Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - What's Next For PS5 and Xbox? - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 31

Episode Date: July 30, 2020

Time Stamps - 00:04:30 - Rogue Company 00:13:05 -Donkey Kong Country 00:20:04 - Crash Bandicoot 4/Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2 00:28:30 - Skater XL 00:33:15 - Grounded 00:38:40 - Carrion 00:43:50 - DevolverLand Expo 00:52:25 - ADS 00:52:30 - Topic of the Show: What is Next For Xbox and PlayStation? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Gettys. Join by one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. Brat, brap. The former and former Imran Khan. Rap, Prap. And the new face of video games blessing at a yo-yea Jr. Brat, Prap. I'm loving it.

Imran, I know it lives and dies by the natural light like I do. He looks like I am having a vision right now. Like the Holy Ghost is speaking to me. It's the third day Imran just wrote. great i've noticed that like the shirt color i wear seems to matter for this thing so at least like depending on the sunlight if i wear a white shirt it's going to glow like i'm literally ascending to heaven yeah i love it yeah so now i'm going mostly white church of this sort of thing yeah you have to yeah so i'm just doubling down meanwhile i'm looking like a lobster still and i and i know

that i normally do in real life but there's something happening because on my camera i'm just like a light pink but here Greg what would you describe this as i mean I already said bit by radioactive lobster and I'm not going to pull away from that. You know what I mean? Like that's what happened to you. At first I said, oh no, it was way. No, no, no, that's right. Tomato.

That's what it is. You said lobster. I knew it was something. Tim, what if you change all the lights just to normal colors? I did it yesterday, Kavv. I turned it and it didn't, didn't do anything. I'll do it for you right now. And then turn the camera.

Let's go with daylight and then turn the camera on and off. That seems like that's way too warm. That's not daylight. light. I hit, I hit you went tungsten to. Oh, nobody goes tungsten. Nobody goes to come here. It's weird. It looks like it's black and white behind you. Turn now turn the camera on and off. Do you all remember? Hey, it's me. It's Greg. Like we do I remember the Nuva ring that burn out? A loomeroom. Oh, I know about you. Yeah. Oh yeah. It was like a projector behind you is to make an entire room a screen. No.

I remember that this is a thing that existed. I don't think I've actually like put it to market. But it was, yeah, it was right when they were like talking about the connect. It was in between the two connects. And it was before the hollow map, hollow lens. Hall lens, yeah. Before HoloLens. Yeah, it seemed like a cool idea if you had all this stuff, but like they never actually

did anything with it. Oh, Imran, it was a cool idea. And me and Kevra live in our best fucking lives right now having it with you lights. Okay. When we play games, all of these lights interact. It's fantastic. Anyways, speaking of games, this is the kind of funny games cast. What's up, Kevin? I will let you finish.

It looks insane right now. It looks like it's Photoshopped, and they took out all the colors except for blue and green. It's really cool. And you still look red as shit. Like, Tim looks like he's in like some kind of spaceship from a black mirror right now. It does look like a Zoom background. Yeah. I was going to take it like an action movie cover.

Like poster. Sure. I'll take it. This is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every week right here on YouTube. dot com slash kind of funny games we get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them uh you can get the show on youtube you'd also get the show uh ad free by going to patreon dot com slash kind of funny games you can also be a patreon producer there like james hastings sancho west gaming julian the gluten free gamer delany twinning jeffrey hizuz bario skin tight salmon

game jumper x and mohammed we appreciate all you very much if you'd prefer to listen to us we give you that option as well just search your favorite podcast service for Kind of Funny Games cast and we'll be right there for you. That's really all the rigmaral stuff that I got to do. How are you, Jans, doing? I'm doing good. Chilling. Great, great, great, blessing, how are you?

In the land of Discord and Zoom calls and like social distancing, like an open-ended question is the worst kind of thing. I know, all right. I'm playing some video games, you know? Liar. Yeah, man. There's this game that I've been playing for the last couple of days called Rogue Company. Okay.

And I don't know if you guys have been keeping up with this one. This is one that was shown off during that last Nintendo Direct Mini partner showcase or whatever it was called. How can we forget? Oh, how can you forget, right? And it had like a very quick trailer. It looked like a very generic shooter. And to be fair, it is a very generic shooter. But yeah, it's out on like Switch and PS4 and pretty much all the platforms.

This is when they doubled down on them. They did like two different trailers for, right? During the thing? Maybe. Yeah. I remember this. Yeah. And yeah, this guy hacked Jeff Keely's stream, right?

