Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - New Vita and The Problems of PSN - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 84

Episode Date: September 9, 2016

We talk about what we'd want from a Vita 2, games we love in genres we hate, the problems with the PSN, and Far Cry 5. (Released to Patreon Supporters 09.02.16) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys, welcome to the first ever episode 84, the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddes, joined by the coolest dudes in video games, Colin Moriarty and Greg Miller. Hello. Hello. It's good to be wearing the same shirt. Don't. Why'd you immediately? I want to bring attention to it immediately.

I couldn't let the people have to be their casting. I didn't expect it. I definitely didn't expect it from you. You don't wear T-shirts often, let alone the kind of funny T-shirt. I packed all my shirts for packs. We're about to go to Pax. you can find our schedule over at Kind of Funny.com slash packs

which at this point This only helps you if you're getting it on Patreon. Yeah, whatever. You should check us out. We're doing a bunch of cool stuff and I'm hosting a panel. I'm a little bit scared about it. You're going to be great.

South Park, man. You're going to kill it. Yeah, so I had to wear this because everything else is currently being laundered. Oh, see, I packed. I'm not to say I don't like this shirt, but I packed all my favorite kind of funny shirts.

Yeah, my San Francisco Bridge one, P.S. I love you. I want to do this. Producer, seducer, Team Fat. I feel you. So this is like the one that's like, this is an everyday kind of funny shirt. This isn't a special occasion

kind of funny shirt. I can wear this whenever I want to wear it. If everyone else wanted to wear it, where could they get it? They can get it at kind of funny.com slash store. It's true. It's very true. What about you,

Colin? What shirt do you wear? I'm wearing a Lewis and Clark shirt. I'm just laughing because Kevin just had like a blunderous switch. And then sat back and actually just shook his head in the negative. No, I'm wearing my usual polite provision sweatshirt that I wear every day. I like the sweatshirt.

but Eric Castro, make it in black. He does make it in black. I'm getting it. It's black with gray. Oh, I would select the pink, but can I buy this online? No. This is only for people that work there or me. I'm sure I can get one.

Probably. You having fun there, Keth? Kevin, you have a lot of fun? Switching's hard. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the games cast every week. We get together, talk about video games, all the things we love about them. you can get it early on patreon.com slash kind of funny games or you can get it late on youtube.com

slash kind of funny games. Either way, we love you a lot, especially Greg, right? I love everybody. You know that? That's my whole shtick. You know what else you love? What's that? The Patreon users that submit topics and stuff.

Oh. Just like Min Chung did. Min Chung says, this month's topic is simple. You guys are in charge of the PlayStation Vita 2. What would you do in terms of hardware, software, software, UI price games lineup, etc. See, I like this one. I like it too because we're timing it.

This episode's going to be going live the week before PlayStation meeting. So this is our final kind of chance to talk about this thing. That's probably not going to happen. Remember on September 7th, you can go to twitch.tv slash kind of funny games and watch our pre and post shows all about the PlayStation meeting. And of course, watch it while we do the meeting itself. We'll talk over it. Oh, wait.

So this goes live for Patreon before. Patreon the week before for normal users. Monday before. This will be the Monday. Two days before. So come on to watch all our content there. Don't worry about it. I'm excited about it.

We're coming up. It's coming up soon. What I like about Ming's question here is the fact that it's deeper than what we usually get. Once in a while, I'll talk about PlayStation Me. I think on the last PS I love you, we did actually what we'd want out of a Vita 2. But we never go into UI software. We always get hung up on the machine itself. I still think that's where I start right now.

Where I start Tim. And we'll actually, you know what I'm going to start with a little history lesson. Go for it. PlayStation Vita. objectively the best piece of hardware it's ever been released in the video game landscape. But the problem with it

is that it's a tale of two Sony's. It's still very much the PlayStation 3 Sony and it's still very much the PlayStation 4 Sony. PlayStation 4 Sony, of course, came out, kicked everybody in the teeth, admitted they had fucked up last generation and said they were going to fix it this time around, right? Mark Serney comes out, it's a powerful PC,

it'll be easy to port your games, it's not the cell processor, we're here about games, we're here about games, we want to talk to gamers, we want gamers to buy the system. this is a machine for the hardcore gamer. They never say hardcore, but that's what they're striving, right? The people that are starting to feel left behind, whether it be mobile gaming,

whether it be whatever that we use trying to do, whether it be, if you remember, what Xbox 1 was saying they were going to do, that they were going to TV, TV, Xbox, Xbox, TV, TV, TV, TV, Call of Duty. They came on and said all the right things. PlayStation 3, of course, was them saying all the wrong things for a long, long time, and not really understanding the market, getting it on track in the end, but still never really recovering, right? PlayStation Vita is right in the middle there where I think that if,

PlayStation Vita hadn't happened the way it happened with PlayStation 3 on the market and that Sony. If they would have waited and launched it after PlayStation 4, we would have seen a device. That's the device I'm going to pitch you, which is here is the handheld for the hardcore gamer, the gamer, the gamer, the gamer. It's about games. It's going to be easy to port yourself. It's as powerful as a PS3. Hopefully it's somewhere closer to a PlayStation 4, but whatever is actually technically relevant, right?

It is a boutique item. We aren't expecting to sell a lot. We want this to get into your hands so that you, the person who loves video games, can play high quality video games wherever you are on the road have that PlayStation experience it you look at this device I think it looks a lot like the PlayStation Vita is right now except that it has two triggers it I call and I disagree on this all the time I say there's no touch of any kind because I think touch does harken back to we're chasing the mobile market we're chasing the casual

gamer this can be something for anybody this is a device that we know we're not gonna make the biggest margins on we know we're not gonna sell 15 million units on we're giving you this device that we want you to do because then it's gonna be the one where if it came out now or they made one now, what they should rely on is that, hey, play your PlayStation 4 games anywhere with remote play. And they tried a little bit with PlayStation Vita, but it's always been so weird and pigeonholed in and all right, cool, like, you got to use the back touch for R2 and L2 and that never works right or swipe over here for a grenade and stuff like that. L3, R3. Exactly. Boil the dual shock down into an actual handheld,

and that's all it is. And maybe it is chunkier. Maybe we get the form factor to where it looks more like a dual shock with a screen in the middle or something to that effect. But that's what I would want out of a PlayStation Vita 2. I would want them to be the Sony that came out in that February event and say, here is a device that is designed for you, for you, for me, for you, the person who's watching this. We want to give you this handheld and we want it to speak to you as a gamer and not worry about. All right, cool.

And there are going to be iOS ports and this, that, and the other. I want it to be a real machine. I agree with some of what Greg says, but I don't agree with all of them. I mean, the touchscreen thing is just, that's just a fundamental disagreement that he and I have about. I think, yeah, you could say,

this is this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, quartz, mobile gaming, to me, I say that's how we interact with devices. So like, the, the interface of the Vita itself, it may, like, with the bubbles and stuff, I think it's fine. Like, I think you can make something cooler. I'm not intelligent enough in design to know what, what it would be.

But I say that only in the sense of that, like the touchscreen, that's, having a tactile screen is not that expensive. in 2016, 2017, at all. And even if you're just interfacing with the machine and not with games, I think it's totally worth having it because that's the way we play with those devices. I think it would honestly would feel very old if you couldn't touch that screen. I think it would be weird.

But that aside, I think one of the major things from a technical standpoint, and we've talked about this in the past, I think, is that to Greg's point of multiple Sony's, is that there's not been any synchronicity between Sony devices in a long time, and it's been a huge problem for them. So like PSP predated PS3 and any interactivity between those two devices was really like not. USB stuff. Yeah, like not really that important. PS3 came out and kind of caught fire later on.

Meanwhile, Vita was really designed to work with PS4, but they couldn't say that yet. And so they had this weird kind of in between space like Greg was saying where it's like, well, PS3 is doing fine. We can't talk about the PS4 yet. The Vita seems like it was made with. not without the PS3 in mind, but really it's made with the next console in mind. We can't talk about it. And that caused a lot of messaging problems.

It's the same kind of thing we saw with the fucking light bar on the controller for the PS4. We're like, why does this exist? And I'm like, well, it's for the camera and all that. I'm like, but who cares? And it's like, oh, it's for VR. That's why you just couldn't say it yet. Like, it's totally for VR and totally for the interactivity of VR. So they have this synchronicity problem with their devices.

And now that PlayStation 4 is doing really well to have a device that is more powerful than PS3 if components allowed and the price point can be below $300. which I think would have to be. You could have a boutique device, a niche device like Greg was saying, that I think could cater to the hardcore gamer like he was saying as well. But I think because all the stars align better for Sony now that they could probably sell twice as many of them as they sold Vita if a very specific thing of very specific things going in order.

They're not going to sell 50 million units or even 40 million units of a handheld ever again. Nintendo even struggling to really hit and reach those numbers. They have. You know, PSP was somewhere around 80 million. DS was over 150 million or something like that. It's like these are insane numbers that are never going to be reached again in the handheld market. So as long as the expectations are calibrated downward, then I really think the thing that's going to sell this.

This is what we were talking about on... On... No, on the React video that we did for PS4 Slim, is that I think that they have to get developers on board. And the way to do that is to say, like, the risk-reward... here is just lower. And so you can make money.

It reminds me of going to a GDC talk I went to with Drinkbox Studios some years ago. They were like, they put a game on mobile now with Severid after launching on Vita. But they're like, we were really not comfortable doing that. I mean, I'm paraphrasing because we just,

it's easier to find our games here and we make more money. And even though the investment's higher to make a game on Vita, people notice that and people buy games, the attach rate's high. So, do you like Wicameli come to iOS? I thought it did. I have no idea. Severn makes sense on Iowa.

