Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - The BIGGEST Video Game Questions After SGF - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

Video Game Town, a truly indie website that is constantly striving to employ and pay some of your favorite writers to build a new community for smart and fun gaming coverage. Check them out at http://videogame.town for daily pieces! You can directly support them on Patreon at http://patreon.com/videogametown for exclusive articles and podcasts.Experience HITS technology with the new PRO X2 Superstrike, the fastest mouse Logitech G has ever built. Head over to http://kindafunny.com/logitech to grab yours and start clicking faster than the competition. Thank you for the support! Run of Show - - Start - Topic of the Show: The BIGGEST Video Game Questions After SGF - Where is Blade? - What is XBox plan? - Is Elder Scroll VI coming out? - Capcom turned it around - Ads - Naughty Dog is taken way too long - MattBanXI: Where is Jedi 3? - Dragon Slayer Delos: When is Kingdom Hearts 4 coming out? - Too little Duskblood? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode's brought to you by Video Game Town, an independent website that strives to pay some of your favorite writers to build a new community for smart and fun daily gaming coverage. Check them out at Video Game Town and on every social media platform. Experience hits technology with the new ProX2 Super Strike, the fastest mouse LogitechG has ever built. Head over to Logitecg.com to grab yours and start clicking faster than the competition. If you want to get our shows ad-free and our exclusive shows, go to patreon.com slash Kind of Funny. What's up and welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Thursday, June 18th, 2026. Of course, I'm your host, Tim Getty's. I'm joined today by blessing at Eioia Jr.

Good day, Tim. Snowbike, Mike. Tim, how about that crocodile? How about it? Right there. Right there. Come on. And Greg Miller.

Crocodile rock. That's a song we don't talk about enough. I don't know that I know it. Me and Susie had so much fun. You know it for sure. Elton John. This isn't like a weird Greg pull. The crocodile.

I don't know. And your feet just can't keep still. Was it in a Grand The Auto game? No. No. You never had me a better time. What'd you think? I love it, Tim.

Very, very excited. I'm pumped up about it. I think they nailed the art. Right? I think in 2026, that is the GTA art cover that I'm looking for. Got sexy babes. Got quote. Got motorcycles, like, it's everything that GTA is all about.

Colors, yep, the vibes. It's perfect. Can we say sexy, sexy babes is 2026? Definitely say that is right. What are you talking to? GTA. Wow. Mike has a point though.

When it's GTA, I do think it's a little bit. We all regress. Greg, what do you think of the cover art? Look like GTA. It was one of those. My favorite thing to do in the morning is that, you know, these fucking dogs getting me up at like, now 615, I'll take it.

And I open up the Reddit. Just go to Reddit. Whatever's going to be, our community will surface what I need to see. And I look there and it's like the pre-orders in the cover. Looked at the cover. All right, cool. It's the cover.

You know what? I know we have a whole topic today. But I agree with what you're saying. But I want to, but I think that this is a good GTA cover. Oh, this is the best one. Can you do me a favor?

The best, whoa, whoa. This is the best one. I want to get them all so you can look at a ball. We're not saying it's the best one. This one will go. This one will be number two behind San Andreas. Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. That's all I wanted to hear. I, maybe, maybe let's get into the show. And then, why don't we,

we're doing a, why are we excited for GTA 6 next week? Okay. We could just, let's save it for that. We can include there, because I need to prep Kevin, the comments.

You can't just ask Kevin to go grab my cover. I understand. I understand. So yeah. Let's save that. Uh, he did it. Kevin.

He did it. We're right here. San Andreas is definitely the, let's just have a quick combo. San Andreas is no one. I need to, I'm gonna have to see, or. I'm so team by city. I'm so team by city.

So let's just do a playoff here to get to which one we like the best here to then compare it to the new one, okay? Because I need to actually look at the new one with that eyes. I think we're under rating five, by the way. Yeah, Vice City by a mile. No. Yeah, Vice City number one on these. Yeah. City's such a fun game.

I'm San Andreas. Vice City number two. I'm flipped. I go Vice City, San Andreas, three, five. And then the rest look like a mess. Love that, Tim. I'm right there with Tim. but now can we compare it?

Yeah, can I say the new one? New one? Now I'm like, you know what? I think the new one's it, man. The new one has like a leading into his color scheme that I like. Yeah. Which so did three, you know? Ooh.

That's not the cut. We need this in vertical. It needs the portrait. Yeah, I need the vertical. If you're watching live, you're part of the show by super chatting on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Remember, we couldn't do this out our producers on Patreon. Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney the Somm-Twining, and Lacks Nomad.

For now, let's be with the topic of the show. I'm throwing a lot of cats. By bad. Didn't mean to do that. Taking you off the rails. I apologize. That was all me. The topic of the show is the biggest video game questions after Summer Game Fest.

All these questions are from patreon.com slash kind of funny. If you had a free account or paid membership, you could have responded to our quip, which is Patreon's Twitter, with your questions, you can also know super chat in what you think the big questions are after Summer Game Fest. What wasn't there that should have been? All of that. Before we get into everyone's questions here, are there any off the top of your heads? Because mine is, I mean, where the fuck was blade? You know what I mean? The PT-6 cover does look really good. Yeah. Yeah. It's one over. There you over. Yeah. That's the right attitude.

dude. I love it. I love it. I mean, Blade, I don't know about Greg. That's far away. I don't think you get to see that this summer. Asha Sharma is saying, here we go. Let's go. And I know it's far away. They have to have something. What have you been doing, Arcane? What have you been doing? Yeah. I mean, are you surprised there wasn't here?

Because I would have been surprised if it was. Yeah, but I feel like is anything surprising this industry? Yes, every Xbox decision we have to talk about everything on games daily. But like, again, what we are talking about of what are you trying to do with this restart of Xbox even before we were calling it the restart, right? And it was hyping us. And if you're going to

fucking show a Senua game just to sell them, I would think you would also be like, at least a, and here's what everything else we got coming. Here's a whole bunch of other titles and covers and whatever. And like, it's just been a long fucking time since we talked about Blade. Yeah. I saw something about Blade.

Really? Wasn't this last summer? They came on announced it? How long ago was that? It wasn't that Game Awards? I don't think it was that long ago. I think it was Game Awards 24. So that's December. So we'll call that 2025. The game was announced December 2023. Went to full production of the following year. 2023? 23.

December 2020 23. Three years ago, not really, but kind of. I kind of cut that down to one year. Two and a half years. Two and a half. He comes out. He says, hey, we got the license. We're making Blade. We're far away from that. You got two and a

we're not there yet. Next summer. Or never. Yeah. Or next box is trending. Or never. They're going to cut that team as well. Yeah.

Which would be actually insane. Blade blades a different level of like if that game gets. Why is that IP cursed? Like for real. And has anybody asked maybe you can't make a good blade game. I mean, that's a silly question. I can't you can't.

How many good vampire games are there? There's tons of fun vampire games. Make a fun vampire blade game. Come on. but of the Dawn Walker going to be great. You don't think you can't? Maybe that team can't.

Or maybe that team. I wonder if that team is if the, I have faith that this will be shown next summer. I'm in for Blade. But the opposite question would be if you haven't seen Blade in the long time, maybe they're struggling to figure out

what Blade looks like and how Blade could actually be fun and engaging. Greg, it just happened to a long time. All right, Mike, make up your mind. Okay. I don't think that's crazy. Snowmike Mike says you'll see Blade next summer. Okay.

Bang. For the conversation piece, while you haven't seen it, maybe they're struggling to make a good blade game. So that's my thing. It's just, I'm just giving you shit about the time because you were giving me shit about the time.

I'm going to go in your ear now like a little worm. I don't think that's a crazy question. Games are hard to make, period, and full stop. Blade being an IP we all care so much about because everybody loves Blade. He's just fucking cool, bless. I know you don't like Blade,

but I think he's cool. What have I never said? But no, I do think it's interesting to go to Arcane, right? Hey, we do these stealth games. And granted, death loop. Come on now. I love Death Loop. Can they make a Blade game fun?

I would say, of course, they're incredibly talented. Yeah. But I also don't. When I think of Blade, of course, I think Wesley Snipes. The one and only. Yeah. And Tim's got an attitude. I want everyone to fucking start with me.

Kevin, you can back me up. Yesterday we did a star, A Spider-Man. With Greg. Yesterday we did a Spider-Man brand-new-day trailer reaction. Yeah. Tim had such a bad attitude.

