nick. That's my guy. I won't ever do that again. What is that? What is that? That's like a mic stand. C-stand. A little stand or something.

You mount on songs. Yeah, it looks like a Liza P. Weapon. So yes, Exoborn, developed by Shark Mob Their previous titles that you may know about Of course is Vampire Mascarade Blood Hunt Which was the 3V3 Battle Royale With the vampires. Very, very fun.

But this is their new title coming your way. This is an open world tactical extraction shooter, third person, fully customizable exosuits that you're currently seeing. You'll have a glider and a grapple hook to help mobility around this big open world. And it's set in a post-apocalyptic U.S. torn apart by weather.

So you'll have random weather events throughout each and every one of your matches that I'll talk about. It's on UE5, so it looks very good. It's coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox series consoles. There's a playtest hitting February 12th through the 17th. So make sure to keep an eye out for that one to jump into the fun. When's it coming out?

Do they have a date? No date. No date yet. This is a premium title. There was no price tag on this yet either as they look to see what they want to put it at. But let's talk about the game. Tactwell extraction shooters.

You guys have heard this word many of times. This is kind of the new hotness alongside battle royals that the first person shooter and third person shooter worlds have been seeing a lot in on the PC side, in Xbox and PlayStation's, I don't say. A lot of people see in this. But this one is bringing something a little bit different when it comes to moment-to-moment gameplay

with the weather effects. So every time you jump into a match, there are tornadoes that are flying around. there could be fire tornadoes. There's dense fog. There's rain. There's poison gas. There's high winds that all play in to different moments to moments when you're playing this game.

Right. So like if you need to go somewhere faster and you want to kind of move around the map a little bit, you jump into a tornado, get that lift, glide somewhere else, right? If it rains, your glider actually will be dampened and you won't be able to fly and move like you were before. So there's some really fun moves into this. the dense fog I was really impressed with. It is really dense to the point where you can barely see in front of you and it does add a layer of like,

ooh, this is intense and I'm scared and I'm nervous. Everything you're saying and showing me right now is getting me. I like what I'm seeing. But my question is you call it tactical. Like how, like, is it not running gun or is it like I get shot once in them down or what's happening? No, you're not going to be shot once and die, but this is on the more hardcore side of things, which is like when you go in there,

you are going to be fighting NPC bots as well that will be guarding certain loot caches, different artifacts that are kind of like the high prized value items out there. But there will also be other teams, right? And so in the, so the cool part about this is there's three maps. At the beginning, you slow, it's like kind of an easier map.

We were playing on the much harder map at the end of the day. We played about seven hours. And the NPCs at the beginning, beginning map, you could probably just run right through. Unless you're really missing it or you kind of get stuck in a bad spot, you won't have any problem with the NPCs most of the time. When you get to the harder difficulty,

that's when it's like, oh, the NPCs will actually take you down and become a problem if you're not on your piece and cues there. Okay. Plus the addition of other teams looking for you and looking for loot, this is more on the hardcore side. I don't think this is a jump in and like you're going to have an easy fun time. This is you should probably be ready to rock and roll with your team. at all times for sure.

Did you enjoy it? I did. Surprisingly, I've never been a big fan of tactical extraction shooters. I had more fun with this than I've had with other titles in the past. I'm still not fully sold on this genre at all, so that's the issue,

is I'm just not a guy who enjoys the drop-in to the map. So the interesting one about Exelborn is when you drop in, you get 20 minutes. You have 20 minutes to go loot around the map. Of course, there are numbers of different kind of loot, right? There's just the bandages, the batteries, the basic supplies that you're going to either scrap or use for crafting. Then on top of that, there are the high value items, whether that be guarded by a bunch of NPCs or what they're calling these artifacts. And so

the artifacts are like a loot box that have a number of high value pieces of loot inside of them. So in the 20 minutes, your goal is to run around this map, loot as much as you can. That risk reward is always what they talk about in these kind of games, and then extract out. If you stay over 20 minutes, you will now be pinged on the whole map. Everyone will see your location at all times and they'll know where you're at so they can get after you. Also, if you get one of the high value items, which are the artifacts, you will also be pinged on the map and people can track you as well. So the cool part is we can always find you and come after you, which I think led to some really fun engagements with me and my team of, I always push a team of let's go find a gunfight.