Sure. True. And I think it's probably fully playable there. I wouldn't be surprised by that. The thing I think that they have to say is, you know, I was reading some stats lately. The last year, traditional handheld gaming only accounted for 3% of the market, but this was only done on the back of what, 40 or 50 or 60 million devices. It's an impressive amount of money made on a small amount of devices when you compare it to the quarter of the industry's gross revenue that is garnered from mobile across nearly 3 billion. devices with an average price point of a game or an app at 50 cents with most of the stuff being free and with 58% of the audience or 58% of revenue accounted for with 1% of the audience. Those kinds of statistics scare the shit out of game developers. And to because they realize that, A, no one's like no one's really paying for their games. 58% of revenue from 1% of the audience is not a viable solution for a more traditional space.

And 50 cent average being brought down heavily by free games means that money can't be made, even if your game is niche and people are downloading it at 50 cents or a dollar or two dollars. There's no money to be made there. It's not possible to turn around things. So go to developers and be like, we want your games on this device. And yes, you may only sell 100,000 copies or 50,000 copies of a game at $10, but isn't that a lot better than having your game downloaded half a million times with 1% of the audience giving you maybe a couple dollars each? You know, like they have to make this pitch. And Sony, I think, did make this pitch with the Vita a little bit. And it did, It did garner games and games do sell well on Vita.

Not all of them, but some of them. So I think that that's the big strategic thing that they have to do is to say, this might not make intuitive sense because of the volume, but this makes intuitive sense for revenue. And this makes intuitive sense if you want to make core games for core gamers and want to get noticed, really nurture that catalog of games and make sure. And I think they've done actually a really nice job of that on Vita. There's garbage on Vita, but there's actually a really good catalog of games on Vita.

And they're not that hard to find. So make those cases to developers. I think the tech is less important, but, but, you know, two triggers and all that kind of stuff, I think has to happen at clickable analytics. It's one of those by adding those. I feel like you open the door

to again have a Markserny presentation of, we realized we made some airs with Vita originally. This is going to be so much easier to port your games over indie. Every indie game that comes out, it shouldn't be that the Vita version now gets canceled, whatever. Because, no, you just have to bring over

the PlayStation 4 version and do some voodoo to it because I'm sure for these Indies that aren't as powerful, obviously. And I hit the port button. I just do feel like, you know, Greg said, you know, they're only going to sell, you know, the expectations of 15 million. I don't think that Sony should do it if that's what their expectations are. They have to aim higher than that.

Like, whether or not it's possible, I don't know. But one last foray into the market within a goal of 25 million, I think, is not unreasonable considering what Nintendo's doing on the backs of their IP, but also on the backs of some third-party games that if they could just, like, people really enjoy some of this stuff, the level. five games, for instance, like Professor Layton, Square Nix is producing a lot of good content there. They're getting some great Japanese games from other, you know, from other developers and publishers as well. If Sony could just nurture that, make the connectivity between Vita and PS4 and Neo very seamless, not only with remote play, but perhaps with some onus on some sort of crossplay functionality. I think that they just have to check a lot of boxes. If they could check all those boxes successfully, if there are 15 boxes and they can get 12 of them checked, I think

that I don't think it's that crazy because I just, it might seem unintuitive, but you just have to set your expectations lower. Not everything has to sell like a PS4, you know? Sure. And I really still feel like they haven't probably lost money on Vita. Like, and so I think that Sony's a big corporation, and they had a write downs on Vita for sure and they stopped reporting those numbers. But I don't, I don't know that with the burn of 10, 15, 20,000 of these being sold every week in Japan, for instance, with games still being released there and this thing just sitting there not doing anything with it, like it's a burn, you know? Like, Yeah, slow burn. You're going to make your money back in the long room.

But, I mean, that's the thing of what we're talking about is if they put out another one, I don't think you call it Vita 2. I think you give it another name and you focus on PlayStation 4. Talking about the Vita in particular, being a device out of time and out of sync with the company is the interface. I hate the bubbles. I think they're fine. Don't get me wrong for what they do. But it's a weird system that, a weird interface that isn't PlayStation in any respect. And it was one of those things when we originally got it.

We were like, oh, interesting. Is this a hint of what PlayStation? No, you get PlayStation 4. And I think it's clear that they were like, we're not bringing the X, MB over to PlayStation 4, so don't do what we did on the PS3 and PSP, which made sense. It was awesome because it was easy to transfer files and stuff in between, but we don't know what the PlayStation 4 interface is going to be yet, so you can't do that either. So it became, all right, we'll do this touch bubbly thing that originally didn't even have

the ability to control with any of the real buttons you had to touch and do those different things, making it feel like this device that wasn't built for gamers. And so that's the whole thing is you put out whatever you call the next handheld Vita 2, which is not what you call, but we'll code name it. And you make it look like live area. It's the exact same idea, exact same stuff happening on it. Same thing where go over, you know, you go one to the left or whatever and you see what your friends are doing and how that's going.

Then the store is always up there and you're same everything just to get in there and be like, okay, this is what this device is and this is how it communicates. And when I plug it into the PlayStation 4, the PlayStation 4 recognizes it. Yeah. Which is out of control insane that when you plug the Vita into the PlayStation 4, it just goes, this device is not supported. Yeah. It's like, are you fucking kidding me?

That was like, because like, granted, we were moving in all sorts of. of ways a normal consumer doesn't, but it was so much easier to download games to the PlayStation 3 and plug in your Vita and transfer them over. And the Vita, like, even with like photos, the way you can a screencap and then plug it into your computer and your computer like, okay, cool, you want to drag these into your photo? I'm like, yes, this is perfect. This is great. Why is it such a chore to make this understand what happening on the PlayStation 4? Yeah. For me, I've been thinking a lot about this. A couple days ago, me and you were talking on Colin Greig Live, I guess it was yesterday, about what it would be called.

called, like what's the best title for? And I was saying, I think it should just be PlayStation Portable and call it a day. But I was like, is there something better to do? Because I think portable is a bit of an outdated thing. We're talking about the Vita being stuck in a time that doesn't really exist anymore. And it was in the middle of the things.

I think that the idea of a portable system is very close to being outdated when we have mobile existing forever and that we have what we think the NX is going to be. I think that the idea of a portable is kind of, a bad direction to go and that's where I think that if Vita 2 or PlayStation Portable 3 whatever the hell it's called is like

a real thing I think it needs to be radically different actually targeted towards the hardcore gamers but thinking of instead of making just another thing that's like oh it's a portable system take that out of totally out of your mind think of it more as a system that you can play outside

of your house yeah so it's like even if it is chunkier it does have the the shoulder buttons and the analogs and everything's proper, right? But I think that a unique way to do that would be instead of having the next Vita being a system, have it being a platform, even if it is what PlayStation Now could turn into or whatever the hell they want to call. They have PlayStation Plus, PlayStation Now place. They add all these things, but like, uh, PlayStation something that, what if it was an app on a phone that you can get on iOS or on Google Play and use a dual shock four, you know? And I don't know

the technical wizardry around that. But if they figured out, out remote play and that was it. It's just it is the experience of playing PlayStation games, whether it's PS1 classics, PS2 classics, like PSN games or whatever. Like it always blew my mind that PS3 PSN games and PS4 PSN games can't play nice. And I get it's the porting and all that stuff. But I think the idea of just figuring out a way to make the Dual Shock 4, that is it. People have screens everywhere, you know? Yeah. You can if you could just instantly connect it. I think that they're taking steps towards that. We saw with the the PC connector. So you can connect your dual shock to a computer and play games using remote play or whatever.

Like that's a step towards what I'm talking about. 100%. The idea of there isn't a different piece of hardware for the portable game experience in 2016, but going off the NX model of what we think it is, of being, it is just whether it's a console system or a portable system, the idea is you can play wherever you want or connect it to your TV. And I think that obviously connecting it to your TV, that's a PlayStation 4, right? But connecting anywhere else, I think it could be an app.

And I, you know, a lot of the like iPads these days, phones these days, Android phones, they're powerful. You know, they can play a lot of these games. And you look at Vita, the tech specs eventually get outdated, you know, whereas these phones are constantly being updated. And yeah, it does create a scenario where certain phones and certain things won't be able to play. But I mean, that's, I think, easy to remedy with just being like, all right, well, then either upgrade your phone or don't don't play those games. You know, play the games that are available. No, that's an interesting move. I mean, we've always talked or we've been talking about it in the months prior of like, well, was Guy Kai a huge mistake for PlayStation to buy? And now that we're

getting to this PC thing is like, oh, this makes more sense of what they were doing, where they're going. And that does as well, I don't think we're there yet. I think you'd get another device before you'd get that. And like, again, with a device, if I was going to put it out, like an easy way to get everybody super excited just from the get go, right? It's like, here's V2, what we're not calling it that. Here we're fixing all our mistakes. this thing can play all of your your niscuit where it would get really weird not all of them because it would be confusing but stick with me all of your downloadable PlayStation 3 games right your journeys these different things not of course you can download anything so not you're not downloading fallout 3 or whatever playing but there'd be that every PlayStation 2 classic we've re-released with trophies that's enabled from day one all the PS1 classics that for some reason would even bring over they're here like and and I think that is in addition to that just that's take the dual shock four put a screen in the middle of it let it do all those things things and then you can use it as a PS4 controller if you want to play those PS4 games or the remote play right and the remote play has its limitations but

that's because that's just where we're at you know you're not going to be playing PS4 games on the go wherever the hell you want. Seemously twitching all over the place yeah so I think that there's a lot of different options and I think that you know this like I'm sure that PlayStation knows what NX is up to you know what I mean I'm sure that they're the they're trying to remedy that in other ways I would be shocked if they actually come out with another thing that looks like the the Vita.

Yeah. Just because I personally feel like that's just a really outdated move that it'll do fine. You know, it'll do, I don't think it'll lose money. But I think it'll just be another thing of just, you know, it'll be, it'll get them enough revenue for it to be worth it. But at this point, I think that it's not a good call to put out things that are just going to be there. Like we already have VR that's going to hit that.