He went and took the YouTube down everywhere. Like, he wanted to hide it from people because he had this weird attitude. He's coming to me with very awkward energy. Yeah. I heard like the taps on the keyboard at his desk. I was like,

what's going on? And I looked at it's blocked. The Spider-Man video just disappeared. It's an irrelevant thing. I hate it. Me and Tim are more in love than ever. That's what it is. And sometimes we catch eyes

and we have fun together. Yeah. Come on Wesley Snipes. I just was like, where did you go? Honestly, let's pull back the curtain on everybody's favorite podcaster Greg Miller. I said it and then I looked at Tim because when I said Snipes, it didn't sound right. And I was like, is it Wesley Snipes? Did I just fuck up his name?

Nailed it. Anyways. Yeah, I could see that. Okay, cool. We have this Blade game. We're giving it to this team that's usually known for their immersive sim stealthy kind of stuff, right? And sure, Death Loop was a little bit different. But Death Loop also was hiding in the shadows.

And I really don't feel like Blade is hiding in the shadows. This is my own. I, ladies and gentlemen, I'm double-cheeked out. I'm showing you my ass. I don't know. Holy crap. I don't know Blade well.

Not even up. The cheeks are out. I'm showing my ass here. I don't know the source material of Blaine. I know the Wesley Snipes movies, right? So it's like maybe he is more stealthy in the comics or even what I think of the fucking him just cut motherfuckers up in the movie. So it's like maybe that isn't translating well.

Maybe I don't know, whatever. But like. I'm like you that. don't know the blade source material that much. But I would view it similarly to how I view Indiana Jones and James Bond, where for Arcane Auster, or Arcane Leon, Arcane Austin is gone, RIP Arkansas. For Arcane Leon, they are an immersive system studio. They are a studio that slows things down, right?

And it is more so about the choices that you're making as opposed to just getting into combat. Can Blade work as a character that is way more about solving shit about vampires, looking, reading things, reading logs, you know, breaking into places, can that version of Blade work? Or, like Mike saying, are they not the right studio for Blade? When you look at Marvel games right now, and that's dominated by Insomniac, people will go, well, look at Spider-Man, oh, look at Wolverine. And then Blade, when I think of Arcane, I think of their art style, I think of their gameplay, it is very different from that. And I worry that

the general audience will go, well, Spider-Man looks like this. Spider-Man plays like that. I don't want Blade like this. I wanted Blade to be like Wolverine over here. And so I worry that the initial reaction will be, oh, like, I thought Marvel's games would be something different, but, you know, it is a different team and they got a different skill set. Slip crit says, have vampire hunting vampires can't be that hard. And to that, I say, arcane has never fucked up a vampire game before. So. It wasn't the problem.

Talk about it, man. What if we still had Redfall? What if that was good? That was good, man. Why don't we let him build? I just caught that. Thank you. I just caught that.

Great fucking job, bless. and I love Arcane I would put it up there I love Arcane as a studio I love the kind of things that they do I wish they were just making more dishonored right but that's me being a dishonored fan If they get dumped by Xbox And get their studio back

I'm sure you'll be in it would be that They figure out a deal to go independent And then they just keep making arcane stuff And then they open up Boston again Just while we're here Because we're having a great podcast Just a simple quick aside for you and me Nicky Steve's man

Fucking layoffs to that studio Come on everyone. to go buy Thickest Thieves. 499. What a game. What a price point. You would have thought there would have been a little bit more movement on that. That's too bad. I think a lot of games are fucking a promotion.

I mean, remember they didn't even blame the layoffs on this. It was some project. It was another project. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's like, Think of thieves is really,

really, really fun. And I want to see how they expand that. Sorry, back to it. But if you're old school Arcane fan, it's in that vibe of like, hey, we're sneaking. And that's the kind of player that I am.

That's why when they announce Blade, I'm excited because it's like, oh, snap, okay, they're getting to work on an IP. Yeah. A blade game is happening, but I don't automatically get excited that they are working on a blade game.

See, I do. Because, so Pete Rob writes in and says, what's happening in Arcane? No blade updates. No other news since Arcane Austin closed. Are they on the chopping block? We have gotten news. It just wasn't in a showcase or anything.

But the director, every once in a while, just be like, we're still cook. Let us cook. Let us cook. Let us cook. And it's just like, you can take a lot of different things from that.

But like, knowing him, the way I know him just from social media and watching him in previous showcases and stuff. I'm like, I don't know. I feel like there's a level of confidence I get from what he's saying. And he's also said that this game's going to be third person, right? Which is interesting for an arcade.

Which I like, though. I feel like letting them do something a little bit different. Like they clearly have chops to make games. And I know we think like, well, they make these type of games. So that means that this has to be super sneaky, stealthy, whatever. I do think a level of that applies. two blade and two vampires and to the shadows and night and all that stuff. But I also think that

like death loop was very action focused. It was very fast. And it had like a vibe. It had like a very strong style to it. And it had a fun story and fun dialogue. Right. I think they we I think we forget about death loop sometimes. But a lot of I don't. A lot of what they established there, I think

would work for the kind of talent you need to make a blade game. Yeah. The only thing I would throw out there back to Michael's point that maybe the game just is struggling. we talk all the time about when you close a studio and destroy these teams you lose that institutional knowledge and that sucks right I think it is worth for this conversation talking about

cool you have all the institution knowledge you know how to make these games and now we are making it third person which suddenly becomes you have to see the character and that's not how a thief is that's not how death loop was right and it's like there is a different vibe from being that immersive sim first person I'm running around doing all this stuff that they do so well putting it into third a whole new animation team rigging

all sorts, I'm not smart enough to do, right? It is an interesting question if they bit off more than they could chew on that. They jumped in it and maybe not even bit off more to shoot. It's just this is harder. We're learning a new skill and having to do something. It's a different kind of combat system. Yeah, yeah.

First person versus third. Yeah. I have confidence in the game. Will we see the game? Will the studio get closed? You can't fucking trust anything. I mean, with all the news this week, it's like their name was brought up.

Yeah. And if they're closed, that means this game doesn't happen. I'm telling you right now, I'm a fool, but I can't see a world in which that happens. And it sounds crazy to me. I mean, after all the other news you've seen. I know. I can easily see it. Right now, the only game I expect out of Xbox is just Call the Duty.

And everything else. And Elder Scrolls. I was talking to Jen about this last night, right? Where I was just, I mean, like, we are seeing them very much retract. Or I'm sorry, yeah, recede and become what we always talk about with Embracer, right? We are going to exploit the IPs we have. We are no longer going to take shots on licensed things or whatever. We are going to make Call of Duty.

We are going to make World of Warcraft, of course. We're going to make Diablo. We're going to make Halo. We're going to make gears. Like, we are making these things. That's what we make. No more experiments. No more shots in the dark.

We're getting rid of all the studios that can't make a block blast. And I know we keep shouting it out, but the Jason Schreier video from the other day, right, him talking about what's going on. at Xbox and one of the things he talked about is when they were on their buying spree, buying studios like Double Fine and a lot of these more double A-ish studios, that was for GamePass, right? That was to expand the amount of content they were able to include on GamePath. A pipeline of good games.

They don't have to be great. Let's win some awards. Let's have a constant new stuff on GamePath. So when you're current Xbox and you have a big change of leadership and you have a change of strategy and you're talking about different metrics that, different metrics for success, then it becomes a thing of, all right, GamePass might not be the number one focus anymore, which means why do we have double fine?

Why do we have compulsion? Why do we have all these, studios that we bought specifically to expand that service, you then start cutting. I was talking to bless about the Sun Games Daily, but like it was horrible to be a fan of Activision titles like I am, Tony Hawk and the Marvel games and Transformers and all this stuff and to slowly over years see all of their studios turn into Call of Duty support studios, right? And then now it's like, all right, cool, well, Activision is part of Xbox, Microsoft, all of that. It's like we are now just in a new era where there's just even more own studios that get to become

Call of Duty support studios. Yep. Fuck my life. I said this like half a year ago or something, but like they, call of duty is a symbiote. You buy Activision, you buy Call of Duty. You think, oh, I'm going to be able to use this thing for my own power and then slowly it comes back and infects you until you are,

you're the, Xbox is the Call of Duty publisher now. Man, they spend a lot of money. Oh, man. It's your Activision thing, right? I bring it up often as a joke. But I think here in a real example, right, it reminds me so much of, yeah, when Activision dumped the Ghostbusters game

they were working on, right? Remember, they were the publishers on that initially, and you probably don't, you're all very young. But, like, when I was very excited about that Ghostbusters game, when they bought whoever they bought, they then dumped them because they're like, we don't want, we want games we can annualize, right? Like this seems like a new thing of,

oh, we're going to exploit what we have, but this has been going on in video games a long time for these gigantic publishers of like, no, no, no, we don't want one-offs, we don't want creative projects. We want to take the creative project and put it into an IP we own, in annualized.