Yes. Yeah. And he's like, oh my God, glitch. Yeah. So this is a game that's coming out of high-res studios. And high-res, they did Paladins. And I think they might have also did Realm Royale. And so, like, they're kind of that studio that, like, sees

trends happening in like multiplayer uh shooters and kind of just goes after them and kind of just like makes their own i don't want to say generic is i feel like that's a mean way to put it but i mean paladin's is generic overwatch like there's not a real whole lot there's not a good way to get around that like maybe some people like it better but it is overwatch without the overwatch style yes and so i kind of peg them as that studio and i think that works pretty well for them the fact that they're like oh yeah we have paladins which is just our overwatch we have realm royale which is our Fortnite. And I think the thing, the thing I will say about Realm Royale is that I think Realm Royale, when it came out, was pretty unique. Like, it added some unique elements to that

Overwatch, that Fortnite formula, right? Where it's a battle royale, but it's meant to also have the style of something like Little Warcraft. It has like a class system where you can pick the kind of character you want to play. And also like the environment itself had a lot of diversity in terms of, hey, over here in this, or in this map, over here in this corner, you have like your snore area. Over here, you. You have like your green area. Over here, you have this. Over here, you have that.

And when you die, you turn into a chicken. Cool stuff. I played a little bit of Rome Royale when it came out. And I thought it was cool. But then it quickly got overshadowed by Fortnite updating and then other battle a aisle is coming out. So Rogue Company, I saw the trailer and I was intrigued. And so I reached out for a code on PlayStation,

started playing it. And it is basically Rainbow Six Siege. meets the last list multiplayer, like last list factions. I'm going to say like 80% Rainbow Six Seed, though. Like it is very much a, hey, we played Rainbow Six Seed. We like what they're doing here. We're going to make a 4V4 objective-based team shooter where it is tactical. You are choosing your operator.

Each operator has different like abilities and all these things. The reason why I also point out lastless multiplayer is one is 4B4, but then also toward the beginning of each round where the rounds are pretty much like capture an objective or like plant the bomb on an objective. It's that type of thing. So the kind of thing you'd expect from a Rainbow Six type game. At the beginning of each round, you are paying for upgrades and paying for abilities before you actually mobilize onto the map. Honestly, games kind of fun. Like I was not expecting to play as much as this game as I had been playing. But I just been enjoying it has a really interesting

cool style, has a really great soundtrack. It is very much a it very much does feel like a, hey, you know, we played siege, hey, we've seen other games, we've seen games like Lawbreakers, we've seen, we know what people like out of these shooters. Let's just

put together the things people like. And playing it, you know, it seems like a very competent game. Like not amazing. Oh, what a box quote. It's a very competent game. With its buttons and controls and movement. This is a video game you can interact with occasionally for a long time.

But that's the thing, though, is that it doesn't do anything that's remarkable or anything that's even, like, interesting. But it's a fun game. I enjoy playing it. It's a good time-waster. It is a blast, but it doesn't do anything special, which is the thing I will say about it. It's free to play, right? Like, not even just during the baby.

Period. Oh, it's a buy? It's not. You have to buy the game. Oh. This is the thing that I had to figure out because I was very confused. And I might even be wrong about this. But as I understand it, oh, hold on, hold on. I'm going to look this up because I was looking this up and I was like, because this is why I had to reach out for a code.

Because what I saw, it was like you had to buy a founders pack to get into the beta. But I feel like the actual final game will be free to play. I think. I've been thinking that I've been playing the final game. And so I don't know. the messaging on this is not great. But as I understand it, right, the, oh, wait, okay, I'm looking at a thing on Wikipedia right now that says the early access release was July 20th, which makes me think that, okay, maybe I am playing early access and not the final game, which I thought I was playing.