Sure. I mean, like the focus on stuff instead of just putting out more things. Because then press conferences get more and more convoluted. And then people are like, eventually next year, if there is another Vita announced, there need to focus on PS4 titles, the portable titles, and VR titles. And it's like, where do they do all that stuff? And don't forget, like trying to explain the Neo. Oh, yeah, and all that. Yeah, I mean, it gets complicated.

It's muddied and muddled. But I think what Sony needs to realize, and I think what's really important and what's integral is they should not cede this hill. And I don't mean cede, this hill of handheld gaming too. Nintendo. Nintendo is in trouble. They're on the ropes. And they have to, and I'm not saying

they're on ropes as a company, but as a manufacturer of hardware, they certainly are. And push them. You know, like someone needs to challenge them. Like, the idea of what the NX sounds

like it's going to be is cool and I'm interested in it. And so fight with them. Like, that's what they've done with VR. They were, they're really at the tip of the spear of VR. It was a bold move and I think it's going to pay off for them ultimately. It might take time and it might come outside of gaming.

It might come from some other part of Sony. But being on Vee, Being on VR and making sure that they have a proprietary piece of hardware there, I think is very smart. And with NX, you know, doing something, which I think is interesting, which is like, you know, a ubiquitous console and handheld experience, don't let them get away with it. Like, I agree with you that they must know. And I'm sure everyone knows what everyone's doing at the top. And so at least, like, force them to make moves that, you know, force your competitors to make moves that would defend their position. Because if NX is, you know, uncontested in this, like, particular space, and I'm not saying that they need.

to make a hybrid console, which that's not what they're going to make, but the handheld space, if it's uncontested, that's boring. And that's not, and that's not really good for the gamer. Like, Nintendo is in a corner. And so they're, like, they have, like I said, they have something to prove. They have to figure things out. And I think the annex is probably going to be pretty cool, but, or at least I hope. I don't know why I feel that way, because, you know, they haven't released any hardware. That's, that's, that's super compelling, but the rumors do sound awesome. And so, So I really want to see what that's all about. And I think Sony kind of challenging them and using some of this war chest that they're slowly accumulating again on the back of PlayStation 4 success.

It would be smart to invest in other places. But at the same time, a company is big as Sony that does things other than gaming unlike Nintendo really. If they're looking at profit margins that are small, it might not be worth it for them to do it. But I've said it over and over again and I believe it that they're crazy enough to do it. And I disagree with you. I think that you will get a handheld that like is maybe a little chunkier or something like that, but it will be very much a handheld and if it happens at all. But I don't know.

You know, I have a vision in my head of something like a little bigger than Vita. I've always had that vision. I don't know, you know, if that's the case. But as long as it, you know, but again, it's all these little boxes. Another box that they have to check is like marketing and not marketing to gamers, but making sure that they're not laughed out of the room when they announce it. I think that's a huge thing that they have to figure out too. It's going to be, when NGP was announced, it was, everyone's like, of course, you're going to release another one.

We've known that for a long time. It was rumors circulating about that forever. In 2016, 2017, 2018, if you're going to announce a new handheld, like, you have to make sure that there's a, this Castlevania Art School. You have to make sure that the, that, I've been waiting for you to comment on this for so long. The thing I love about the art on the so is that we block so much of it. It just looks like Collins get, oh, now it doesn't. But before, when Colin looked straight at the camera, it looks like he's just in front of like a jet bridge. like he's about to say goodbye

and then walk up the stairs under a little plane and take off. Yeah. Yeah, that's an iconic Castlevania scene. Anyway, so I would not be surprised. Not, I don't think you'll see it necessarily.

That's my question. Real quick, before we go, let's really put our thoughts into a time capsule. Is it getting announced to a place? Is there going to be a handheld announcement? I don't think so. I would love that, but I don't think so. Yeah, I don't either.

This is something you announced in Japan. There's too much to announce. You can't come out and be like, cool, here's the PS3 or PS4 Slim. Sorry, it's been linked. Here's the Neo. Here's more with VR. Maybe I'd assume, but like they need, hey, VR, don't forget, is a month away pretty much.

Yeah, we need to talk about that a bit. Yeah, I think that you announce, somewhat NGP, you announce a Vita successor in the safety of the Japanese market. Like, I think that you do that and that saves you a lot of trouble. I would be shocked if they announce that in the West. I mean, it will come out in the West if it's released, but I'd be shocked if they made that, like, you know, a specific sticking point for them. My favorite thing about the PlayStation meetings or whatever is the hype intro. video. Oh, Sony does so good.

It's so good. I can't wait to see what they do with this because it's about to be the hotness. So I went to Twitter and I asked people what they wanted from the Vita 2. Jason Das says he has a long list. There was a photo that he did.

He didn't want to use no 140 characters. Oh. He has 10 things that he wants. SD memory card expandable. Yes, we didn't talk about that. None of this prep prize are in memory. It's a bullshit. I agree.

Two, built in storage. He says 32 gigabytes. I think that that should be standard. these days of at least some built-in storage. A centered front face camera. Really? Do we need this like, what? Jason.

Remove back touch and reduce touch area. Okay. Yeah, back touch needs to go. They paint themselves into a corner with that. Dual trigger shoulder buttons. Yep. Yeah, that's an obvious one. L3R3. Oh, sure.

Ability to live stream on Twitch. Longer battery life. No. That's software. The battery life, not but the Twitch thing is like. And then 10, just games, games, games. Games, games, games, games. Yeah, he's hit on some of it.

I think that, like, you remove, like, I'm not, I want, whatever the storage solution is, it has to be, like, I'm not convinced that it needs internal storage. If it will make the unit cheaper and if you can use purple, like, if you're just using SD cards, you can get off Amazon, I wouldn't care about. If that's the case, I think that it needs to come bundled with some SD card. Sure. It will be. It will be four gigs.

In order for this to succeed, like, they need to not have the problem that they had last time. Like, when Vita was announced as the Vita, not the NGP, everyone was just like, what the fuck is this? Because of the name and because of the memory cards and all that's like that's when the bad news came. Well that yeah.

Well, no, no, the memory card stuff came after. When they were like E3 in the prices and we were all like, what? That's awesome. And then it was,

yeah, one PSN per thing. Here you gotta use our fucking memory cards are super expensive. And I think that now they would need to remedy. Oh yeah. But again, because they have to come out hat and hand

to be like, hey, we made a lot of mistakes and we're not going to do that again. You don't only say that by the way. You have to say you believe in the device. like Vita is a fantastic device, but we did make a series of errors that we're correcting with whatever the fuck it's going to be called.

Casey Weaver says, just make it a PS4 controller with a screen in it. Done. I agree with that. Andrew Garcia, very similar thing to me here. Amazon, an amazing battery life, two shoulder buttons, regular memory cards, or just an extra microSD slot to add Bluetooth so that my PS4 controller can just attach to it. I don't care if it's the size of an iPad Pro. I just want regular buttons to use. Absolutely.

Mark Trembly says, AAA exclusive titles and more focus on crossplay and save. Freedom more. Specifically with sports games. Yeah. There's a lot of hate out there. Hate, hate, hate, hate. Lenin, Ecott, saying I'd rather to just not be a Vita too.

Well, he's wrong. And dumb. Our boy, Trevor Starkey. Current Vita, just plus extra shoulder buttons, minus the back touch and with a light bar so it can work as a PSVR controller. William Ramos says, just give me back those big, beautiful black PSP buttons.

Don't need those hard candy baby Vita buttons. So you're always saying, Tim. Is that one of your alter cats? It is. William Ramos. That's where you send your nudes from. Jimmy Champagne says more FPS games and more original square JRP's in the West. I'm Zetsuna would have been great.

Danny Roseman says support from Sony would be nice. More AAA games to return to a Sony handheld such as GTA. That's the thing. That's a huge point too, is they have got to commit with internal They did for a minute. They got scared off very quickly. And I still think, and it makes sense why they were scared off because I'm like, well, the timing of this isn't very good. We have, you all need to make PS4 games. And, you know, Bend is really the last one that's going to come out with a PS4 game. So, um, they have to commit resources, significant resources and money and money to third parties. If they want Madden, for instance, to speak to the Madden on PS4, then that's going to cost them money, not EA. Yeah. So, um, I agree, you know, and they've abandoned the Vita. And, and even with MLD, and even with MLD, and even with MLD, be the show and stuff like they stopped doing it. It's like what do you want what are you guys doing? But it's a numbers game and bean counters somewhere I have to figure out that these things don't make

sense. Dan Wilkinson says simplicity. Don't put the pressure on it being a home console like experience. Let it be a sibling rather than an extension. Shane Firth says, HTML out so I can play my Vita games on a big screen when I'm not outside. I think that's a no-brainer at this point. And the frustrating thing always was that the Vita Dev kits have HDIMI app. So why that wasn't even the thing to begin with is a little weird. The mystery port of the original Vita. Matthew E. Remus says something interesting. I don't care for this, but allow download of iOS and Android games to help sell units.

Okay. That just doesn't work that way. No, it doesn't. But, you know. Yeah. And if people have their phones, they have their phones. You know, like. Yeah, maybe you can get on the Sony Xperia Play store, whatever the hell is going on over there.

Then to end this topic out, there was a back and forth that I need to call people out on. Okay. Because it was awesome. Joe Lap says, I don't want a Vita 2. I want a PSP 2. No back touch, internal memory, better OS. To which Brandon Faro responds,

fuck you, Joe. You wouldn't buy it anyway. To which Joe responds, I'd buy it day one like I did my Vita. Not my fault. It didn't have games that I cared to play. Brendan responds, yeah, it is.

Nailed him. All right, guys. Topic 2 of the day. Brought to you. By Patreon. Once again, my boy, Kenny Char. Kenny Char says, what are games you enjoy in genres that you typically don't?