Let's talk about the flip side really quick, right? You talk about Call of Duty, but at the flip side of it is, does that mean we get more games in the Halo universe, more games in the Gears universe, more games in Elder Scrolls, and inside of Fallout, right?

Like, does that mean, like you brought up with Call Duty, hey, now these support studios are going to come in and make more Fallout games at a faster clip instead of 10 to 20 years, right? Hey, that means we get to have that Halo game complement the other Halo game.

is that what they want? Is that what we need? Tim Gettys from Kind of Funny.com. This is horrifying to say. But, Mike, yes. They put out gears, they put out Halo exclusively on Xbox.

They do not do what they need to do. And then those studios become Call of Duty support studios. Oh, you think it just becomes that, Tim. Really? You think a Halo is going to save the day? No, I just, I find it interesting that, like, I guess that would be a 10-year

down-the-road thing, I think in the next 10 years, let's just say next five. The goal is like, hey, Domino's are lining up. Compliment the seven big IPs that you and I talked about on Congress Daily that Xbox is now known for, and you just double down on those until they're proven successes, and that's your hope.

I think that is the vision that they're looking at. That's not the vision any of us want here. But I do think the reset is, hey, here's seven IPs. These are the only things that matter, and we're making those, and we're making more games inside those universes, because that's what players want. and we'll buy because they're the only ones that they gravitate towards.

Yeah. I just don't know that that's even true for Gears and Halo at this point. Yeah. Really? Halo had motion with Halo Infinite's. Halo had motion. Like that for, oh, yeah, that first three months. It launched well. The first three months very, very well.

Oh, I'm with you on that. And why they fell is because they didn't have the support to keep up with a live service like they planned on doing. Now, if you add two studios like a call of duty to support that, then you fall onto that. they should have had a battle royale like we talked about they didn't have enough people to do that they were working on a different engine that wasn't friendly to bringing on more people that should have been done hey when we were talking about multiplayer there should have been maps every three months like it was 2004 all over again right map packs need to be released and you need to keep people's attention throughout the year and onward right and so like that means more people more dev time more studios have to come in support halo still has the motion it just after infinite you worry does it still have the motion five years from now when we finally get to the next halo. Is that something, I know we're getting into an entirely different podcast in the headline now, but I'm actually interested in this conversation. Hey, these are the questions at SDF, all right?

I'm really interested in this conversation because Mike, I think there is something there to what you're talking about. My question is, as Xbox, when you have Halo and you have Call Duty, you're talking about games I need similar amounts of support and similar types of content. They're both competitive first person shooters. So when we're talking about a Halo Battle Royale, you have a Call Duty battle, right? Eventually you're going to have the conversation about a Halo extraction shooter, but we got the Call of Duty one, right? Like, do you think that's something

that they can support, like, both at the same time? I think we see in the market right now, there's plenty of shooters that people gravitate towards them wants, and I think Halo was one of the big ones there. Now they're kind of a little bit different, but you think Apex is out there. PubG is still doing just fine. Like, there are so many shooters in that market.

I think there's space for a very good Halo and Call of Duty to be just fine and compete with one another, compliment one another. You're going to push Battlefield out of the way if those two were to be the big dogs. And Battlefield stays on a four year to five year cycle, right? Like, who's going to be in between those to compete with those two games? Not many other games. I have a question. This is a question at SGF, but me and the Xbox stuff for it in the Xbox stuff.

Do you think, don't look at the chat team. Look at me. Look at me. Do you think, Todd Howard, makes it to the launch of Elder Scroll 6. No. I don't think we do. Wait, I'm sorry, what?

Like an immortal? You're the Elder Scroll 6 is going to come out in our lifetime? I don't know. That was scary. With such serious eye contact right now. I mean, I'm being a bit hyperbolic because I don't, I think that we will see Elder Scroll 6, but like I'm not confident we will see.

It's like, what would give me confidence at this point about any of this shit? Like, I think it's one of the big major titles. I know, but like, uh, Perfect Dark. Perfect Dark was, I will say it, just like I said on the X-Cast, who's buying that? No one knows Perfect Dark anymore. I mean, unless you're me and you're 36 years old. That was, but there's a lot of people and a lot of the Xbox audience was that type of person. And the four A's, there's four A's more than triple, quadruple.

This industry couldn't support that fourth A. It's just like that game doesn't exist. It's like Elder Scroll 6, it's like we've followed 76. We're just going to continue to go fucking forever, okay? Yeah. But, yeah. Or the thing is we get Older Scroll 6, but it like, is it a rushed? Hey, we got to get this out.

We just got to do it. That's where I'm going to hail a wind. I mean, you know what it's going to be. We're going to say, oh, this is dated. That's going to be the problem. Yeah. We're going to do just like we did with Starfield. We held up so many other RPGs against this.

And you're unfortunately. still looking dated and feeling dated. We're going to celebrate it because it's Elder Scrolls and we have that love for it. But like we will, it will be the same conversation in Starfield. But I think, you know, I think that'll be a certain category of people. I think so many more people will have the member berries though. Of course. I think Elder Scrolls, Skyrim specifically was such a launch of a video game.

People love that game. And to this day, like, you will meet people that are like, oh, yeah, I just finished another Playthrough of the time. You know, I was 15 years ago. Isn't that crazy? 15 years ago was crazy, but I still think it's relevant, right? Like I think what I think Bethesda games still have the sauce.

I just think Starfield just didn't have the sauce specifically. With Elder Scrolls, guess what? If we're reducing everybody or giving them the hard reset, they're going to these teams and going, what are you going to make? Do we vibe with that? Or do you want to come over here and make this?

Or are we selling you off, right? Those are probably all the conversations they're having with each and every one of these studios. And it is, hey, here's Elder Scrolls. You're going to start making this with Todd and the team. And hey, we want Fallout. You're going to make this now. And to get into my question a little bit off.

of it, right? I wonder, yeah, I do think those conversations are probably happening. You know what I mean? And I do then wonder if you're Todd, industry luminary, you've been there forever. You probably have more money than God, I would assume. You're, you know, exec on the show and yada, yada, yada. If you're watching Asha and team come in there and be like, cool, this has been fun. But I need people making fallouts and I need them making elder scrolls.

You guys are how far out? Let's speed that up. Can I get you more people? Can I do this? But also, we're taking the IP. You can still be Fallout 5, but we're going to go do fallout colon, New Vegas, too, over here with Obsidian or whoever. And on top of that, we have these folks over there.

We're in China. They're going to do fallout Chicago. Like, you know what I mean? Like, we're going to milk this IP. Yeah. Exactly. And I wonder if you're Todd and you look at the timeline and you go, all right, how far am I actually from wrapping Elder Scroll 6 in reality, right?

And then if they're pushing me to do something different and they're taking my children and doing all these things, do I just want to say, you know what? But there's a lot of change at Xbox right now, and I want to let the next generation of Bethesda people rise up and put their thumbpins on these games. I'm going to still oversee the Phil Spencer thing, right? I'm going to be a consultant. I'm going to be on the show.

I'm going to focus on the show, kind of like the opposite of what Neil did. It's like, fuck the show. I'm going to make games. I don't know. Melo fellow in the chat says, LOL Tim compared perfect dark to Elder Scroll 6. I'm only making the comparison in the sense that like none of us

would have believed that after seeing it at Xbox game showcase, that later that year that game would have been canceled. Hey guess what? That's that's the duo right there. I mean, they beat that record this week. No, I know. I know. I know.

That was an unprecedented like, no, there's no way that would ever happen. This game at the very, I'm not saying it's going to be good, but the game's going to come out. Yeah. And it's like, oh, no, that game didn't come out. And Wonder Woman, very different situation. We didn't even see the game at all, even a first slice of it. It's like, I'm giving you a very dated reference, but it's exactly how we felt about Pray 2. Went to an E3 event for Bethesda.

Played Pray 2. Actually, saw the game, saw the vertical slice. And then eventually like, you know what? No, it's gone. We're starting over. There'll be a new game from a new developer called Prey. I think the possibility of Elder Scroll 6 not happening is there. But I also tie that to Xbox is just gone by that point.