Let's find an engagement. So let's go to these high value areas. Let's get after it. Oh, that one's moving. Let's go track that team and get after them and get involved in a gunfight. Because I felt like most of the time, when you are just low-key scavenging and trying to keep it simple, it's a slow burn. There's not much excitement going on. The NPCs aren't providing that much of a threat where it never felt exciting or fun to be involved.

And it was like, oh, that was 20 minutes of us collecting a bunch of scrap metal that I really don't need or care about. Are you bringing this stuff back to a home base? Correct. So at the end of the 20 minutes, you will come back. And so because of the exo rigs, your three exosuits there's available, you can upgrade those. You can, of course, grab new weapons.

You can upgrade your weapons with different attachments. And there are extraction points that you would. All over the place. Yeah, yeah, on each map. So the three exosuits go like this. There's the Codiac, the Viper, and the Kestrel. The Kodiak is your big, heavier tank that you'll see during my gameplay. It's equipped with a shield.

You'll have ground pound. The Viper is a close quarter, kind of life steel one. It has a beacon that can recon around you and kind of ping different enemies. And then you'll have a blade so when you kind of go in and jump out really fast. And then, of course, the Kestrel is repositioning height advantage where you could actually fly and hover around the map on that stuff. And so the big catch here is all the loot that you get, you'll come out and you can craft new pieces of armor.

you can craft upgrades to your armor so we noticed later on in the map there was this big toxic gas cloud around one of the high value targets and every time we'd go in, it would corrode our armor we'd get down to like zero health and we'd die in the gas cloud before we could get the artifact and extract out

and I said, well how do we do this? And they said well look in your upgrade menu, you'll see there's different pieces of armor that you can put on your exosuit that will help you with that. So really you're playing the lute game to get to these different pieces of hey armor attachments or I want my weapon to have a silencer and extended Mac.

It's the generic tactical extraction shooter. So I think most of the fans out there are listening. They'll probably know this game by now. But if you're new, that's how the cycle of an extraction shooter looks in place. No pun intended to cycle. Exactly. Another game that sort of came and went. And so you have a third person perspective.

You will go into first person when you aim down sights. All the guns felt good. There's a sniper rifle. There's an LMG. There's an SMG. The gunplay felt good. I had no problem with any of the gunplay, especially when you add on attachments, you can definitely tell if you have a blue rarity gun compared to a purple rarity gun and so on

and so forth, just like every other video game you've played. Some of the things that I really liked, self-reads, I love being able, you go down in this and you can actually pack revive kits that you can use on yourself, on your teammates. I really, really enjoyed the three maps. I find in tactical extraction shooters when you only have one map, I get really bored with this. So I liked that there was three different maps

that all kind of brought to three different varieties. The first map, very open, a large scale map that you kind of get your feet wet in. The next one is kind of more city-like, so you'll have buildings to run around with, but still pretty large. And then the third map is a very small, tight map called the pit, I believe,

and you just jump in this pit and you will see everybody. I mean, you're engaging with everyone and anyone. That was really, really cool on that one. Some of the things I didn't like, I didn't like the glider maneuverability. It's very much a glide and not a move with it. I think I'm so accustomed to like a Zelda that really lets you fly with this. This is, you're not going hundreds of feet forward. You're just kind of gliding down and then moving from there.

The XO rigs are interesting. The weather's the big draw here. Was it cool? Did you like it? At the end of the day, it is cool. It was fun. I would try it again, but I don't think this is the one. I was going to say this strikes me as a great stream.