I've never particularly been an FPS fan. But Wolfenstein, the New Order, was probably my second favorite game in 2014 after Shovel Night. I was wondering if you guys had any similar experiences. The one that always stands out for me is Kingdoms of Emila Reckoning, right? Like, that is a game that on paper I don't think I should enjoy. It's in this mythical world with these characters that are all made up and bullshit shit that I shouldn't care anything about, but the gameplay was so good that I just totally fell down

the hole in the rabbit hole with that one of like playing it on stop. And I guess it's kind of an out because, you know, it's a Western role playing game. But like, again, it's the setting that gets me off. Yeah. But like, you know, I did, I did enjoy The Witcher for whatever. I don't remember. I look at Colin. Like he keeps, he's got the best memory for our relationship. Colin is the best memory of whatever it was like 50 hours or 35. I forgot what I clocked at back in the day. But like, I enjoyed the Wisher and it's like that. But it's like there's so many other ones that come around of like shadows of mordor i'm like no this is not my kind of game i played for a little bit i get the mechanics but that's not my world that's not the world i want to exist in

but man i love ommler so god damn much and it was such a fantastic game and to run through and play and just sink hour after hour an hour into it buy the dlc and play that and have a great time yeah like that was a game that caught me off guard with how much i liked it yeah for me it's kind of working backwards from thinking about genres that i don't typically that i don't typically like and uh so like racing games comes to mind and need for speed underground one and two but specifically one. Like I was addicted to. And I played that.

I'm not a big car guy overall. So I don't know what it was about it that really like hooked me. But I think it was the combination of the tone of the game, the soundtrack and just the look of it. And like that that game was really kind of a really nice presentation piece for the PS2 back then. When it was like that's a game that looked awesome. People would come over and see it and be like, damn, video games are crazy now. You know, Grant Tarismo 3 was like the real real. example of that, but that was way too hardcore for me.

I rented that and I'm like, uh-uh, not for me. I cruised around my PT Cruiser for a bit. Oh, wow. Yeah, wow. You're right there. I was like, no, I'm not into this. But Need for Speed Underground. That game I played for hours and hours, then my brother played through it.

And it was one of those games specifically for him. And I experienced this where he would play through the whole career and then delete a save, do it again. Delete his end. It's just like, that's, that game hooks people in a weird way. Yeah. Another one, when you started talking about that, it brought up for me because you always talk about it. Like I never connected with Tony Hawk.

Like when it was just Tony Hawk, never did. But then I went to a friend's house who bought thug on day one. And I was watching that and I was like, damn, this looks fucking awesome. And I went out and bought thug and put so many hours into that running around being stupid. So what was it about thug? That felt like that felt like, that felt to me, and this is at a passing glance growing up of what the Tony Hawk and the pro skater game were. was like this one felt like it had a world and a story to an extent

or there was like more of it there was a person to personality to it whereas before it was like let's get combos let's get scores and that never spoke to me but opening it up and putting into a world and being the precursor to what skate would become it's like okay cool this I like because like skate I always liked it because it was

I started as a shitty ass skater and I'm like I'm bad at these games so that was the same idea right of then skating around getting missions doing these different things yeah I mean I love thug but it's just that's funny because to me the THPS games are way superior because of their simplicity. Doug was the first game to add

gameplay mechanics that didn't work right. Got you off the board and stuff like that. Tony Hawk won, you know, got it down. Tony Hawk two out of the manual. Three out of the revert. Four added the spine transfer. Those are all key to the gameplay being fun. Doug added the getting off your board.

And it just like, it just never felt right. But it did add the story and it added a lot more customization. I think a big thing about those games was the being able to create your own park, be able to create your own. skater, which back then was a big deal. You know, like not everything had a creative mode. Tony Hawk was all about that. And by the time you got to Thug, you could literally

create your own moves, create your own game, create your own missions, create your own everything. And I think that the fact that you were you in the game instead of... Random guy from the skate video I've never heard of. Exactly. Bob Bernquist. You haven't been on Jackass yet. I don't know who you are.

Yeah, and also all the jackass elements. I think that's when it really, and especially with Thug too, but it kind of introduced a lot that we saw in Tony Hawk for being like hinted at. Yeah. And yeah, that's very interesting, Greg. Thank you. I like to interest you once in a while. What about you, Carl?

I think that there's probably an example of a game or games at every genre that I wouldn't typically like that genre, but like the games. Racing is a good example. I mean, but more in an arcade sense. Like I really love like Race the Sun or something like that. You know, back in the day, Hoppersuit 2 is like, I played the shit at that game. I love that game. I love it the soundtrack.

You got that fever for the flavor? Yeah, Hot Action Cop. I went and bought Hot Action Cop's record. I was one of five people that bought that record. I do, too, with the cover with the girl's butt on it. Big fan. Doom Boom, the opening track. I love that fucking song.

So there are examples of that. I think Civilization Five always sticks out to me. These are games that I should like, but I just, and I mean similar kind of games to these kind of more Sidmeyer civilization games. But I've gone and played some of the other ones and tried them. And I'm just like, I don't know. Like, for me, like, I love Civilization. I just love that I love civilization

But not necessarily the genre I mean there are adventure games I like I think I've actually had a little bit of a renaissance with adventure games And this is gonna be a weird thing to say But I don't like we've talked about in the past I don't like these obtuse ass fucking Adventure games that feel like they're a job You know like where I don't know how where what this candle interacts with this I don't fucking know what you want me to do

Grim Fandanga Yeah like I'm like I appreciate that people like those games I'm just like this is I remember when we played Grim Fandango when it came to PS4 Right when we launched we were streaming it I'm like, this game kind of like, I don't know. Why would you want to play this? You know, and I'm like, you have to go back and I'm like, all right. So, and I appreciate why people, you know, that people like them, but it wasn't for me yet.

Gone home's an adventure game. You know, like, uh, walking dead, right? Yeah, the walking dead. So like, so they're different kinds of adventure games, but they are adventure games at their core. And so these walking simulator type games, I like them because I think that, um, that you have the story elements that these adventure games really excelled out without me having to, like, you know, bang my head against the wall because I just don't play these games. well. But I've, you know, I've encountered adventure games in the past that were, that were fine, too. I think the same thing with puzzle games. Like, I don't typically gravitate towards those, but like I'm, I really love Dr. Mario, for instance, like, and I'm fucking nasty at it, by the way.

And Tetris, we saw it at the bar when I was playing. Doc. He was clowning some drunk guy out. He didn't know what he was doing. He didn't know what he was up against Dr. Mario. And, you know, Tetris and all this kind of things. So I don't like, I don't like, Um, like I like playing puzzle games every once in a while. Like Critter Crunch was really fun. Oh yeah. And, um, I love the animation in that game. Yeah.

It's a very pretty game, very vivid game. Uh, but I don't typically, uh, you know, gravitate towards those kinds of games. But every once in a while, something like that, you know, comes out that, that I'm like, okay, I'll play a, I'll play a puzzle game. I would. And right now I'm playing inside and that's not a game, you know, that's an adventure game. And that's not, um, really a puzzle. Oh, okay. Uh, limbo.

Uh, and, uh, that's like kind of a, uh, an adventure. game or a puzzle game, really more of a puzzle game with a puzzle platformer. And that's like, if someone's like, you want to play a puzzle platform, I'm like, no. And actually, and actually, like, I'm inside in like these kinds of games, like, I just don't like, I like, I like, even if the game's hard, even if I'm playing call of duty on the hardest difficulty level and I'm dying over and over again, I know I'm going to get past it, you know, and in Castlevania or Metroibania game, if I'm, I can't find the way forward, I'll figure it out. In these kinds of games, I'm like, I don't, I stood there for five minutes to be like,

I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And I like go on YouTube and just... It's so funny. Because I just don't care. Like I'm not gonna say, I don't find satisfaction. I'm being like sitting there. I'm like,

45 minutes later. Oh, the, you know, put this there. I'm like, I don't... Of course I should have waited for that. That's just not why I particularly play games. I like hard games that are mechanically difficult.

No, for sure. That's funny you bring up Metroidvania's as being an example of different than them. Because I think that they're quite similar in to like limbo or inside. Where like I would say that Metrodvania in a lot of ways are puzzle platformers. You know, it's like,

trying to figure out how to progress and like there's doors and stuff that you can't get through yet. And it's like it's a bit more simple. But when you really think back to like the puzzle elements of limbo or inside, they're similar. But that's the, the, I think the word isn't, and it's not meant in a pejorative way towards myself, but it's simple, right? Like if you think about symphony in the night, you come across these caged doors, right? And there's a few of them. And you know, I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do here. And then you get the missed ability and you're like, oh, now all of those puzzles are solved.

Yeah. And I know exactly what I'm supposed to do or like these sealed off doors that you need. or you like see a thing where it's like you can't jump to it you need to double jump or whatever and I'm like okay that solves literally 15 different things that I had to do and I remember those things are on the map so yeah they're similar maybe genetically come from the same place but a way more mechanically driven backtracking satisfying thing for me as opposed to saying like no I'm with you because you figure in an adventure game you never know if you have the solution it's easy enough to be like I feel like I've done everything I could possibly do to get to that

platform there must be a jetpacker double jumper or whatever where in an adventure game it's like yeah Oh, how would I have known to wait for that light to turn green and take this piece of bologna and throw it over there, which... I'm not talking about adventure games. Oh, it's my apologies. I'm talking about the... Oh, just puzzle platformers, like the limbo's insides versus a metric game. But even a limbo or inside, I feel like you're running into... You dead end at one point, right?

Like when I got the one for me and inside, not a spoiler, well, whatever. When I... First, when you have to swim under the door or whatever as it moves, right? I got there and when I couldn't figure it out, I started getting... I was like, I sat down. I'm like, I have it. I have it with me. It's the same idea, right?

Like, where it's like, you can get around a double jump you can't get to. You're like, I must not be able to go there yet. I'm going to double back and try to figure something out or go else we're on the map. Whereas this is like, I have to keep going that way. So I clearly have what I need, but how do I figure out how to do it? Yeah. Trying to think of other ones. I think an example of this topic, but in a different way is the, is Fire emblem,

because I would have never thought that I would like strategy RPGs at all. That's a good one. That was the same thing with me like Valchariacrona Chronicles. But yeah, then I got into it. I'm like, holy shit, I love this. And that, it was a perfect example because I only played it because of Smash Bros. Because I liked Mart's so much. And then I was like, all right, cool.