Like we're just talking about, yeah, Xbox collapses. And that's the reason why. I think as long as Xbox exists and is still trying, Elder Scrolls has to be. That has to be the centerpiece of their strategy. That's got to be on everything they talk when they go to Saty and Adele and try to get more time or get whatever. They've got to have that on the slide of where it is in the timeline or where they want it to be in the other. And I guess that really comes back to because Mike, time about 10 years.

That's a different conversation. Because, yes, if Xbox still exists in 10 years and there is any level of getting there, sure. But like, just being realistic about where we think Elder Scrolls, let's take all of the Xbox drama out of it. Take it out. Take the drama out. Let's just talk about Elder Scroll 6 at Bethesda Game Studios. when's that game coming out? Like,

what year was Starfield? 2022? No, we were firmly in the studio. 20, 23. I would give it. Maybe even four. September, 2023. So nine months in.

I'm going to say 2029. I was going to go with 2030 is my window here. That's what I'm thinking that. I mean, yeah, that's so many years away. To think about the amount of things that could happen before then. It's like, that's wild. And some of those things could be, hey all the studios you're working on

on Elder Scroll 6 I just don't think that that helps that doesn't actually get the game to come out in a higher quality state faster it just seems messy would they be having those studios help them then compliment with other games in those franchises right so it is at

2030 30 that launches now 2031 you have something 2032 23 but isn't that the goal to make smaller project that complement the IP I'm scared of that because I think that waters down the IP I think if you When has that ever happened before? I think if you get,

I think what's special about Elder Scrolls is that we wait so long for it. Of course. And so it is this monumental event. Once we start getting Obsidian Elder Scrolls and you play it and it plays like a Vald, no offense to a Vald, but it's not Elder Scrolls.

Like, once you get that version of it, I think you start to water it down to a point where I look around and it's like, I can just play Baldess Gate 3. You don't know what they have. I think, can I just kill for it.

Sorry. Go for it. That is inevitable. Yeah. That is inevitable. When this buyout happened and they said they were keeping their independence,

we all said, okay for now. And then I think what you're talking about is inevitable that all these studios that have been bought up lose their soul at some point. And inevitably it will always be the Balders Gate, the Witcher 3, the

hopefully, you know, Dawn Walker. Like, hey, we're a team doing something we love, inspired by everything. And that's why Baldersgate 3 destroyed Starfield. You know what I got out before it and everybody played Starfield like, oh my God, this feels old because Ballard's Gate 3

pushed it. forward. You're always going to see that level of finesse, that level of we're doing the new brave thing come from a small, hungry studio. Whereas when you get bigger and bigger, let alone get bought by a company like Xbox,

that's not going to happen. And I just don't, I don't think, you can, I think resting on the laurels of, we have this IP and we have a structure that worked in 2011, I think that's going to continue to lead to your downfall. Oh, yeah. Older schools is just going to do worse and worse and worse, same with fallout or any of these other. Assassin's Creed.

IPs, yeah. You brought it up earlier. The IPs you want to exploit. And so we're just going to end up in that same place. I think the only company that somehow has had this figured out for decades is Nintendo, where they keep the same IPs, but they keep swinging in wild ways and experimented. They're encouraged to experiment. Yeah.

That's the only way to keep them vibrant. I'm scared they're not going to have that. Obviously, a lot's happened in the industry that's changed where the money is and how the money can be made and all of this. So it's like some of the points I'm making aren't necessarily one to one. But I do think that a lot of the argument we're starting to create here is hard. marketing back to the success of a different time of just relying on a core set of IP and trying to get as close to annualizing it as possible. If not every other, you're coming up with some type of cadence of expectation for a Fallout or a Halo or whatever the game is. But it is interesting to look back to you bring up Assassin's Creed where that came from.

That came from the team from Ubisoft, one of the premier Ubisoft teams, especially at that time, Prince of Persia's stance of time. Now we look back on it as like such an old different era or whatever. when that game came out, that was like in the game of the year conversations. That was like such a huge thing. It wasn't just like, oh, cute. They're making a Prince of Persia game. Following that up the next year with Warrior Within, the year after that with Two Thrones, like that was looked at as like a huge franchise that was getting a new

installment every year, making a lot of money for them critically well received. And then what happened? They went on to Assassin's Creed. They moved on from Prince of Persia. And then they found more success there. And then just, we know what happened with Assassin's Creed. They annualized until they couldn't. anymore and then they kind of figured it out.

Now we look at Ubisoft as a fucking mess and as a joke. Call of duty annualized it. They're the only ones that have figured it out to the sense of they make more money than God. It doesn't matter so they keep going. But that's on the backs of all these other teams. A team like NeverSoft. Which what they do? Tony Hawk's Pro

Skater making more money than God in the 90s and 2000s with annualized games that they were putting out that everyone was buying, that were critically well received. When that started to taper off, what happened with them? guitar hero they got put on hey there's this big successful franchise in 2007 that's making a lot of money harmonics is going to move on to rock band y'all are going to now get off of tony hawk you're making guitar hero ride that into the ground until that didn't work and then what happened call duty support studio it's just like everything we're saying here we're watering down the IPs and we're just inevitably building support studio for whatever the big thing is you're making assassins crate Microsoft you're making assassins create But like are we at that with Elder Scrolls though and Fallout, right?

Like isn't the point of like this is taking too long to make this game? You need to speed this up. This needs to be a four or five year endeavor, not a 10 year, not 15 years, right? Like isn't that the goal of this though is to speed up sky or speed up elder scrolls and the fallout wait time for fans that are like, let's get here. Let's get this out here. You say the goal of this. Which one are this you talking about? I think the goal is like the conversation of if I have.

I was Microsoft CEO to come up to Todd and the team and be like, this cannot be our sustainable model. Yeah. I can't have you making the biggest, one of the largest IPs in the world every 15 years. This has to be five to seven at most. How do I help you? Is it when I tell these three teams that,

hey, your mid-tier game isn't good enough and is not selling what the numbers that we need, and I'm going to bring them on to help you, I need you to say yes to that and let's speed this up. I think, you're right in that scenario. I just don't think it's that, hey, here's the olive branch.

Let me help you as much as here's the, let me take it. I'm going to put all these people on here, and yes, we're making three other fallout games over here. We're taking your engine for Elder Scrolls and we're giving it to three other studios so that every year and a half

we can have a new Elder Scrolls game. You know what I mean? That is, I feel like them give an inch, take a mile kind of thing. And again, this is a conversation we had multiple times throughout the years, but especially this week of like, that's not wrong from the Xbox scenario. Xbox has Microsoft on top of them saying make fucking money.

The experiment is over. Be sustainable. Make money. So I understand why they would do that and they're within the rights is the ownership of it. It's just the sad fact of this is what it seems like inevitably happens when you sell out to the big corporation. And something to bring up with the money, it's like, it's, you know, we're not just like moving pieces on a board that then equal, okay, with plus two to stats here. so the power goes up, whatever. It's like, so the support studio is not making these other games.

You're still paying their salaries. You're still needing to pay for figuring all the stuff out. So it's like now you're just spending more money on fallout, more money on whatever it is. Is that actually speeding things up for the cost benefit difference there? Is it actually going to get the product good enough when it launches so that the audience isn't starfielding it, you know? And it's like the starfield thing is an interesting side to it too because it's like the expectations were high because.

because of Elder Scrolls, because of Skyrim, you know? And it's like, well, they didn't do that with their new IP that they knew everyone had their eyes on. So it's like, I just, I don't know. Elder Scroll 6 just seems like such uphill battle. It's so different. It's the closest thing to GTA 6, but God damn, is it different than GTA 6? Where GTA 6, I look at it as a foregone conclusion. It is going to hit every metric and record that it's attaining to.

I do not have that confidence in Elder scroll six. I do think it will sell very freaking well regardless of the quality. It can be bad and I still think that it will sell more than most games do the year it comes out. That's fair, yeah. Paying back off something you said earlier, right? I also think there's the conversation of

what does what does speeding things up look like? Because you're talking about, hey, have these three other studios that are making like the double a things help you out to get this out quicker. Greg's talking about, hey, let's take this and have these other studios make games. I think either thing is a monumental effort, right? You can't

just take other studios and have them work on a game that you've been working on for years and years and years because that requires onboarding. That requires them understanding what the engine you're working on is. And I think that takes as much time and effort as staying the course of what you've been doing already. And then same thing with, hey, we're going to take this and give it to you. Like, I think that then speeds up things in the long term of when we finally get there and when they get used to these tools and figure out how to make that, right? But that cycle doesn't get going until six years out, seven years out, right?