Yeah. This seems like a really good stream we could do. Almost like when we got into once human. Remember that? Once human, we didn't want to be like two or three days. About to bring that one up too. There's another one. Once human,

which surprisingly has 25,000 people playing right now on Steam, which is kind of surprising. But you and I also previewed a game a couple months ago called Arc Raiders. Yeah. And if you could check assets, Kevin, because I put through a link in assets. Arc Raiders is another similar story. Sci-fi, futuristic, third person,

PVEVP and like the children yearn for the division I just want Come on you be soft Because here's the thing I feel like these games are becoming sort of a diamond

dozen nowadays because there is less development time in letting the players make the content There's less development time there as opposed to the division where it's mission structure mission base.

V-O, this is what's happening. We're telling you story. Progression, new boss, move on to this part. Story cutscene, new boss, raid this. Like, I think developers are going more for this because they could still show off visuals and cool gunplay.

Sure. While those sort of emergent gameplay moments are you running across another squad. You having that, you know, me and Mike had this moment in when we demoed the Art Graders game where it's like, oh, shit like we thought we were alone we hear another squad move in and it's like those moments are cool don't get me wrong anytime i experience that shit it's a lot of laughs and it's stuff that you

could talk about forever because it's like oh my gosh the you know when mike is like and do you have the shot taken and i snip his head off what a fucking great moment you take his loot but it it doesn't take too long for those moments to lose their excitement and i really just want I just want a Division 3 I just want that You're not getting it I bet I know never

And I'm just like These games kind of keep coming out And we played the cycle We had some great streams in the cycle But you got to a point where it's like Okay what's next What am I supposed to do next in this game Other than keep on running into

You know Trying to make content out of other people in the world What if I just want to play a game With a mission structure One I'm jealous that you guys got to play Arc Raiders, because this is one where I remember the game award's debut of it, and I thought the debut trailer looked really cool.

And I remember, like, a year later, we were doing predictions or whatever. I was like, oh, we'll see Arc Raiders. And everybody was like, what the fuck is Arc Raiders? But then also, so this is the same dev that did the finals. And I want to know, like, what do they got over there as far as, like, the visuals team? Because there's something about their games that look just like really good.

Oh, yeah. And it might be AI. I don't know, but like, they got something over there. This game looked fantastic in practice. I can't say much for Exoborne because we've only seen the video that Mike provided here for us, which some of it looked good, some of it did not look great. And I know that, you know, UE5, you know, it's still kind of early for a lot of newer developers. So they're still trying to kind of figure out what works best with that engine.

But I don't know, man. It's so discouraging for me to play a lot of games that the movement, the locomotion, the shooting feels awesome. but I just can't see myself spending more than 15 hours in your game. We had a lot of fun in the Arc Raiders demo. But of course, they're speaking to a different audience, right? There's an audience. But they love Andy to be the audience. Exactly.

There's an audience for Escape for Talk Off fans, right? They love the extraction shooters. And we're not really that audience, but like how big is that audience? Are they trying to get new players in? And I do think, like, when we played Arc Raiders, it was, visually like, oh, this is cool. I really liked the setting that they had. But there was nothing drawing me in as a new player to like get me excited.

We're like when I played Exelborn, at least it had the grapple hook and the, the flight with the glider and they had the crazy weather. I think that was their draw. Both of these, right? It's like, who is this speaking to? Because it is that like when I play these, I do want the division. We're getting the division light here and it's not quite theirs. I want to just level up with my friends. progress and you know i think there's a lot of fun to be had in games like these sort of pve

vp games where it's all about the risk reward do i want to go out with good gear and risk losing it to another squad or should i leave it back and just make this run where it's a different loop entirely right i like i'm asking for choose your own loop right yeah i'm asking for a different video game at this point but but i just like there are so many of these games coming out and i i just I get sort of discouraged with each and every one of them because I end up playing five-ish hours in them and go, okay, I'm good. I can't see myself being in here too long.