So, yeah, maybe the final game is going to be free to play. But basically right now they have different tiers of packs you can buy. And so you can get like the standard, like, low tier for, I don't know how much, like let's say $15 or $30. somewhere somewhere between there and then you can like get the the tier up package for like $15 more than that and then the ultimate package for $15 more than that and basically that'll get you access to more skins and more characters you can unlock because like Rainbow Six Siege you are buying these operators like with like the standard edition you get a number of operators you can choose from which again like have different abilities different perks and all that stuff like different operators

change the way that you can play the game but with like the ultimate pack you then get access to all of them. And so that's that that's basically the the pricing structure right now. But whether or not it's going to be free to play when it finally comes out, I think I think if it is, that'll be a very good thing for this game because playing it right now, I'm like, all right, whatever the pricing structure on this thing is, I don't know. I don't know if this is it. Like I don't know if paying full price for this game is the way to go because it is, once again, like not doing much special, pretty basic. in terms of like the the different stuff going on like it is not it is not that deep of a game

but again why why are you playing it instead of rainbow six siege it's something different you know like i played so much rainbow six siege that i feel like i've gotten i've gotten to that point where i'm like i know what this game is like i'm having i'm playing it you know for the fun and all of stuff but i think the thing that keeps me coming back to this game is the fact that it seems like it's it's a twist on that and so it's it's a twist on that and so it's third person, it's not first person like siege. It's somewhat tactical but not as tactical

as siege. Like this feels like a casual version of siege and so like it is giving me more of a laid back experience than that game and that's doing it for me. I think like that's the thing that I'm kind of coming to this game for is kind of turning my brain off and just shooting shit and that

being fulfilling. Are you playing on PS4 or? PS4 yeah. Okay. Does it seem like a game that would scale well for Switch, because they've been showing it on at least two Nintendo Directs now. So I don't know if that's going to be a game that I would play necessarily,

but if I did play it, maybe I would try it on Switch. I think it would run fine on Switch because it's not like that much of a graphically intense game. Like, it's not blowing the technology to like its greatest limits or anything. The thing I will say is that

actually controlling the game, I could see this game playing best on PC. Even on PS4, playing with a controller, I am like, oh, man, you're doing like a lot of, it's a third person shooter, right? A third person competitive shooter. And so I'm doing like a lot of switching shoulders. I, like the ping is mapped

to down on the D-pad. And I legit sat in the settings and was, I was remapping my controls trying to figure out like, okay, what's the best way for this game to play? Because it seems like for a competitive third-person shooter like this, I don't think there's necessarily a science for how

that game should play. And so, like, right now the default controls are like R1 to switch shoulders, L1 to do your gadget, to do your special ability, it is like L1 and R1 together. It's stuff where it's like, all right,

this is, this probably would work a lot better on a keyboard mouse. And this is me saying that as a console player, as somebody who prefers to control. But like, it's so complicated in this game in terms of the way it controls.

And I can't imagine that being much better on Switch, especially if you're playing handheld on JoyCon. That sounds like almost a nightmare for me. But speaking to playing things on Switch Blast, what else you've been playing? Oh, man, I've been playing some of that Donkey Kong country as part of it's part of Nintendo Switch Online. Hell yeah. How are you? I've made it to, I think, like, the third map or maybe the second map. I've gotten a couple of levels past the train.

You know what I'm talking about, like the cave, like you're going to the mine cart. Yes, mine car is what I was thinking of. The mine car level. I'm like a couple levels past that. And man, this game has a difficulty jump that I forgot. about. Dude, the difficulty jump in Donkey Kong Country is where the save points, Donkey Kong Country won, is where the save points are located. Like, there's a stretch somewhere around the second island that straight up, you need to get through about

three or four challenging levels, like straight through without like getting a game over to get to that safe point or else. You're going to be doing them over and over and over. It's going to be real, real frustrating because I think one of those levels is a mind cart level that really test your patience. That mind card level is difficult. This version has safe. to rewinding though. And then there you go. Then you're good. I've been trying not to do that.

And I finally gave up and I was like, all right, no, I'm doing this because fuck that. But yeah, like trying to play it. I'm going to say trying to play it raw, you know, as one would. That's a phrasing. Trying to play downtown country raw, man, is an experience. Because, yeah, like to Tim's point, game is difficult. And there are quite a few levels where I found myself actually, like, depleting lives. Especially because in that first map, I got up to like, what, 10 or 11 lives?

I thought I was doing real good. But yeah, that mind cart level plus some levels that come after that, oh, man, it's a struggle. It's a big struggle. But fantastic game still. I've been having a blast going back to it. Yeah. Which is your favorite Donkey Kong country game? Listen.

See, I've only played through most of Donkey Kong Country One. Donkey Kong Country 2 was a game that was at my friend's house. that I'll play there. And I think the same with three. And so, like, really only, like, DKC is the one that I refer back to. And even, even Dunkin' Country, this is going to upset you. As a kid, I had the Game Boy Color version. I didn't have the Super Nintendo. The music was so bad in that version.