And at that point, what are we talking about as far as what we need to be? right now is Expo. I mean, it's one, you should look back when they had the acquisition go through a Bethesda, right? And, like, I'm sure they weren't, they weren't probably predicting where they'd be now of, like, man, we still don't have an Elder Scrolls game from this purchase, right? We have sat on this. We got Starfield out of that, but that was clearly already in production when we probably

purchased it. But, like, we bought this for the big hits. We haven't got a big hit yet. We've gotten a bunch of smaller titles from Doom and Indiana Jones. But when you're purchasing this, we're going for, I want this. This should be happening. And we've made that purchase, what, 2002 is when that closed or 2020?

And it's like you're still, what, four years later almost and don't have the big dog yet? This is such a good conversation. We have a lot of stuff I want to get to. I want to, before we get to add, one last thing I want to bring up here because I do think that, like, there's a lot of doom and gloom conversation here.

But I look at someone like Capcom. And I remember having a lot of doom and gloom conversation about Capcom. Like, coming from me. Like, I remember being in the original spare bedroom to be like in 2015-16 being like what the fuck is Capcom doing to itself like it's making all the wrong decisions it has such an incredible library of IP and it just can't fucking figure it out and now you look with where we're at currently and it's like holy crap they're absolutely killing it with new IP classic IP remakes all of that and they have turned Resident Evil from like a franchise that like was beloved but was beloved to some to one that is one of the most currently beloved franchises. Like, we, Halo can be saved. Like, Fallout can be, like, saved, whatever that means, like, from 76 of, like,

they can, like, come back with a new energy. It might include remakes. Yeah, remake three, remake New Vegas, put out five. This isn't hard to understand how to make, but then it'll be, you keep going, and then are we watering it down? Yeah, but look at Resident Evil. Like, they've had so many, and it doesn't feel watered down. Yeah.

We're getting a lot of them, but I think that they've had a good cadence of keeping up quality with releases coming out where it's just the right amount of time for us to want to play a remake versus a new one. You know what I mean? And if they can figure that out, I think will be in a good, a really, really good spot. Yeah, I think it's tough. So tough. Resident Evil.

Resident Evil is the perfect game series to figure that out with because those games are 10 hours long. Yep. Yep. Right? They are these containable things that people actually don't really get tired of. I can play a Resident Evil once every year or two years and it still be an exciting thing when they announce a quote Veronica or Resident Evil Veronica. for 2027, whereas

Fallout's, those are big RPG. Now, we say that, but remember, it was two years between three and New Vegas. So it is that idea that, like, hey, we could be on a two-year-kaden cycle with Fallout, ride the high of the show. That two-year thing happened once. I know.

That two-year thing, that was every two years for eight years. But we're also asking, like, not eight to ten years, right? Oh, yeah. If we can go, there has to be a happy video. Right, like, I think the gamers out there are just saying, like, I just don't want to wait a decade for, the next installment of one of the biggest franchises ever. And there has to be an answer to that.

Make it four, make it five. Let's roll this thing. That thing is like, I'm not, I haven't been, I had the thought and I meant to meet you in the middle, and I forgot to meet you in the middle of the thing of like,

yeah, you can just put obsidian on Fallout and it be a thing of, okay, a fallout every four years, right? You put another studio on a sea of thieves or like, you know, you take a lot of these, you have enough successful games that you don't need to put everybody on a fallout.

You don't need to put everybody working with, with these things. You just have to speed up the cadence a little bit. That's what the players want. That's what the players want. That's what they've been hearing. That's what they know. We all know when we talk about the business side of things,

when your two largest IPs are taking 10 to 15 years, it's like that's not sustainable. That's not the answer. Yeah. We're going to keep talking about other things. Big questions we have coming out of Summer Game Fest. Right after a word from our sponsors. This episode's brought to you by Video Game Town.

Video Game Town is an independent media sales. where you can find fascinating articles, podcasts, and videos created by the best and brightest in games journalism. In order to escape the AI hellhole our industry is currently in, Video Game Town proudly presents the best in gaming coverage joined

by plenty of familiar faces. Khalif Adams, Jenna Steber, Merritt Kay, Ian Walker, and more. Video Game Town is run by two friends, Grant and Jared, who bring their decades of experience covering games, movies, tech, and memes. They deliver the kind of analysis,

editorials, podcast videos, rankings, and nerdy effemaria that you can't find elsewhere. So check them out at Video Game Town and be sure to subscribe to their Video Game Town Hall series wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to support the return of fully independent web media, you can directly support at patreon.com slash video game town for exclusive articles and podcasts. Look, we've all been there. You've got the angle, you've got the timing, but you still lose the face off. In competitive gaming milliseconds aren't just a stat.

They're the difference between a trophy and embarrassment. And that is why the team at LogitechG just changed the game again with the new ProX2 Super Strike. This isn't just an upgrade. It's a total reimagining of the mouse click. It features the revolutionary hits technology. That's the haptic inductive trigger system. They ditch traditional switches for magnetic sensors. That gives you up to a 30 millisecond advantage.

Think about that. You're literally clicking. faster than the speed of human reaction. And the customization is insane. You can tune your actuation points across 10 levels and even adjust the haptic intensity. Whether you want a crisp, sharp snap or a hair trigger rapid fire,

the Superstrike adapts to you. Stop playing fair and start playing faster. Go to logitechg.com and enter code kind of funny 25 at checkout to save 25% off LogitechG products. Just a quick note, some exclusions apply and the promo is non-stackable with other offers. Grab the Super Strike today.

The winning click is finally here. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,

please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2-600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. that MGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. This spring, denim gets a softer, lighter update. Introducing Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg, a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim to feel like for summer. Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool. With a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming.

Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapeed denim wide leg. This episode is brought to you by L'Oreal Group. Beauty is a powerful force that moves us. That's why L'Oreal Group has built a business that is inclusive at its heart with 100% of its brands, championing diversity. With 25,000 professional opportunities for people under 30 worldwide and 54% of leading positions held by women,

diversity is a strength that helps L'Oreal Group create the best beauty products for all people. Visit loriel.com to learn more. Plus, you brought up something that wasn't at Summer Game Fest. Yeah. In relation to the conversation we were just having. Yeah, the conversation that we were just having about, why don't you put the studio with this other studio to help speed up that cadence,

made me think about a different publisher named PlayStation. Ah, I know them. And a franchise named Uncharted. Yeah. And just a developer named Nottie Dog who takes forever, because we're talking about how long it's taken for Elder Scrolls. But also, Nottie Dog, I'm looking at y'all. Y'all are taking way too long for your video games as well.

and if Intergalactic is what 2027, 2028 Uncharted or Last List whatever you're working on after is going to be even further and further out Do we get an uncharted? Is that something I can kind of predict and expect at one of these

showcases someday soon? Soon. In the next two years. There's got to be second team working on this right? A support studio. Yeah, I take a chartering and give somebody else. I mean, again, I'm never trying to carry water

for naughty dog even though the internet would tell you otherwise. Remember they did have a game. There should be a naughty dog game. We're all playing right now. And they feel. Exactly. Yeah. And don't be wrong. But Jim Ryan said live services. They rose to the challenge. They were on Jeff's stage. They eventually like, oh, you know, this is a little fuck everything up forever if we do this. And they stop. So they just fucked up the near term. So hopefully you get intergalactic and then their next single player title isn't, I mean, it's going to be a long time, but not as long in the grants, whatever. Um, yeah,

I do think in the same way we talk about Xbox. fucking make games. I think when this live service shit dissolved in their hands as we all told them at wood it's a terrible decision, I do think they went and had hard conversations with those studios as well,

including Noddydog, like, you guys want to make it her galactic? Awesome. Neil, you've got a fucking napkin outline for Last of Us part three. Let's let that cook for a second. Y'all aren't doing shit with Uncharted.

And that's clearly something we can do and we could have it be the daughter. We could have it be somebody else. We can, we won't touch Nate. You guys love Nate. Nate's your thing. We won't. But we got to get that to somebody.

And I have to imagine someone somewhere at some studio is in pre-pro or real development on it. Do I think it's close? No, because I have, I've, I've heard little murmurs, little things. But not enough where I'm like, oh, it's for sure happening. Some studio somewhere. Is it, I'm trying to think of the studios now. Because like, I mean, I would be working on it. Because like there was, I remember talking about you this years ago.