And so like what are those things that need to happen for these games, right? Because we want something different, but like for these games, what do they need to succeed, right? And I think we see a lot of them just go to PC only. And it's like, oh, you got to go to console as well and try to get a larger audience. I do think a lot of them got to be free to play. But like, what is the monetization tactic there

to justify not charging? $40 or is $40 enough or when we see the back Concord. That's crazy. Like I can't do that. Right. And so every time we see these games,

I'm always wondering like, what are we doing? Right? Like what's the game plan here? What is the thought process going into this? And what are you bringing new or how do you get the audience to really attach it to? Now, our creators, the devs had a fantastic response to why is your game not free to play? Why are you charging 40 bucks for it?

And they said, well, we want to make content that serves the gameplay and not waste our time making content trying to make money. Yeah, yeah. You know, as opposed to like, here's our game. It's a free to play game. All right, dev team, go make stuff that'll go make trinkets that'll make us money. Go make

battle pass stuff. Go make cosmetics that'll make us money. As opposed to go make stuff for the video game that kind of serves the gameplay. I, which is a great response, but I just... Will they pay for it and will it actually work? Yeah. I don't know. That's the same thing looking at to Exiborne. Like, I'm saying it looks like a fun stream a fun two stream but i don't see it being something

finds an audience is connected with everything if that's your cup of tea right like if you are into the extraction shooters and like this is something you're excited about you have arc raiders you have exa born new games coming into that that you can try maybe you like the mechanics maybe they have a good end game set right but like for us it's just like the casual audience right you attach yourselves on to like things that you see in other games and you're like i'd like to try that or like oh i love just cause you're telling me there's a tornado in there that I'll get excited to see three times and then be good with like that's the kind of the catch of like when I see a game like this I'm like that's going to be fun for me and Andy

and the boys to play five times maximum and then unless I somehow I become obsessed with the loop and I finally see the code I'm probably never going back to this because it's just not my cup of tea well blessing is Tokyo Extreme racer your cup of tea it is yeah I played an hour and a half of it yesterday this is one of those ones where this is blown up everybody's talking about the numbers it's putting up on Steam. Yeah, so it's in early access currently. Yeah, it's one of those games that, you know, we had one of the news stories on KFGD about how it's doing very good numbers for a Steam concurrence.

And I heard about it earlier this month, watched the trailer and was like, oh, this looks really cool. And then as it came out, I think late last week, was getting blue sky posts from people being like, yo, you should check this out. This might be a blessing game. And I was like, oh, I usually don't hear that about a racing game. And so, like, this is one that I'm going to check out. Oh, you got my stream.

But, yeah, so Tokyo Extreme Racer, I learned this last time while playing. I played nine and a half. As I was playing, one of the things that struck me was one, I knew Tokyo Extreme Racer was a thing already. What I didn't realize is that this was part of the same franchise. For some reason, I thought this was a separate, like, brand new Tokyo Extreme Racer. Okay. Because the franchise of Tokyo Extreme Racer hasn't been around, at least as heavily, in a while, right?

The franchise looks so started in, like, 1994, the game called Shutoko Battle. The first Tokyo Extreme Racer game was 1999. And then like the last couple of entries have been mobile entries. There was one in 2017. That was another Chitoko Battle. And then in 2011, those different mobile entry. Again, that Chitoko battle thing. But between like, you know, I guess 1994 till now,

there have been a bunch of different Tokyo Extreme racers all under development by the developer, Genki, which is the same developer that is making this brand new one, which I think feels almost like a reboot for the series. So it's out now in early access. in my hour and a half of playing it. I'm very intrigued and I like what they're going for. What are they going for? Is this the street racer?

Yeah, so it is, the whole game takes place on there's a name for it. I think it's like the Chuto Highway. I'm looking for it in my notes here. But the game takes place on like the expressway system in Tokyo, right? I guess it's one of the largest ones in the world. And so the fun thing about this is you get put into the game, you start off in your garage, of course, you buy a car.

it's the typical racing game thing of you spend money on like do you want the Toyota, the Nissan or this other one and of course my first car was a Toyota Solara 1990 something. Nice. I went to Miata. Oh, you went to the Miata. But yeah, I picked the Toyota it takes you to the garage. You can tune it, do whatever.