I want to figure out the game he's from playing. And I was like, when I saw videos of it, I'm like, there's no way. I'm going to like this. Fell in love with it, played advanced wars after. And now I'm like, holy shit, that's one of my favorite genres because it is so satisfying. And there's so much depth there. And it makes you feel like you're doing something with the story elements on top of it. I think that it's a really, really excellent.

genre to get into that I think a lot of people wouldn't think they'd be into. Yeah, I think, uh, yeah, strategy RPGs, it's funny because I'm very particular about them. Like I don't actually don't like Fire Emol. Like the, um, I remember trying, I think it was awakening and I'm like, there's just something wrong about this. And then what I realized was that like I basically just like the Square NX style strategy role playing games and pretty much nothing else. Like when I think about the three hallmarks for me in that genre and these are three

games, three series I fucking adore is like, Final Fantasy tactics. obviously in tactics ogre and front mission, which is a, which is a series I hold very near and dear to my heart. And they shit on that. Seriously, they do everything else over there. But, like, these very deep grid-based tactical role-playing games that have a very specific way of playing them. That's the thing that ties them all together. In a way, like, Final Fantasy tactics and, like, let us cling together are, like, almost indistinguishable. You know, and that's fine for me.

Like, I love these very basic, in-premise, but very deep strategy role-playing games. And for me, Firearmund just doesn't do it for me. Like I've tried a few times and I'm just like, I don't know what it is about. I think a lot of it has to do, at least back in the day with like, it's kind of linear in the sense that like it's not, it doesn't seem very grindy. It didn't seem like very like super granular and class based to a fucking nth degree. Like these really like when you're you get really deep in fun of these tactics and you're like a mathematician or something like that or you're a dancer and stuff like that. And you're going to figure out like how they like, but you don't have to use these classes. These are really weird obtuse classes.

You can be your white maid, your time age and stuff like that. I like that kind of shit. That's why I'm so sad. Like I, I'm kind of reformed from that genre because there actually has been a game probably since let us cling together on PSP or like Final Fantasy Advantage advanced advanced too where I'm like I even even played them. Do you play any of the Descaya games? Yeah, Descaya. Yeah. So Descaya doesn't do it for me either for multiple reasons.

The stacking is really weird in that game. I don't understand that. These like these super ridiculous. damage numbers. I'm like, that's what I was loved about Dragon Quest where it's like,

you have 10 hit points when you start the game or 12 hit points. Why do I have like 5 million hit points? You know, why is this guy doing 9 billion damage?

It's like, why can't you just make it all like normal? You know? So, this guy, I just, this guy is charming

but, and very popular. But yeah, not for me either. The last one I played was three, I think. So, shout out

to DC Universe Online. not even the joking sense. I just throw it out as a joke all the time, but like I'd never given a shit about an MMO before, but there I was like, now what, 700 hours in my life to that game? Like, granted, it was subject material

that I obviously have a hard on for. But it's just a game genre that for sure never spoke to me before. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's it. I can't really think of too many others. So there you go, Kenny Char. Thank you very much.

Thanks for your support. I'm Patreon.com slash kind of funny games. Colin, topic three of the day, is something that you brought up to me yesterday, the PSN and the quality of games on it. What do you have to say about that? I'm wondering if we're like crossing up or having a shift on PlayStation Network specifically.

I can't speak to Xbox Live authoritatively enough to know if it's happening there too. My suspicion is that it is. Where I'm feeling like there's no quality control of any like objective measure on these consoles. This came up to me because I can't remember the name of the game. I wish I did because it's important. I guess it's somewhat important to the argument, but a few weeks ago, a game was released on PSN that was like totally fucking like full of stolen assets and art and music apparently. And like it was like everyone's like, how the fuck did this happen? Like we expect to see this. This happens every day on iOS and Android. They're like totally unmitigated free market markets where they'll eventually get taken down. But like there's no process. Same thing with steam. And when I saw this, I was like, and a lot of people were like, how? How did this happen on PlayStation Network?

Like, where is the quality control? Did no one like look at this? Does no one, does no one like try to figure out like, yeah, this game might not be for me, but we can understand how this might be for someone. There's some sort of objective quality level of quality to this particular game that made, like that under no circumstances will a vast majority of the audience just hate. And it seems to me that like they're flooding the market in a very steamesque or iOS way lately in the last couple of years since PS4 really launched,

where I'm like, this is in the wrong direction. This is going to start to go. We were talking about the Vita thing, the Vita argument of like, of discovery and of like having a place where you can make some money. Like, they're actually injuring themselves. And I'm curious if you guys have noticed this on the platforms that you play. And if you think it's problematic too,

because I find it to be extremely troubling that on PSN yesterday, for instance, or today, but on PSI, I love you when we recorded it, that or two days ago when we recorded it, that we read something like 14 new games or something. Oh, I thought it was more than that. I was like, I'm like, how is that possible?

There should maybe be this many games a month, maybe on your platform. I mean, I don't, I understand consumer choice and all that kind of stuff, but I'm like, you're like, what are some of these games? Like, I can't imagine some of these games on a platform with 45 million users. I bet you some of these games sell literally 5,000 copies. Sure. It's like, what is the point of even releasing a game that no one cares about that you don't promote? There's no PlayStation blog post.

You stealth release it. And then you bury shit. I think you give too much credit. And I think you've done it for a long time to, what goes on over there behind closed doors about a game getting on the PSN. I don't think there's like a quality control board sitting there playing it. I'm sure it gets rated by the ESRB or whatever. It gets certified or whatever that runs and they just don't care. They put it up. And this is, I think, key to the argument you had with Andrea and not like an argument, you know, the argument

Andrea and you were making on separate size of the mobile game in the PlayStation slash console game on the PlayStation 4 Slims React. And the fact that I think Andrea was arguing, right, that the things you were talking about with all these mobile developers falling and failing and all the shit games happening. She was arguing that happens already. And I think it's just a per capita thing. You know what I mean? Where I think honestly, there's so many more. It's so easy to make an iOS or a mobile game. $99 gets you the program you need to make a game and put it out. A good example of this is that, you know, I was like, did Guacamale come to iOS? Put guacamale in and it auto filled. I'm like, oh, it did. And then there was like three apps there that were not Guacamale but are using that name and like

talking about Kwokam and I'm like, what are these fucking clones even doing? It's not that bad yet, right? But it's because there is that barrier entry of getting a dev kit and getting going and getting working on PlayStation. But if you were to somehow try to get the numbers do a bunch of division, I'd feel it's closer in terms of per capita basis of like there's a lot of shit put out and there is. And I don't know if you should stop it or how you stop it. The, I think the, if anything, the onus on celebrating champion games falls to the PlayStation blog or or us or personalities that are going to be like the Vita Lounge, the guys who make the,

you know, the actual Vita magazine, right? The fact that they're going to sit there and celebrate and champion and talk to developers who are making quality products and do it. And so if you're a Vita fan, you're going to read that magazine. Because, you know,

to the Vita argument, I forget what it was. It might have been dual shockers, but in the last two or three months, there was an article up about like, hey, is anyone aware of how fucking broken it is to find a PlayStation Vita game where they're like,

games aren't mentioned on the blog post, but if you go to the store, they're in new releases, but if you go to the web portal, they're not. be vice versa. But it's one of those things where you can't physically find things as a person, like typing and knowing exactly what you're looking for. You can't always find the game you want. And that is the fact that it's in the data. There's so much shit coming out. And it is one

giant bucket of DLC add-on game, this thing. And that's always been my issue. So are you talking about is there too much crap on PSN? I think that it's even less of a problem of crap games and more of just crap content. And the fact that the crap content is with all of the- Are you about to insult the dynamic theme of corn? Exactly. The corn on the cob rotating? But that's the problem is it's just like every single time I've ever been on PSN, whether it's PS3, PS4, Vita, whatever.

It's finding stuff has always been an issue because even if I'm looking exactly, search term, Final Fantasy X. Yeah. Like, why am I getting so many dynamic themes and avatars and like DLC packs and stuff and like things that are just like kind of relevant? And it's just when you're searching through games, it's like they make it too challenging. to just look at games. Yeah.

You know, I know that all you need to do is go to the little ticker and click it, but it's like that option should be the default. Like finding the themes in packs. You should struggle to find those things. I mean, like the best worst example of this is like, oh man,

it's the first of the month. There's new PlayStation Plus games. And you would go into the store, go to PlayStation Plus, click PlayStation Plus. And it's like, do you want to buy one month, six months?

I'm like, I want the fucking games. Where do I go to find these fucking things on the store? And that's the thing is I think that, I think that the PSN does a good job to an extent of telling you what they want to tell you. Like when you log into the store, like the first opening page, it gives you a lot of information that I think is actually really helpful. It lets you know what sales are going on. It lets you know what PS Plus games are there and all that stuff, what's new.

And what like retail game, like, you know, bigger games are like the hotness right now. Pre-order now. Yeah. And I think it's like, all right, but then you're right. Then you click into it. And it's just like every single time I'm trying to get a PlayStation Plus game. It never makes sense to me. And I'm like,

and then it turns into me searching for exactly what I want. And if you're on PlayStation 4, it's F. and then you got to go A, and then you gotta go, all right, time to N. Oh, man. There's just so many options there. And that's where I think

the crap argument really gets in the way. Yeah, there's clutter. I think it's better on PS. I mean, it's not better by volume on PS4, but better in terms of searchability on PS4 than it was on PS3 is a mess. And Vita's the word, like, go to your download list,

everything is everywhere. Dates are all wrong. Like, they're definitely didn't download all hundred of these in one day. Yeah, like, I don't know what they're thinking with a lot of that kind of stuff. But I feel like there's a solution to this particular problem that at least I'm raising amongst these litany of other legitimate issues, which is, I really do feel like these companies need to hire a board of people that literally play these games.