There was a San Diego studio that's not Sony, San Diego. Yeah, what was the, yeah, I forget even what they called. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Digital Art studio. I look at Sony Ben and I'm like, what are you doing over there?

Sony Ben, though. There are studios that's not me wrong. I said Sony Ben, that's Sony Ben just getting the short end of the stick so many times. And I don't know. Again, if it is Herman walking in and being like, y'all, stop. Stop making this, trying to make your original IP we hear about all the time. But that was before that they were supposed to be trying to make an uncharted thing. And then they were all like, we don't want to do that.

Yeah. And so I don't know if it finally was like, cool. we don't want the game you're working on and we also don't want to put you out of business but you got to pick. Do you want the unemployment line or do you want to be making uncharted? I don't know. I know very different in terms of the circumstances between Xbox and PlayStation but yeah, I thought about that

and was like, man, there's similar issues with both even though X-Vox is just extrapolated to the extreme. It's what we talk about all the time though is like and I think we just disagree on this which is totally fair and fine but like and y'all can call me whatever you want for this. Nottie Dog's different. I do think the difference

is Noddy Dog puts out 10 out 10 out 10 games of the year games every time they put out a game. And like they put out games that then turn into games you can remake a thousand times to make even more money back and then become movies and then become TV shows and then become all of the stuff. It's like the level of prestige, we talk about prestige games. That's naughty dog. Like we can say, oh, it's PlayStation.

It's like it's naughty dog. And I think that that they are the only team that I'm like, take as long as you need for a galactic because you need to get that right. And it will pay off for them. unless it doesn't. And the moment that it doesn't, I take back everything. I'm like, cool, you're done.

You fucked up. But until they fuck up. The thing I do want to clarify, right? Because I know I get on Nottie Dog as a studio. I love the Nottie Dog games. And I understand that factions puts you back as far as, or pushes you back as far as the games are making. I'm more so thinking about the franchises.

Uncharted. I know we ended uncharted in 2016. I think it's time uncharted to come back, right? When I'm thinking about, oh, when can I play the next last of us game? It feels too far away. That's my only thing is. When I'm thinking about the-

You're playing that with your kid. Yeah, I think that my grandkid may be, right? When I'm thinking about the cadence of these franchises and keeping them active, that's more so where my beef is of like, man, naughty dog, of course, take your time, do your thing. You failed on one project, take your time on the next project, make intergalactic great. Somebody else should be working on some of the other things that you have, though.

And we're bringing up a lot for me as, for me, it's heightened of, we've had so many remakes recently of the last of us, and we're capitalizing on that. But like, when you get those remakes and you're like, I just had that, right? like uncharted, they have the Holy Trinity, and it feels like these three should be in juggling in motion a lot better than they are.

And it is, hey, these are the prestige titles. We let them work and they go slow. But it does feel like you have the big three. You should be moving these at a faster pace. I just don't think the big three are equal. Like I don't see Last of Us is something that needs to be iterated on that much. I don't think that we need a thousand spinoffs of it and like things like that.

Uncharted I do. Chartered I think should be like buy and cast. With Last of Us part three though, We shouldn't be waiting until 2040 or until I have a child, right? Like, that should be a little bit faster than that. Maybe some of it. But I'll think we wait until 2040. I think that Last of Us 3 is being worked on right now.

And I think that, like, we'll get Intergalactic first. And then Last of Us 3, it won't be seven years after that. I think it'll be like quicker than that, maybe two, three years after that. I mean, it's a fun conversation because we're all coming to the same thing of, like, a lot of these studios. The creation of a game is taking too long for the fan side of things. like eight years is way too long, right? It's like you have this great IP, this great franchise. We cannot be waiting that long.

So we've got to find a way. Here's a question I want to ask. That isn't what we're talking about, but it kind of is. But it's definitely in this conversation. If you're an uncultured listener viewer right now, you might be at home listening of like saying, why do we want all these sequels? Why do we want the IP?

And my question really becomes, I mean, the answer, of course, is that this isn't what we want necessarily. This is what Sony wants and what Xbox wants and like trying to make money because it's all about the money. So my question would be though, if not a magic wand,

but would you, from all of you, for Noddy Dog and the question here, would you want them to go to Uncharted for, or five, would you want them to go to Last of Us Three or would you want them to, we do it or Galactic and then we do the next new thing and the next new thing? I won't Last of Us Three.

Okay. I want Uncharted. from naughty dog yeah for i want uncharted next i'm good on last of us right now i'm like i'm last of us out i think they make really fun uh action adventure games mummy-esque movie type like comedic action games that like that's what i want i want more of that i'll take i'll take whatever from naughty dog specifically but i want it uncharted from somebody okay yeah see my thing is like i feel like in this conversation we're having about you know what the future of xbox how bleak it is right now all the studios that are still left there or maybe on the chopping block.

Although not the same, it is, as we talk about, PlayStation's dealing with the same problems to a different degree. I do worry about like, not worry, I guess, but personally, I obviously missed the PlayStation that was making new shit. And it was cool, it's a new generation. Now we're doing Uncharted. All right, cool. Now it's a new generation we're doing Last of us, which isn't exactly the same.

But you know what I mean? Hey, we made all, we're soccer plunge. We made all these infamous games. Now we're making Ghost of Sushima. Like the fact that people, it felt like there was transition a lot. And now I feel like with the economic headwinds and the apocalypse that's upon us and everyone just trying to make money, I worry so much about now. No, no, you're in the machine. You are in the PlayStation machine.

Right now we just need proven hits. We just need sequels. And I understand why that would be that way. I'm excited. I think intergalactyl looks awesome. But it's like, are we going to have another 10 to 15 years now where it is? Cool. if you work at PlayStation, you work at Xbox,

I'm leaving a $10 a dollar conversation, you are just making sequels to what you've made before. Everybody goes to, we are exploiting the IP we have, which I think we are. Yeah, which I,

it won't just be that because there is the indie space. There is like the smaller, like, but I'm talking about being at these studios inside the big guys. Which at a certain point, I'm just like,

that's okay when it's, when that's the only games that are going to be coming out because we are only going to be getting two of these every 10 years or what I is. I agree with everything you're saying. I just think a reason for why it's happening is,

the generational gaps between consoles has slimmed so much. And once we got to that PS4 generation where we did see the jump from resistance to the ghost of Tsushima, that was the a level that we really haven't. That was such a level up in terms of 4K and like how giant the tech needs are for these games. And that's only widened in the expectations for like how big all these games are. That we can't put that genie back in the bottle. And I feel like that's that is such a big. difference between how they were able to just kind of pump the games out, not even year after

year, like it's just closer together and then move on to something new. I think that something new came with a new generation of tech that allowed them to think bigger, but now it's not just about thinking bigger. It's about like they're thinking as big as they can. They need to continue to be that big and that's scary. Matt, Ben, we've solved a lot of problems. We solved a lot of problems. What else wasn't that? Yeah. Matt Band says, where is Jedi 3? Jedi Survivor came out on in April 23. Fallen Order came out in November 2019. So we're right there. We're right there. I think you guys nailed it. You talked about the big D-23 presentation.

I think that's a compliment of that, a Star Wars situation. But like that seems to be, hey, we have a really big deal here, a great game with number three on the list. Let's show that off at a large presentation and party. Yeah. It all goes back to the same conversation we had from other folks, too, where's the A? It's interesting, right? And is, you know, this weird, hey, we're waiting for what goes on with this Saudi Arabia deal. Obviously, they're still putting out plenty of stuff.

Truman the Tiger. Mascot mode. I was just saying, it's like, well, we go through EA, right? You don't want to hear about Madden or college football, so we're not showing those off, right? No one wants to hear about skate besides Mike and Greg. Can't show that off. You know, it's free skate weekend. Don't forget.

Mass Effect team said, hey, on N7, they don't even look for us because we're not ready for this. It's like, you start going down the EA list. There's not many that are ready to. to do anything, right? So, yeah, EA's not quite the same where we used to have a big show presentation. Do you guys think like AAA games like this that are probably slated for second half of 2027

in beyond, do you think they're waiting for after GTA is out to then talk about, like, or announce their games if they're not announced yet? To some degree, yes. I think this year, the oxygen is eaten up so much. But I think also I think a lot of people are leaning into talking to the right audience at the right time. That's why the D23 thing would make so much sense

have Calcestis himself come out, make the announcement, have the double light saver, yada, yada, and then you go quiet until, yeah, you're on the other side, have something at Jeff's, you know, game awards, depending on when it's coming in.