And then they put you on the expressway and it is you will drive until you find a rival and then you challenge the rival by blinking your lights at the night. Yeah. And then it immediately starts a race. Exactly. Now, the shoot to Andy on 19th all the time. So the Shuto Expressway is what it's called.

I found in my notes. What's interesting about the races is you go like toward like you know, down the track on the on the expressway and you see on the top of the screen there are two health bars. It's your health bar and then your opponent's health bar. Basically there are a couple ways to win. One,

the more you pull away ahead of your opponent the more their health bar will go down. You can also bash into your opponent. Oh, I'd be bashing. Yeah, if you bash into their opponent, that'll take down their health bar as well. So it's more of like a interestingly competitive.

Fascinating. Yeah, racing game in a different way. Like a fighting game. Yeah, like a little bit. But yeah, it really is about like the one-on-one head-to-head experiences of racing. What then happens is after a few races, if you look to the bottom right of the screen, you can see the car icon with the four like health bars around it. Those are your wheel house. Tires. Yeah. So each of your tires

have their own health bar. and once your tire help bars get low enough you then have to go back to your garage to then heal the health bar yeah to reset them and then while you're in there there's a ton of different menus

you can go and you can tune your car which I don't do because I don't like tuning cars but you can also customize your car which seems like the customization experience seems to be pretty good from what I've experienced so far there's also skill trees

and like a lot of stuff going on there's also a menu for like lore of characters that you've you've raced against Cinderella Pass midnight. Yeah, so here's the thing, right? Because I didn't even get to this yet. When you first, you know, get put into the game, before even going around and racing, you then, you start off in this, like, visual novel sequence where you talk to a character. The character is a

faceless character. It's kind of like just like a black silhouette, yes, of a girl. And her name is Cinderella past midnight. Yeah. Sick. Yeah. And I forget exactly what she says, but she basically is like, oh, you're here as a racer. And they're setting up. the story of you is the street racer trying to make a name on the streets. It's how in karate kid the whole world revolves around karate. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the most important thing in the planet.

And like, the music is bump in and like, we'll get in a conversation because like Mike also played it and I want to get Mike's thoughts in. But like, the music is bumping. I absolutely love the soundtrack. This is cool. And I'm not even a racing game. There's character to it, right? And like you get put into when you're doing the, and like, you know, you do the races, come back. And after you do enough for the races, you then

get another visual novel cutscene. I like a lot of what they're doing here. I think this game is neat. I think this game has a good energy to it. I found the race is fun even though if I'm getting into critiques of it. I think the game when you are getting to the flow of, all right, I finish

this race, now I'm looking for the next race. It can get a bit boring because it is you driving down this expressway until you finally reach a person that's ahead of you that you haven't raced yet and then blink your thing and then all right, cool, you do another race. All right, Nicole, now I'm going to race or now I'm going to drive and see if I can find another person.

that process, I think, takes a little bit, and there's not really much to do in between that process until you go out to the garage. You do all the shit. Vistral attacks replenish your health bar and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Critical hits. You are unlocking parts of the expressway as you go. And so, like, once I hop back into the garage and I realize I unlock a new part of the

expressway, I then drop in that part of the expressway, and there are more racers to find there. So it seems like they want you to jump out and jump in pretty often. But my other beef with it, my beef with this game so far. My biggest critique with this game is, like I mentioned, they have the story, they have the lore sections. My problem is that everybody's faceless. You're not seeing actual character art. And most of the characters don't have actual names.

Is that an early access thing? That's what I hope. Like how Hades had a bunch of placeholder art? I really hope that it is placeholder art, and that is an early access thing. Because when you go into the lore, you'll have, like, there's factions of different racers. One of the factions is named the challengers. You'll go into the lore, and it is it's a lot of, this like Challenger 1, Challenger 2, Challenger 3, 4, and 5.