And they're submitted for certification, and certification shouldn't begin and start. Does the game work and is the trademark logo proper? and did you, you know, replace the A button with the X button or whatever, you know, whatever, although that didn't happen in Tales to Borderlands, which is fucking hilarious. And rather, like, and my mind is, like,

have 12 people with very, like, that you hire. You have to, like, really go out and find these people. This is my, like, kind of hairbrain solution, but this is the Nintendo seal of quality. Exactly. Go and find, not that that really meant everything in the world because it didn't, but, but to that point, in the NES era,

a lot of people know, you could only publish five games a year on Nintendo. You had to pick and choose the games. And this was a thing that I think guys like Frank Sefaldi and some other guys talk about that. The NES has games that are done, that are translated, that are finished. And because the publishers, and there's actually a lot of them, and because the publishers could not publish more than five games a year and some of them didn't have like these shell companies like Konami did with Ultra where they could get 10 games, they just sat on a shell. Final. 2, for instance, the real Final Fantasy 2 on the NES is done, translated, finished.

It was even at CES, and they never released it. You know, like they just never fucking released the game. You find these things over and over again for all these reasons that Nintendo was looking at the Atari experience from 81, 82, 83 where they're like, this fell apart because there was no control, there was no quality control. No one gave a fuck. People were just shitting it. Quaker Oates was making games.

Like, everyone was making games. And that's like, we're kind of seeing. a similar thing now. We're like, that's not good for the market because people then don't trust quality. And what I've noticed is the segue of, you know, with the fall of THQ and all these kinds of things where we had kind of like A games, I think you still have your A publisher and something like Deep Silver. But if you really think about it, there's not that many retail games that are like just bad. Oh no. You know, anymore. There used to be like bad retail games that were coming out. Now the explorer goes to Mars. Now there's like, you really like really have to think about it

to even think about something that's like lower than, you know, a medicritic of five or six that comes out of retail at $60 because there seems to be some thought going in there because everyone's now going and being like, well, we don't have to spend money on retail and everything's digital anyway. So we can go to PSN and release games at a cheaper price point that are shittier. And so my solution is to say like hire 12 people, like literally a dozen that know games that have varied expertise in games. And during the certification process at the technical level, have these people just sit down and watch or sit down and look at the game and exchange notes on these games. They don't even have to play them for that long. But the question shouldn't

be like, do you like it? Because like if someone was like, do you like this racing? I'm like, no, I don't like this racing. But you can recognize the quality of it. Yeah, exactly, but be like, I'm a gaming expert. And yeah, like, this passes the smell test. Like someone's going to like this.

This has this level of quality. And I bet you if, and my thing is like nine out of 12 would have to vote yes. That's it. And then a game goes, you know? And if it falls below that, you fucking kick the game back. And you're like, we are experts feel like this game doesn't belong in the PlayStation network because it diminishes the quality that we are striving for and, and Berries games.

Listen, if people are discovering games because their trophies are up on fucking PSN profiles or Xophase, and that's the only time you ever hear about the game, probably not worth being on the PSN. You know, probably not. If there's no blog post, probably something Sony doesn't give a fuck about. If they don't give a fuck about it, then why is it on the store? You know, like, that's my whole thing. You're talking about a perfect world and running a boutique PlayStation that doesn't exist, right? You have to imagine that if whoever is, whoever's plate this would fall on at Sony, right?

I would imagine the counter argument to this is the fact that, well, we don't care because we're still making games or money off the good games that are coming out. We don't care because the shitty games are still paying licensing fees to get on to PlayStation 4. And the board that is telling you if a game's good or bad falls on the shoulders of an IGN, a game spot, a Vita Lounge, if you want to get granular with it, right? The fact is, I think that they're walking the line where you remember when mobile was taking off and so many pocket gamer and all these different sites did pop up that were going to talk about

and review mobile games. And then when the water came over the size of the ship and there was just too much, it became that they're going to champion certain games and you'll know about them that way, your monument valleys or something that will pop up that way. I feel like you're not there yet with where we are now. And it's actually still to the other thing where it's like, I've never heard of that game, so I will ignore it. You know what I mean? Like we read through everything on the blog, every PlayStation or PSI Love UXOXO and it's like us mentioning rocket, rocket rocket, or whatever and joking around about it doesn't sell it. It lets you know that it's there and maybe somebody looks into it.

And then maybe we're wrong and maybe that one does come out. And we talk about it a couple weeks like, oh, I remember that coming out. But it's like, it's the same thing, right, where we ran through this giant list and I always forget it. What is that horror? I just bought the horror game myself last night for this plane ride.

Claire. Claire, I want to say Catherine every time. Claire was there and we're like, we've heard about this. Oh, Bears can't drift. We did a let's play. That game's really fun. And like you go through the list and you are already from us being influencers or

tastemakers or whatever, seeing stuff that the developer believed enough in that the developer of Bears Can't Drift, right, is a fan of kind of funny and reached out to us to do the let's play to tell us we got the platinum in there and make sure we got codes today and we have a whole bunch of codes to give it.

Like, okay, cool, he believes in his product and he's out there doing this and he's gone to an audience that's, or somebody who has a audience that specializes in a certain thing. So there still are there. And then when you and I go through a PlayStation blog, like, what the fuck is this game

that doesn't even translate it correctly in this description makes no sense. You'd think that even, Even there, we're doing the job of the panel in saying to somebody that like, well, clearly these people don't care about their thing. Yeah, I don't know. I just disagree in the sense that I think this has to start at the top. There's just a lot of evidence, historical evidence, that this hurts markets, right? Like, and this doesn't only hurt gaming markets.

This hurts all markets. If there's an influx of shit and there can be no trust in quality, then like what is an example of that not hurting a market? Like what, like, and what is that, like, the cream rises to the top, I guess. but if there's so much fucking garbage in there then like what does it really matter if there's some sort of caliber of like low key or like influencer

control of quality when it's not coming from the people that are putting the games out. It's a huge problem. That was the reason Atari got destroyed. That's the reason why Steam is becoming like kind of a bigger ship pile as time goes on even though it's a really

novel idea in a way to proliferate games and that's the reason why iOS and Android have significant top to bottom issues because to your point it relies not on anything other than like they have those people at Apple, you know, like that aren't controlling the quality of the games that come out, but actually have curators that are like, well, this game's good. And so can they, can you make the case that that's, that's, that should be done on PSN or Xbox Live perhaps. But my argument would be, if, if you have shit, like, 50% of your shit, no one cares about, like, I would be, I would go so far as to like, not only have this panel at at Sony, but be like, we're going through all these games now. And like, we're removing some of the shit. Like, we don't, we care. It would. It would. be such a fucking PR coup for them to be like, we're putting the brakes on this. Like, we have too many games. And like, we understand why some of you look at indie games with Iyer, because

for all the shovel nights and, uh, you know, gone homes and all this kind of stuff, we have all this garbage. And that sucks. And that hurts everybody. Here's why I think it wouldn't be a PR coup, right? And I think it's a great headline. Don't get me wrong. It'd be really cool. It'd be different. Everybody would talk about it. I think we're doing that thing we do all the time where we're, we're speaking for our lives, our lives, how we consume games, I would venture to say that the majority of PlayStation gamers, and I'm people own PlayStation's, don't care that much about the PSN and don't buy that much on the PSN, right? Whenever we talk about digital and this, that the other kids hit us all the time that they only buy stuff in the store and they only do this. Right, but

doesn't it make the case? Like, doesn't it make the case to say like we're showcasing, everything's digital now on PS4? So every game that you buy retail. So that's not the case on PS3, but that's the case on Vita. And that's the case on PS4. Wouldn't that make the case to be like we believe in this platform and we have to scrub this shit out. Like there's just games that are objectively fucking terrible on this platform. And it hurts. Like, and this, I got, I would, I would fucking love to see some of the numbers these games sell. Like I, and you have to, yeah, they're playing on 30% licensing fee to get a game that sold

5,000 copies. So Sony made $15,000. Like, like, it's like, it's like, it's a quantity game at that point. Yeah, it adds up all the shit games, right? It is the same thing on the, the mobile side where it's just like, there is all that. crap but that crap is just making money and so it's like them curating and focusing on the the good stuff I think is them being like this is what we care about that this is there because it makes money because it's business you know no I understand in terms of the the different markets and so I think

music is a good way to look at it right iTunes comes out and it's it is that it is a it's just a storefront that has it started a bit more boutique then got just it has everything good bad it doesn't matter but in order to get there you had to be back in the the day be on a real label or whatever. As things progress, we literally have a song on iTunes. That's how easy it is, you know? And that's where a lot of the things come into play of just like the stolen assets and this and that. There's, I mean, there is a quality control thing you got to go through that's saying like, do you own all this? Do you whatever? It's like, yeah, but that's so easy to just click next, next, next. How would you not know, right? Yeah. And so it's like, I think that

it's impossible on that level to have quality control for everything because there is so much. Gaming is a little bit different because there's not billions of games. But I think that we just are in a different market now where the entry level to do things is much lower. Anybody can do things. And so you see all these smaller indie games. And I think that in order to allow the good ones to be made, the bad ones need to be made too.

And I think that they need to be able to get into this place in a way. And I think that allowing all of it in is easier than, If there was such hard limits to even like get in the door, I think that would cause a lot of problems. We wouldn't see a lot of the shovel nights and stuff like that. Unless they are, I mean, like shovel nights is probably not a good example

because of how high profile the developer was due to how the game was made. But when you're looking at a lot of other things like, I don't know the story of overcooked. Like who made that and how? And you know, I think that games like that might not make it on because they wouldn't even be welcomed to the door. That's the thing is.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. You're making a compelling argument. but I would still say that literally this board would see in two minutes that overcooks awesome. Sure, but the concern would be the chilling effect of it, right? Where it's like, sure, there's a lot of shit games right now, right? But like you figure this is another numbers game that we don't know the percent is on. A lot of shit games out there, right? But it's getting people to make stuff on the PlayStation 4.