Yeah, I mean, so yeah, there's a lot of interesting things there because D23 is every other year with Star Wars Celebration, and next year is Star Wars Celebration. Oh, it's like even more likely that'll be the case, and that's May, I want to say. Yeah, usually it's like spring.

So then, you have this being a fall title, that would kind of make sense. Survivor was April 23. April, I think is weird, but that was a COVID-developed game, right? So I think that that must have affected a lot of the decisions. I imagine they wanted to get this out,

holiday season 22. But yeah, we know the Jedi 3 is being worked on. So I am actually surprised it didn't come out this year. Now this far into the year, I'm not surprised. But like last year, I was pretty confident of it being this year.

So how they're making these games so fast? I know it doesn't feel like the fastest thing, but like we're talking about AAA games now, probably being what, standard standard five years of development. Yeah. I mean, it goes back to pretty quick. Like the conversation we're having about like teams that stay together and the Jedi team, there was a lot of overlap between Fallen Order and Survivor.

Guess what? There's not a lot of overlap between Survivor now. So maybe we should pump the brakes because like a lot of the core members left, right? Don't you remember. Stig? You left, right? Yeah, but at least that right. Yeah.

I don't know. We'll see. Very interesting. Dragon Slayer Delo says, when's Kingdom Hearts 4 coming out? Whenever they're goddamn ready. Whatever they're goddamn ready. We're going to stop asking that question because,

yeah, they've cleared to and they're going to show you when they want to, is right? And we're at their will. That was crazy. We saw that at the Nintendo director. You guys talked about it today on Kind of Fun of Games Daily. What a joy to look over at Tim and smile as he goes, oh my God, they're showing it here.

It's insane. all places right now on a Tuesday at 6 o'clock at the morning. Here we go. Yeah, it's wild. I've been saying for years that I think this game's closer than we think, and I was so wrong about that. So I'm now at the point that I'm like, I don't know, man. Like with what we're seeing here, this is a lot more footage than what we saw at

when it was originally debuted in a similar setting and setup. We now know it's coming to all consoles day and date, but I, this. showing of it doesn't instill me with confidence that like, oh, this is imminent. Because if it was, I feel like even this reintroduction, we would have seen a lot more than just like this one location that we've already seen before. Does the release of Final Fantasy, the finale over here next year, have any way of like, hey, let's give them, Final Fantasy is doing their thing? Let's wait till next year.

Or would they drop one and two in the same year? I think they'd drop in the same year. Really? I mean, they drop Final Fantasy 16 and rebirth. like within six months of each other, right? Like, and you can look at that as a bad idea because it probably was, but, um, I don't know that that's going to change their minds with, of like a kingdom hearts for and the final fantasy state. I also think that I'm expecting final fantasy within the first three months and one week of

it might be early April, you know what I mean of 2027 and then I'd see kingdom hearts more if it's next year as a later in the year thing. And I don't think that'd be a problem. I just want to see more of it. Like you said, it's like I'm just going through like you have to start showing the Disney world right? And it's like where do you show that? That is the get hype like we're nearing this.

Now it's time. That didn't feel like that going back to Tokyo again seeing that city scape. Like it didn't feel like, hey, we're here and building. What's the Disney world that they can show they'll have you pop off onward? No, I mean, they showed Star Wars already. Oh, they did? Mm-hmm. Yeah, we saw

Goofy had a lightsaber Footstep In a forest It looked like Andor Would you pop off For an infinity gauntlet I guess Like it's like

I don't know We're in such a weird place With Kingdom Hearts With the Disney integrations And I'd pop off more For Final Fantasy integrations Than Disney at this point What about Stephen A Smith

On ESPN Would that do anything for you? Yeah Yeah If they got fucking weird The NIR world Would be wild That would be crazy

Um I mean, I have a quick one, Tim, that I was like, hey, what happened here? Dust Bloods really was like, hey, are we going to see gameplay out of this? And we didn't see anything from Dust Bloods, right? We got the trailer, but we didn't get a date. We didn't really instill confidence that I'm going to be playing this this fall or this year at all. Yeah, it's like, we had a big feeling last year of like, oh, this will come out this year. We'll be playing that.

I came into that going, we're going to see gameplay. we're going to get a better message of what this game is when you're playing it, you're going to understand the loop. You're going to be down with this. And it's like, oh, I got nothing from that. And now I feel like I'm not going to be playing that this year. You'll be playing the beta in the summer. Yeah, we play the beta me and you.

That's true. Hoping in. That's true. But yeah, no, they said 2026 in the debut for it. There's no way. I don't believe it at this point, right? Like, it's going to be at least 2027. Yeah, unless we do a beta what?

And then right into we start promoting that it's coming out two months from now at the end of the year. I mean, Nintendo does directs in September. Like, their next big direct is probably September. I don't think that's a good way to promote a From Soft game. You know, you want to build hype over time. At least, like, show us more of what the game is now. I just don't believe.

I just don't think it's ready. We'll come out with the beta and then follow it up right there with the big trailer in September, drops in November. No. I don't know. Just a little straight up. No. I now expect this game to be in spring 2020.

Yeah, that's where I'm at. Yeah, I don't think there's a reason to drop this the same month as GTA. GTA is not on the switch, though. It's still, yeah, it's, is Nintendo publishing this? Yeah. I do think that that is like the weird W&D factors to all of this. I feel like, yeah, that's very different from GTA, right? Like, we're talking about a diehard, Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls, Miyazaki fan base,

as opposed to GTA, which I know we always talk about. It's like the dark cloud looming over everyone, but I think. I'd be honest, I don't think it matters. I don't think it matters how different you are from GTA. I think the only game that will drop around that time is whatever DeVolver Digital is cooking up because they're doing it for a bit. I think no matter what kind of game you are,

you're not going to drop that same time. Even Oclery enough time? No. Nobody else is dropping around GTA. Okay. On the Switch 2 page for Desquod's, it list publisher is FromSoft. Okay.

So maybe they're doing their own thing. Developer from Software, or Incorporated Publisher from Software. Yeah, look at Google overview says from Soft and Nintendo, but that might be an error. Um, mob, Askew says, Cana Scars of Cosmora,

not at state of play, had me shocked. Yeah, it's definitely, it's, you know, it's the reality check of, it's not this year,

which is really sad. I don't know why they would have said it was. You know, they didn't need to do that when they showed it at state of play in February or whatever it was. They said 2026. It's like, they could have just announced. And especially after the prequel,

you know what I'm saying, the predecessor. Like that game got, delayed. The original? Yeah, it wasn't supposed to be launched and then it got delayed a little out of that. Like a year out of that, something like that. Yeah, bummed not to see it, but

that is a surprise. It could pop up somewhere else. It's coming in August. It could happen. DJK says, were we greedy? Were we greedy? You know what context for that, Greg?

I mean, we have with this conversation all the time, are gamers greedy? You know what I mean? Like we get all these great presentations and, but I, greedy, no, spoiled yes. I don't think we're necessarily spoiled rotten.

This is what my mom used to always say. I was an only child, right? And she'd always tell friends, Gregory, spoiled, but he's not spoiled rotten. Like I wasn't an asshole if I didn't get what I wanted, right? And I think,

obviously we're talking about gamers. There's a wide spectrum of, are you an asshole or not. But I do think like, you brought it up to him. And it's something, a salient point we don't, you know,

acknowledge a lot. But it's like, we sat through a lot of really fucking bad E3 press conferences where you would sit there and be falling asleep. This is awful, you know what I mean? So now we get these really well-paced, packed full of games. They're not really wasting your time,

but comparatively grading on the scale to each other. I don't care about this game. Why they presented it that way? They didn't show it. Ocarina got announced, but they didn't show it leaked. There is that part of like, yeah, we're spoiled.

It's 2026. We're being assaulted on all fronts by entertainment of all kinds, where you can't consume everything you want, let alone the world fucking sucks and we're all gonna die soon on it. So it's like, there's a million problems and good things

and yada, so it's like, yeah, where it's, gamers are insatiable and we are spoiled rotten or spoiled in the way that like Jeff came out. There's been 9,000 games released already this year. Are you fucking,

I opened up Steam Next Fest and I can go to any genre you can imagine and see fucking boltloads of amazing creativity that games that won't sell 100,000 thousand units, but are also somebody's dream that they made. I'm like, that's fucking awesome. Yes, we're spoiled.