I was all about it. But, yeah, like, I didn't have a Super Nintendo growing up. And so I played those games at a friend's place. And so I didn't really get the full experience. Two is the only one that can kind of hold up to a tropical freeze. But, like, three, A lot of people would defend three, and I'm like, I don't remember three being that good. So I'm eager for them to put it on this list, I don't know, this S&S online thing, and try it out again.

Because I remember it being like a really pale imitation of two. Three is demonstrably worse than two, even one. One has its quirks, and I think a lot of them is more pacing than anything. And also it's like way, I prefer to be Diddy almost every single time over Donkey. I feel like that's why I enjoy two so much more is that Diddy and Dixie both feel equally, kind of viable in most of the situations. And then they had Kitty Kong and three and they mess everything up.

But yeah, Tropical Freeze is just, it's a masterpiece. And I would argue Dark Ground Country, too, as well. So I'm eagerly anticipating them bringing it on to this. I'm baffled that all three aren't already on the service. But to an extent, I'm kind of happy they did it this way, just because now I'm actually replaying through one

in a way that I totally wouldn't have done. I would just skip straight to two. I mean, here's the thing. The service is actually pretty good, because I've been playing Kirby recently with my girlfriend. And you can play it online, and it's so easy. And people are able to drop in and drop out. And it's this way to play these games that I was never able to do as a kid growing up

because I didn't have anyone to play Kirby with me. But if I wanted to play Donkey Kong Country Online, I could. And it's ridiculous that they just kind of have this cool service. They kind of underbake in a lot of ways that it should have a redact country game. It should have Act Razor and all that. Where is Earthbound? Like, that's the one I'm winning for. Because I love Earthbound.

It's on the S&S Mini, so there's no reason it shouldn't be on this already. It's bizarre, man. It's ridiculous. Do you guys, speaking of this kind of, what do you guys think is going to happen this year with the service? Like every September, we've pretty much gotten some type of increase, whether it's here's the Nintendo games. Here's the Super Nintendo games. Do we get Game Boy games this year? Ooh.

What do you say, Greg? That'd be awesome. I said, oohie. No. Here's a game board game. I can't think of what they could possibly add that would be like because they seem hesitant to go beyond S&S in just general. Like they've not put any out in more minis.

They haven't put any more like virtual console style games. They've even slowed down the existence of these games down to like the quarter. So I can't think of what they could do aside from maybe like another Tennis 99 style thing. Like here's some more just free games that come with your subscription. Yeah, I'm kind of with that too. I don't necessarily see them doing a whole big. Like, I feel like we get the Game Boy Mini or the Game Boy Special Edition, like whatever that actual physical item is.

I think they would want to introduce that before going, before adding those games to Nintendo Online. Because if you add them to Nintendo Online, then I feel like there's way lesser incentive to want to actually buy whatever the Game Boy Mini could actually be if it comes out. And so, like, if that's not the case, then I could see them adding another game, But I think I kind of come back to the question of how much does Nintendo care? Like how much does it matter to them that they give you something yearly to be involved with Nintendo online?

Especially now that Animal Crossing is out. The reason they do that on September is because everyone's yearly passes come out to like end up in September. So that's why I'm expecting something. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is like I'm between N64 or Game Boy and I feel like N64 is just being a little too wishful thinking. but I also think that that would obviously be a much bigger get. The Game Boy games are interesting because it's like, you know, and people might think I'm crazy for this if you're Jared Petty.

But like looking at the Game Boy, just the Game Boys library, I struggle to come up with like a top 10 that's very interesting. Like there's Pokemon, there's Links Awakening, there's Mario Land, and then you start running out of this. Hey man. And Tetris. Yeah, but it's like, but that thing is like, I feel like where the Game Boy and specifically Game Boy color really shine was more just like those random.

What game did you grow up with? The Terminator 2s of the world. You know what I mean? It's like Game Boy is kind of like I feel very different compared to any of the mainline consoles. And GBA, I think, is a bit more interesting of the prospect, but I don't expect them to jump that far ahead so soon. But soon. All of this should have been there since day fucking one. But, you know, whatever.

it is what it is. Speaking of older games, though, something I've been playing a lot is Crash Bandicoot 4. I did a first impressions over on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games with Barrett, where both of us got to sit down and play the demo, which was essentially three levels from the game. And I can't stop going back and playing it.

Wow. Just trying to like, because it's like they're pretty chunky levels. Like it's a, they're traditional crash, but they, they modernized it in a way that they made the levels longer with more checkpoints. And the checkpoints kind of functioned to make the game more like a Celeste type experience where it's almost like rooms to complete.