It's keeping up with the Joneses. It's giving PlayStation a foothold of not to be ignored by the Steam or iOS developer, right? Into an overcook, sure, there are games, though, that you could see that are like, great, this game looks really good. We'd like to have it on here. But we have the 12 games for this month, and we're almost to the 12 games for next month. You know what I mean?

Where it would be like, they're getting pushed around a bit by what Sony's scheduling would be. And then they're like, well, fuck you. We'll just put on Steam on Xbox one or something. Granted, I'm with you that like a boutique system would be cool. Somebody to stand up and be like, we only want the best would be cool. But I feel like that's like almost an Elon must kind of move.

Of like, we're going to be different and we're going to be smaller. And this is what it's going to be. Whereas like, it's run away with PlayStation Xbox. Yeah. I mean, you guys make interesting and compelling arguments. I think the fundamental core is what Tim was saying was, would in 10 years more money be made if people like you like for instance $15,000 right like gross revenue turns into after you your taxes you know a corporation $8,000

whatever like that it pays the salary of a person working at Sony for a couple months or something like that let's say and I'm wondering like if you just nip if you just get rid of this like it's it is the argument we used to have about mobile gaming back at IGN we were discussing, which is like, if you cut down, um, like the bottom 50% what, how much revenue do you really lose, right? Like we don't, we don't know the numbers. That's the big thing is like, that's the peak behind the hurricane we don't have. Um, I do think that there could be a chilling effect, but I also think there could be a

boldness of being being like, our game is good enough. Like don't like, you could even go as far as to say like make your dev kits free. You know, like, like, we'll give you a dev kit and then send us your shit and and better be fucking good. You know, like, and so I understand what you're saying. and I think you're right to an extent, but I still feel like, I think we are going to be very disappointed

with what PSN looks like in five years. Like that's all I'm saying. And if I was a developer, then that's the fucking chilling effect. For the record, I've been disappointed what the PSN looks like since this is a long shot. I'm used to it.

Going back to what I was saying. Really, I think PSN has a great games on. No, no, I'm just, I mean, like the interface and like stability and a million other problems. But with the PSN, like I, like I said earlier, I think it does a great job of presenting what it wants to tell me.

I do think that there is a curation going on telling me about the, the, the actually awesome games. They don't really talk about all the other stuff because they're just kind of there, whatever, making money in the background. And I think it's the same thing on the mobile side. Like the reason whenever we talk about the mobile stuff that I get so defensive about

it is because I just don't care about all the shit. I don't even worry about that. Apple does a really good job of telling me what games I should be paying attention to when I'm at an airport and just I'm like, I want to try something new before I get on the plane and download something. It's been very rare that I've downloaded something on their games you should check out chart or whatever. and been like, oh, this sucks.

Like, that is their answer to the board where I'm answering, I'm playing games. And there's been times I'm like, not for me, but I get who this is for. And looking at my thing, like Jetpack Joyride, Pagel, Tower of the Mask, Kingdom Rush, Pac-Man 256, like all the go games. Like, they're great games there. My enjoyment of those games has nothing to do with all the shit, you know, and I can not even care about it. And I feel like I don't go to the app store ever and look at the crap, you know?

very clearly it's like they're telling me what I am actually supposed to care about. There's a bunch of idiots playing the dumb shit. There's a bunch of idiots paying a lot of money for the dumb shit, you know? And I think it's similar. And a good thing about it, back to us being the tastemaker or whoever being the tastemaker, right, is the fact that our community in the industry and the fan side of it, right, the enthusiast side of it is so much different than the mobile market and so much different than what the Atari market was, right?

Where you didn't have a way to instantaneously communicate. and like here where the fuck would you go? I don't even know. I'm not a mobile gamer, of course, but I don't think there's a lot of mobile gamers beaten down these mobile game websites to find out what the hotness is, right? But with us, right,

I can talk about Taco Master and make Taco Master chart. Not as a joke because it's really a fun, easy platinum and I say that. And then not only do I say it, our fans who run their podcast say that and then people play, you know what I mean?

Like it spirals out enough in this community where you can make waves like that and actually do that. But I mean, that's how I found Tower of the Mask. You know, and there's people on Twitter that I respect saying this is fun. So I was like, all, cool, I'll check it out.

And I think that it's, and I've talked about it. And I've got so many people have tweeted at me saying, dude, I fucking love this game. This is the first time I've heard you talk about this game. I talked about it before. You're trying to pitch him on it. What's the time? Pitch me on it, was it? The Tower of the Mask.

It's like, it's a rising endless runner essentially where you're just kind of bump it up. But you're collecting coins along the way. And it's a, it's a 2D platformer, kind of. But there's no jump. It does all just swipes like make you go. It's kind of like the opposite of the game you like down. Oh, down well. Downwell.

Because you just go and up this tower, like collecting this bunch of power. Are you good at you? No. It's a lot of fun. It's addicting and it's rewarding in a fun way. But again, it's not like that deepest experience ever, but it's a fun game to play on an airplane. Sure. I play fun games on Vita on the airplane.

It's a good conversation. They're like trophies. Yeah. Hate bubbles. All right. Topic for the day, as always, brought to you, the people. And Stephen Inzler. Patreon producer, Stephen Insler.

Now, again, you. want to know how in deep with the kind of funny community how much of a fan the guy who makes bears can't drift is he sent us codes said all this and they said here's a bunch of giveaway codes and then he had one code and he said make sure you give this to stephen insler if he's still alive because the joke is stevenzler died and his credit card just keeps rolling over so much dude bears kind drift we had a lot of fun in that i'm looking forward to playing then we get back from back yeah it's it's fun game all right sombrero says hey guys when do you can i get a minority report on that name, Kevin? You're a goddamn racist. Kevin, if I put the hat down, you know what's,

if I put the sombrero down in the middle, you know what I do? All right. You guys are definitely gonna make fun of me. His name absolutely not sombrero. His name is somber owl. Who's never known? Somber owl. It looks like sombrero. It shows you how we actually read. Yeah, right? Like by, you see the first letter and the last letter and you're like, close enough. Holy shit. Hey guys. What do you think we'll hear about the next numbered far cry game, Far Cry 5. And where would you like to see it go? Personally, I'd like to see them go somewhere we haven't seen yet, like a desert

location, possibly somewhere in Europe. Seems like it'd be a next year game, right? Fall next year. Yeah, maybe E3. Yeah, yeah, well, when will we see it? Yeah, maybe fall. I feel like Ubisoft's being a little more deliberate now, so I don't know that they're necessarily even going to release it next year.

Primal did way better than they thought, too. So I wonder if they're going to actually double down on that setting as well. But where are I want to see it? I don't really care because it's all about the mechanic. Those games are fucking sublime. They really are. The Far Cry games are awesome. So if it's another tropical location, it looks exacted at the last location, fine.

I don't care. I'd like to go to the U.S. Let's do a U.S. city. Come on. Let's have some fun. What's you thinking? Make it up. It'll be like a Willemette, Colorado, I'm sure.

Well, that would be cool to go to, like, Yosemite or something like that, or Yellowstone. But I feel like part of those games allure is that they are, I want to say foreign because people aren't all American or whatever, but there's something not Western about those games. That's why I think it'd be different and shake it up. Let's go somewhere, you know, bring it back home. It's possible.

It's the fifth game. Yeah. You want that? You want to go be Troy Baker? Go be Troy Baker. Yeah. It's hard live my life. Nico has a long one here.

He says, evening, fellas. My question relates to the pricing of software and hardware in the U.S. when compared to other territories. And more specifically, the huge markup that seems to occur outside of the U.S. This can be seen on almost any random title you care to think of, but for the sake of brevity, I'll give the example of The Last of Us Remaster, digital. On the U.S. PlayStation Store, the game's priced at 1999. Yet in the UK PlayStation Store, the price sits at 3999 pounds,

which at the time of writing works out at around $52. As mentioned previously, this huge discrepancy in pricing can be seen on many titles, and it's the same story when comparing USD to other currencies such as Australian dollars. I realize that the various factors can affect game pricing across different regions, such as regional sales, etc., but to see such an astronomical difference on a consistent basis over 200% in the case of the last of us seems inexcusable. Do you guys have any insider knowledge as to why these price discrepancies occur or do Sony simply hate us?

Much love, Nick. We have freedom. And so our freedom allows us to get cheaper things. That is a solid point. Next question. Colin, do you have any real answers? No. So I have answers for why games are cheaper in some places or more expensive, I should say,

in some places. In Brazil, for instance, games are fucking way marked up. hardware, hardware is like outrageously expensive there because of significant taxes on imports there. So like there's, there's things like that that happened. I think they were saying, wasn't the PS4 literally like $2,000 or something like that? Fagely, I remember, like, Lord. So like it's something to do with like over there, and I could be wrong. I'm sure we have Brazilians that could correct me out completely. That's something like they have an import tax and like these electronics are taxed in a certain way and it just marks the price up.

So I know that like in that specific market, that's the reason or that's one of the reasons. So in Australia and in places like the UK and stuff, my theory on this, and this is my long-held theory, whether it's true or not, is that the United States is a huge market. So volume makes you more money on the back end. And when you're in Australia where you have a fraction of the people playing games there, you have to sell them for more money. Like I really do think that it might be as simple as that in some places. There could be some taxation issues. There could be some funding of different boards that rate the game. that you have to pay and all those kinds of things.

But I bet you that in a lot of these smaller countries, and the UK is not really a small country, but Australia, for instance, it doesn't have a huge population. I bet you something has to do with the fact that in the United States, it's like why they released the PS4 here first. They sold a million units in 24 hours. That wouldn't have happened anywhere else.

So when you're selling it volume, you can afford to sell a game for $60 USD. That might cost $80 USD somewhere else because the money needs to be recouped somehow. And if you don't have a volume of gamers buying them that you do in a bigger market, then that might be the way you make it up. But I think that there are a lot of Byzantine kind of taxation issues and importation issues in a lot of these countries as well.