I don't think we're all spoiled rotten. Well said. Yeah. Can't see much more to that. Yeah. Well, okay, then on that, no, I'm going to go. I got a business goal. More I will say on that, though, is in addition to, uh, we sat through a lot of bad

E3 press conferences. I also want to bring up another point to that, which is we didn't sit through that many great E3 press conferences. If we were to go back and look at like the all timers, there is a handful of like, holy shit. the ones we're thinking about, like, yes, those were the best showcases we've ever seen. There are so few of those, and there are so many. I will go as far as to say 30% of the conferences would be a large number for me to say were good, even.

You don't miss those just dance numbers? I mean, there's elements to it that I like. Dude is the just dance. John Bernthal bringing the dog out, talking about ghost recon. I think our light has dimmed. thing, right, to what we're talking about. Because I remember my first, the first E3 conference I remember catching, it must have been like

2012 and me channel scrolling and I come across Spike TV and I see the PlayStation presentation and they're talking about Wonderbook. And I'm like locked in, I'm like, what the fuck is Wonderbook? I want to know more about this. And that was the coolest thing. I was like, oh, there's this game called Wonderbook and then these other

and they're showing off more things and I'm like, all this is the coolest thing ever. They just announced a million video games and I was surprised and delighted. And I think if we look back, that was probably one of the worst press conferences. No, no, no. That was not a good one. Okay. Dude, like... I may not, okay, worst might be put in too much, but that wasn't a good press

conference, but I was blown away. Yeah. And like, we don't have that anymore. Yeah. I'm watching Nintendo announce Ocreen at a time and Kingdom Hearts 4. And I'm like, I don't know, man, five out of ten. Yeah, exactly. I love it. Yeah, I mean, we're in a different time. We're also, you know, back in the day, E3 wasn't for gamers, right? It wasn't supposed to be selling gamers on the games. It was a whole different business idea. And now we're kind of like in the prime of like, now we know companies know this is targeted towards gamers out there because we're selling it directly to them with how sales are now

sold just on digital all the time. And so, yeah, we're kind of in like the prime now of all these incredible presentations and showcases to having fun. Will we ever get a Keanu Reeves coming out on stage in front of a bunch of people? No. Will we get a forts of car coming down from the rafters? Unfortunately, never again. where we get Cristiano Ronaldo to come out and talk about FIFA for 15 minutes?

In between the 8 fucking mobile games? Will Brian Erlacker come and talk about the hit stick and man? No. But you got to remember those. I miss elements for sure. Yeah. You got to remember those. I do not miss the pie charts though.

I do not miss the freaking, it is a two and a half hour long conference and the majority of it is fucking business talk because it's not for us to watch. Who did the last one? Was it Ubisoft that looked like they were in the Lakeinta ball room? That was Ubi-Sop, and they brought back the live show. What the fuck are we doing? I was God awful, man. They had nothing to talk about. Nothing to, skull and bones was featured with a musical performance.

2019, you were in a beautiful L.A. ballroom, having just dance performances from the rafters, everybody's having fun. Then we fast forward. We're in the Lakeitha ballroom, just going, hey, the mic doesn't work here. And it's an awful look. Yeah. Wild times. Yeah. I miss it.

Yeah, I miss it. We need more. boring press conferences. We need more press conferences that are just like, this wasn't made for me. No. I was talking about this. We don't.

We're the shareholders. Yeah. That's bad because you know what? Back of the day, they were showing pie charts of like, look how many users we have playing games. You know what they would do now? Look how we can monetize with more micro transactions.

Plus, the boring would be bad. It would be very bad. But I miss it though. I miss it through and being like, I don't know what those numbers mean. We're going to lay out more people. That's what it would say.

Look how many people we let go of. Look how much money we're saving. Because I was talking about this. When I rewatch the Nintendo Direct, I was talking about this on my personal stream that like I, the, all of these like direct style presentations

outside of Nintendo because actually I don't really include Nintendo in this specific example I'm giving. When I look at state of play, when I look at Xbox Showcase and all these things, they are so tuned in to the fact that they're making this for us that it's like, oh, you guys have now min-maxed the showcase factor. And Nintendo still has it a little bit of like,

they don't, They don't pace out their, like, the editing of their showcases in a way that's, like, super duper entertaining. Like, it's still fun and they still, I think they've dialed in a lot. But, like, there's something to the Nintendo directs where there are parts where I'm sitting through where I'm like, who, why the fuck did you do this way? Whereas Xbox and PlayStation, I think, I think they're so cognizant that people are reacting to these things and people are hyping these things. And they have to pace it like a movie almost or like a piece of content. Nintendo is too. And they have directs that are well-paced.

that have the funny bits. I'm not saying get rid of the thumb wrestling. I'm just saying if you're going to have the thumb wrestling, you need to think about where you're presenting it and what you're presenting it around. Because I do think it really affects because that shit's in zero. That shit's what? Don't lose.

You have to win the thumb wrestling. You cannot lose the thumb wrestling. I lost. That was crazy. Honestly, it does kind of feel insulting. It has that feeling of like y'all couldn't do a second take, but you made us watch it, you know? But also it's like, hey, he's an authentic guy.

He's a real guy. He's a president. He's just like, sometimes he loses. But it is, Nintendo's very cognizant that people are watching. They are, when you look at the directs and how they've evolved, it really just comes down to how my theory, my big brain theory on this is the more important a single game there is in a direct, the more eyes there are from the top of Nintendo Japan.

And that's when things get weird. Zelda Akarina being in this, I think directly affected the weirdness. of this direct in its pacing. And I think if it didn't have that level of game announcement, I think the pacing would have been much better. I buy that. I buy that a lot.

It's just because there's just the scrutiny and like the weird decisions made. How you talk about it? How you face it? All that stuff becomes a lot more important from the top down. Because I know, I talked to so many people in Nintendo America. I know how much Nintendo values the direct reactions and direct like

people seeing, talking about the pacing and how much people agree, but just how much dissent there is between the different people and Japan wins. Japan rules everything with Nintendo. Every single decision. Every single thing. Yeah, there's something to like watching the state of play and I'm like, I'm happy that

they're good. You know, I'm happy that the Xbox showcase is good. Yeah. But I'm like, it's too good. Yeah, let's get, let's get weird. Let's have a dance number. I miss it. I'm blessed I miss it.

Let's do this and I'm looking to ball. I always smiled a little bit, hated the two and a half minutes that Jason DeRulo just danced his ass off with everybody. but like, you know, it was a special moment. We used to get weird. It was not weird anymore. Yeah. Last thing I want to say to close out all of this. What a great episode this was, by the way. We don't need to put a score on it or anything because it's like, who gives it shit?

I do think that, forget the showcases. When we look at just the games that were either announced or shown off or given a release date from the last, from this summer game for the season, this was an all-timer. Like, I think that this was such an incredible. incredible week of game announcements. And I think you put this week of announcements up against any other week of E3s. And I'm not saying it's the best, but I'm saying it hangs. I'm saying that if you look at this and you can't be excited for video games, you were in this for the wrong reasons.

And I think you need to just find the game that you like and stick to it. Because there are so many incredible games shown here. And we got Kingdom Hearts 4 out of Intendium Direct. And we got Final Finaces 7. revelation. Full type plan. We got Ocarina at a time. Come on.

And we got a brand new god of war game. Grand new god of war game. Wolverine. Yeah. Gears. Halo. Fable looks great. Looks amazing. And they came out with 30 plus minutes.

We're like, here's more. It's like, okay, that's, we got enough, but I'm so excited. I can't wait. Yeah. Reson evil. Resident evil. I'm so excited for. Yeah.

Anything you wanted is here. Every year it gets better and better. It's just fun to celebrate. We got a new Zeno blade. Get hype. Let's get hype. Get hype. Everybody. There's a New Zeno Blade Chronicles.

Let him know, bless. Let him know. Come on. Oh, everybody. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. The day is not over right after this Toy Story. Five in review. What did we think of the latest Pixar movie? You'll have to wait to find out. After that, there's a gameplay stream. Mike, do you know what it is? Yeah, it's a games cast plays of Elliot and his crazy hat.

Mike and Greg are going to sit down and talk about Elliot's. I'm very excited. This could be a game for me, or maybe not. We'll find out. We will find out. And until next time, I love you all. Goodbye. Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets?

Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different. Locked in. Loyal, invested. They're called fans. Fans don't just listen to music.

They feel seen by it like it belongs to them. So when your brand shows up on Spotify, that's who you're talking to. And you're right next to artists like me, Lizzo. So, are you ready to talk to fans? Spotify advertising. You're among fans. Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair.

Ever order furniture online and wonder, what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home.