And then once you get to that checkpoint, you're fine. And if you're playing in modern mode, you don't have lives. Like it's not like traditional setup of after you get four deaths, you get a game over. It's like you can just keep going as many times as you want. So it incentivizes you to try to get all the. Celeste strawberries or in this case, all the fruit, break all the crates and all that. And they're really kind of taking everything

that you love from the original Crash Games, trying to minimize all the bullshit that people didn't like. And I don't want to talk too long about this because you can go check out my first impressions, but I am blown away by the game so far. It is easily, if it keeps up this quality, going to be the best Crash Bandicoot game that's ever been released.

Wow. I understand that a lot of people don't like those games, but this reminds me a lot of Tropical Freeze or Sonic Mania. And it's like, that's extremely impressive to me because ever since the game, I was like, this looks like something that I'm into. But I'm now like, wow, this is one of my most anticipated games of this year. I saw someone online having a complete meltdown that Dr. Cortex is playable. They're like, oh, this totally betrays the crash story and lore. Like, he's been a villainous too long.

I'm like, I find myself not doing. that's a that's a super weird take and uh cortex of levels are super awesome very hard this game is hard as shit uh but in a way that makes you want to just keep going back and not be frustrated by it like it's it's it's and there's the different levels of challenge like before uh in a crash game they're not that difficult there's certain elements and certain what crash one was very difficult but otherwise any real skill level you can play through the game if you just put your mind to it but what the real perfectionist would do is like have to break all the crates to get the gems, find the secret gems and all that.

This game now adds other features where you have to collect a certain amount of fruit and you get a different gem. If you die less than three times going through a level, you get a gem. So there's like a lot of collectibles based around these challenges that incentivize a lot of replay value. And these levels are designed in a way that replaying them is fun because there's a lot going on. It doesn't ever feel as repetitive as some of the older games.

And there's such a great balance between 2D and 3D gameplay. I'm just like pretty blown away, man. Toys for Bob are nailing it. And it makes me so excited to be the type of gamer that I am that we're getting Crash Bandicoot 4 and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater one and two within a month of each other. And that vicarious visions, toys for Bob, they're all putting so much loving care into these products

and making sure that they're not cheap cashins. And this is coming from Activision. Like the reason I want to talk about it on this show is like, I am so impressed with how Activision is handling their lesser properties right now not the call of duties not the overwatches and all that stuff but like i don't know how much you guys talked about it on the games dailies i'm not on but uh such a key part of the tony hawk experience is the the music and not only are they bringing back 98% of the songs from one and two there there's like three songs they can't get because of licensing things that they tried to

get um they're also adding like 37 news 30 songs and they announced it they announced it today they announced the list like bless have you seen this list i I peaked at it. I haven't actually gone through and looked at all the different songs on there, but I think I saw a tribe called Quest. They got Can I Kick It from a tribe called Quest? Dude, that's awesome. Like, are you fucking kidding me?

So what I love about it is they actually went back and got the music supervisor, Brandon Young, who worked on all the other original Tony Hawk titles to come back and help curate this soundtrack. And they worked with all the new this generation skaters to make sure that they're getting songs that represent their tastes currently, as well as going to a lot of the classic skaters that we know and asking, hey, what should have been in Tony Hawk 1 and 2 that wasn't there? And can I kick it got brought up.

And so, like, cool, we'll get that. But it's cool because I was reading this thing where this is, it's music from the 80s all the way to the hits is today. It's further represented through songs from over half a dozen countries and genres. So, like, they're going through this multi-language songs. And this, I'm like, this is just so freaking rad that a new generation is going. going to get to not only play these classic games, but understand the music that made them so special. And I'm stoked about it because I'm going to get some new music introduced into my life.

And I feel like it's been a while since I've had this type of curated care put into music in a video game. And maybe I'm just not looking in the right place. Do you think this ends up being the return of Tony Hawk Pro Skater? Like, do you think this is what sets the feature of what the franchise could be in terms of what a new Tony Hawk Pro Skater game could be following up on this? yes, if. And that if is it feels as good as Crash 4 feels. And based on that, I think it's going to.

I need to get my hands on Tony Hawk before I can actually give it a fit of answer there. But it really seems like these guys care. These teams care and they're being given the power to kind of make the decisions to make these games matter and set up for a future. Like insane trilogy ended up turning into Crash 4, right? So I feel like with Tony Hawk, I imagine we'll get one and two if it doesn't. well when it does well. It will get a three and four and then at some point, I don't know, thug. But then after that, I imagine they'll move on to their own, like a new thing.