Jan Hell Yes says, hey, Colin Gregg and Tim, congrats on the studio and all the success. I want to know if any of you have an idea about your total kill count in all the video games you've ever played. Jesus God. This includes players, AI, neutral animals, robots, basically everything you can kill in a video game. No, that's impossible. It's got to be millions. Millions. For sure.

We've played games our entire life. You kill something every game. Yeah, totally. Do your parents ever have an issue with like the vernacular used and all that? My mom, total hippie. Like she would hate it when me and my brother or even Kevin would be like, like, oh, we died. Like playing Mario.

Like, oh, I died. She just was not having that at all. No, I remember when I was playing Doom 2 on the computer. You remember there's rabbits in Doom. This is like one of those things. The guy like rabbits or some shit. I forget what the hell was. But I remember we were outside and I had been playing it all weekend or something.

and we were gardening or some shit like that, I don't remember. And I made some comment about, like, cutting a tree in half in our yard to see the rings or whatever. And my mom flipped out and was like, oh, next you want to cut the heads off those rabbits and see the rings. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, what are you fucking talking about? I was like, ah, I put it down. So the last part it didn't happen. But, like, I remember it was like this escalation of something that she had been worried about this game.

And suddenly me wanting to cut this tree in half because that's what you learned in school was somehow related to doom being that. What? What do you got for me? What do you got, Big Keb Dog? First of all, I was really scared that you were going to end up killing a rabbit. No, no. And second of all, they teach you how to cut trees down in school? No, but you know how that was? You're going to, I don't know, we're on a field trip or outdoor red or some shit. Or just in class. You're talking about, like, you find a stump and you see the ring. And that's how old tree is.

But I love that you looked at that tree. And you're like, let's cut this tree down. See how old is this is. I want to see the inside of that tree right now. Yeah, I, I've always been fascinated by the vernacular generally that we use in games that we take for granted. and I'm learning that, you know, with different people in my life as I've gone on. And I think also about dead or dormant kind of things that we don't say anymore. We don't use the term board anymore, B-O-A-R-D, which was a term that was used constantly in the N-E-S-N-S-N-E-S era, the first board, the second board. And this goes back to the way people thought about games and tabletop games and the way they segwayed into.

And then we started calling them levels and stages, bosses, like maps. Maps, leveling, backtracking. Like there's like all there's this whole Way we talk about games that is completely fucking foreign to people that that don't know how to play games These words mean something level Level means something in the real world to be level or a level Yeah like our like are too like you know if you're hanging a picture or something like that But a level in a game is like a stage

But stage is yeah something But level could also be like role playing Yeah yeah a leveling yeah like so it's It's, I love that generally, like thinking about the way we talk about the name is dying and killing and all that kind of stuff. Like, they are thrown around in a way that you wouldn't throw them around in the real world. But, you know, the newsflash for people is that it's not the fucking real world. So I think that. But I love that.

If we really sat down and thought about it, the way, like, it's like, it's like speaking Russian to someone. You know, if you talk about your experience in Mass Effect and you're jumping from men. Mass relay to mass relay and you're gaining experience points and you're Fucking that alien. You're dealing character classes and yeah like fucking Garris. You're upgrading and using upgrade trees and all that's like what the fuck does any of that mean to someone? Nothing.

Nothing. Needs. Check points. Checkpoints. Even Krogan's. So it's interesting when you think about it that way. Yes. Absolutely.

I like this show. Lelush Lamprooge. Shout out to Code Kios there. Considering Collins' admiration of Inifune and love of the Mega Man series, What is his opinion of the Battle Network series, which was my favorite? And what does he see as the future of the Megamand Legacy after Mighty Number 9's flop? Megaman's silly too long and successful a series to push on the rug for longer. Battle Network was fun.

But I think that similar to Star Force, which came after Battle Network, I think it just went too far. Battle Network was very much a product of the time during the late 90s and early 2000s rise of Pokemon and card battling and collecting. I really liked Battle Network and Battle Network, too. They were really great games. It's just that they, and actually really all of them were fine. It's just that, like, they came out too quickly, and then Star Force did the same thing. And it's like, these aren't really Mega Man games. And that's always why I've always questioned the admiration of legends as well.

Because I'm like, what is it about this game that people really love that makes it Mega Man? It's not, the furthest Mega Man has ever gone out of the side of the classic series of where it's Mega Man is X. And the unfortunate thing is classic and X are dead. We had never even got a bridge game that put them together, which would have been awesome and would have been an obvious thing to do maybe for its 25th anniversary. Mega Man Generations. You're talking about Sonic Generations. No. Sorry.

I was, I looked real quick. I'm like, is that at Wiley Castle? So, uh, I feel like the, the future of Mega Man is uncertain. So, so first of all, my number nine, no one likes my number nine. It seems sucks. Um, and it's a disaster. I think Inafune's legacy is definitely injured over it. And depending on how recor goes, and I saw recor behind closed doors at E3, and I think it

looks just very generic, but I don't, you know, I don't know if it's going to be any good or not. I think that a lot rides on, you know, the future of Mega Man like games based on Inafune's rise or fall based on these two games, right? But Capcom definitely has plans for Mega Man, and I still really do believe that they're going to do a big AAA Mega Man game. And and I think that that would be cool, but I also want Mega Man 11. I also want Mega Man X-9. It's a similar argument I make about tactics or these other games or the Castlevania, Metroidvania-style games where I'm like, why don't you just release these a lot and then stop when it feels like it's time and then bring them back.

And as opposed to like battle networks just dead, right? Like Star Force is just dead. You could have spread those games out and been more thoughtful or maybe spam them for a little while and then went away and then spam them again. There's people's like appetite for them come back. So I would love 11 in the same vein as 9 and 10. And I'd love X9 because I think that those games are really good too

and they're different. But I really do believe, yeah, I do believe we're going to get a AAA Mega Man game, open world game. I just feel that that's what they're, going to do. They're not, Capcom, unlike some other companies we make fun of, they're not really stupid. Like, they just, they make weird decisions and they seem to correct themselves often. So, like, they did with, they're doing Resident Evil, right? They did with Street Fighter 4. Like,

they, every once in a while, like, you see this weird thing out of them where they're like, no, we understand. And I think Mega, I think they know what they have to do with Mega Man. And I would, I, I've said it before and I said it again, like, I would kill to fucking write that game. Like, I have this vision for that game. That would be all. I want it to be dark and violent. Like that's one of the big things is like the robots are killing humans. Like Mega Man is murdering these fucking robots. And I've said it before, but like it takes place in a city.

And the the Mega Man two robots are the ones you fight first, not the Mega Man 1 ones. And so you find Woodman in like the park in the middle of the city. You find Flashman at the TV studio or whatever, like a new studio. You find, you know, like all these kinds of different. You find Heat Man at a factory or something like that. And there's like these really violent fights and these like really like visceral and and hectic fights going on. And then it comes that, you know, Wiley had created these particular robots and had reprogrammed the original robots from the original game. And so like Fireman and all those guys that had practical purposes that Mega Man and Light thought weren't even a problem at all that were still under their control.

And so the games are turned upside down. And I think that that would be cool. And I'll write it. I'll fucking write it. And it would be awesome. It would be an awesome game. Kind of sounds like Sonic 2006, which worries me. Navi says, hey guys, long time, first time.

My question is, how should reviews work for games with multiple versions? For instance, series like Pokemon, Fire and Blum Fates, are games which release on multiple platforms at the same time. Should reviewers do two separate reviews? The too much water critique, for example, seems to apply more to Pokemon Sapphire than Pokemon Ruby. Thanks. Congrats on the new studio and keep up the great work.

No, they should play a version of it and be very clear on which version. version they played. I, you know, when we were at IGN and we did multi-platform reviews, I mean, it was always the thing of I'd play through it usually on the PlayStation skew for trophies or whatever the reasoning was or that's what I got because those are my debugs or vice versa. And then I, I remember when you had to, the review would go up and then like the retail would come in and I'd pop in the Xbox version or whatever version I hadn't played and play it for 20 minutes, 15 minutes to make sure that it seemed like it had the same issues in those same things. And then we'd transfer the review. And thank God that never really backfired on me, but Skyrim, right?

They reviewed Skyrim on PC and port that over to every page. And then PS3 has this giant fucking issue, it turns out at the very end. How the hell would you ever know that? There's no way to do that. And so going through and reviewing the game and saying, editors know at the top, this is at the bottom, wherever you need to put it where your reader knows where to find the information. This was reviewed on the PlayStation 4. After playing this many hours of it, we've done a cursatory check on Xbox. It seems. like the same or we didn't get the chance to do that. When you're talking about the Pokemon games,

that's more on you in terms of I don't know the differences there. But for a multi-skew game, that's how I do it. I mean, I think there is a big difference there and that the content is different. And there is, like, it's subtle things, but in some of the Pokemon games, it could be a pretty big difference. And I think that it's the same thing.

You say, I reviewed, I'm reviewing Ruby. If you're playing Sapphire, majority of the game is the same. Here are the differences. And I think that that's just, it's more of an informational thing. Sure. You know, and if it is different enough,

And I can't think of an instance where this is the case, or Fire emblem, actually. I think that those games are different enough that you could review them separately for birthright and conquest. But it also makes sense to review them as the total package of revelations or whatever the fuck it's called. So, yeah. And there's going to be enough people out there doing it, I feel like, is the thing, right? Where it's like if I'm at IGN and I'm reviewing whatever Pokemon game and I'm reviewing one version of it, but you really want to know, because obviously I'm just spoiling down the bullet points that I haven't told in interviews or what I've seen in my fact sheet or whatever the differences are, There's going to be a site out there, a fan site, whoever, that's going to review the other version.

So you can go get it there. Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been episode 84, the Kind of Funny Games cast. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Stephen Insler, for being Stephen Insler. Thank you, Kevin, for being Kevin. Until next time, I love you.