And each of them have like a paragraph of Challenger 1. He's a shy guy that works in the auto shop. Shy guy from Mario. He's a shy dude that works in the auto shop, but he's not great with the ladies until one day he met a girl that shared the passion of racing. And like they build out these Lorne characters, but they don't have names and they don't have faces. And like my biggest wish, my biggest wish for this game is that when you challenge somebody on the road,

you would see like a key art of their character art and it is just one sentence of let's race or like you know all right first to the finish line or something like that it really needs that. Heard you been turning up the streets bless yeah like because we're halfway there we're so close and that I think would push it over to the top of oh this fucks

like I think some anime out of it because like I think the lore stuff is cool but you can't do the lore stuff with these characters and not let me see their faces. What was a stylistic racer that came out year two years ago Neep for Speed I forget the name of it But one of the deep

It was like a very much different Looking sort of video games Like anime kind of aesthetic Mike what do you think of it You want to know what I called my racer What's that? No Mike Mike Prince Adam

Oh because he's a beast From beauty and the beast Get the fuck out of you I know it's crazy Come on I love that You like this game Mike I hated this game Nice

Nice Nice I played this game for an hour And I just did not not like this at all. You know, sold to me a little bit as like, Need for Speed Underground, you know, Midnight Club dub edition.

And I think what drew me to those games back in the day was that just killer soundtrack. And this one does not have that for me. I do not like the soundtrack. Which, to interrupt you there, right? Me and Mike talked about a little bit about it, you know, out in the office. And Mike had mentioned that he wasn't feeling it.

And to that, I totally understood. I was like, oh, dude, like, I could see exactly, why somebody wouldn't feel this because I didn't feel it, I think, until the last 30 minutes. It's when you mentioned the soundtrack where I was like, what? Yeah. The soundtrack? Soundtrack. That's my favorite part.

Hated it. The soundtrack wasn't bumping for me, and that's really what's driving you moment to moment, right? It's like, you drive down this highway that is empty. There's not much going on. I can't turn around if I miss another driver. Like, Blessing said, right, this is very much a game of like, take a race, maybe take two, bounce back to the hub screen. Then you upgrade, you back back,

you bounce back onto the highway where racers are. Because I was just driving, Greg, in a straight line. I'd race one person, blow their doors off. It would take another two minutes to get to the next person. You're like, all right, well, this is a long time. You're just too good. I'd get to the next person. It'd be a very basic race.

I'm looking for more of like, hey, here's the street race. There's six of us now in a line, and we're going to go for this. It felt like every time all the races were the identical situation. I pull up, flash my lights. I fly off the starting line. Either they beat me or I beat them. It's like a 30 second race at most. And then I have to keep driving and do the same thing, rinse and repeats. So yeah, I just didn't love the moment to moment gameplay on this one. I like the car customization that you can get lost in. Yeah. I enjoyed going over there and painting my car with different decals

that they have. They got a good extensive library of like, you can really get in on the painting and make it fun. Similar back in the day when we would go NBA 2K. And you can, you can layer different things on the courts and on the jerseys. I really appreciated that one with that. But yeah, this one oddly enough was one of the few games I've ever said in my mind, man, I should Steam refund this right now. Wow.

And I usually don't do that. I love seeing Kevin struggle with my stream. Because like for some reason whenever I click off the game the game just minimizes immediately. And whatever it minimizes, you see my computer background. Which is Hayachi fighting Sonic's

cool. A good match. It's a really No, but midway three, you also switch over to Oh, it's a virtual fighter? Yeah. Yeah, I played virtual fighter Revo last night. I wasn't feeling it. And then at the end, I played Magic the Gathering. Ladies, gentlemen, and envies. That's another episode of the Kind of Funny Games cast.

Remember, we're here each and every weekday with live talk shows. We're evolving around video games. If you like that, pick up a kind of funny membership to support our 11-person small business, Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny, YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games, Apple and Spotify. Of course, the fun isn't ending right now. We are live while Mike plays Kingdom Hearts 2. And I got some beef. I have more beef.

More beef. You don't want to miss out like Kingdom Hearts 2. I'm calling someone out. Get your belly full of beef. Be there. Until next time, everybody. It's been our pleasure to serve you. Beef.

Beef. Beef.