And that's quite exciting to me. Yeah. You don't think they'll keep remastering rather than if one and two are success, and they are, that it'll just be enough to go straight to making a new Tony Hall. Well, looking at the where these teams have kind of done over the last couple years, they went from the insane trilogy to Spiro trilogy to Crash Team Racing remake. Like, I kind of think it makes the most sense to go to the, go, keep going back to the well for as long as the water tastes good. And like, there's still a lot of good water in there.

I was going to say. If, is there. Because, you know, what, like, what, what is the water left? Because I feel like with Tony Hawk Pro skater, right? Right now we have one and two. I think a smart thing or maybe a, maybe this isn't a smart thing. But I was going to say, like, a possible thing, though, could be, hey, plus three expansion, plus four expansion. And then from there, you know, that's ideal to me.

Like, I think that could be awesome. I could also see a world where they go, all right, let's just release Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 plus 4 as like a separate follow-up game. But at a certain point, I feel like they kind of run out. Like, Thug, even though I love Thug, specifically Thug too, I don't know if that's one of the ones where they go back and really put in the work. Because like those games, I feel like historically, even though like they're great, people don't, there, people aren't like, crazy about them the way that you are crazy about Tonyaq Pro Skater. I think they are specifically Thug 1. I think the Thug really found a more mainstream appeal than we give it credit for.

Like there's definitely the nostalgia obviously for Tony Hawk 2 specifically. But I think that like 3, 4 and Thug being on that PS2 generation has just gotten so many more people's hands. So the way I see it, ideally, if I was at Activision being able to make these decisions, exactly what you said, Bless, three expansion, four expansion. But then the next game would not be a Thug remake. It would be a new game that is just Tony Hawk's underground. And it's a modern new game that's taking the kind of like RPG elements and story elements and stuff of Thug but presenting for what it would look like today.

But that at that point would be going up against Skate 4. I still see memes about Eric Sparrow today. So like there's people do associate their like Tony Hawk love with Thug primarily. So speaking of Skate 4. And speaking to all these skate games in general, a game that I forgot I was playing is Skater XL, which came out, I think yesterday. Is that good? I booted up last night. And I am very underwhelmed by it, is what I'll say.

But like, I respect what they're doing with it. I really respect them for going for what they're going for because they really got like the bare essentials down. They're like, hey, we're making a game where you fuck around. It's a sandbox. You can like go to different maps. And what we're here and what we're trying to nail is the physics and the feeling of skate, right? Like we want you want the right inalog stick to be your right foot, left analog stick, your left foot. And they really, they go so hard with it that in a lot of cases, I feel like the game actually controls more difficult than skate.

At least skate three, because skate three is the one skate game that I played. I find it way more difficult to lane my tricks in this game. I think they went pretty hard in terms of making it feel as semi as possible. But I say all that to say that there's obviously this Renaissance going on right now. Or maybe Renaissance might be the wrong word, but this comeback of skate games or this attempt at a comeback for skate games between Tony Hawk and what will be skate for and Sater XL. There's something in the air. There's something in the air. Everybody wants to be on these boards that have wheels on them.

These nuts. These skate nuts. But yeah, with all of that. like I feel like a game is going to reign supreme out of all this. And like if I had, if I had to make a bet, it would be the game that like if what you're saying actually comes to fruition, right? And they make a Tony Hawk underground that is from a ground up, like we're not doing a remake. We are doing a reboot.

And it is like, hey, it is, it is Tony Hawk, you know, with RPG elements in this open world and we're really like going hard with this. I could see that taking the cake. Like I feel like that is such a good middle ground of, hey, you got your arcade feel of the Tony R. R. Pro Skater games, but RPG elements that all the gamers love nowadays, also like these open spaces that you can explore and do your thing. And like that sounds like the ideal way, I feel like for one of these games to go.

Yeah. Do you think it runs into, I understand that it feels like skates back in the air. And I mean, skating, you know, not the game skate, but like all this stuff. Do we run the risk of going back to when it was like, man, we haven't had a guitar here in a rock band. Here they are. Oh, we don't want either of these. We don't regret this. Sorry.

And honestly, I hope that I'd be wrong about this. But the thug pitch I just gave, I don't think ends up being a good game. Really? I think that's an awesome game. I mean, I would, I'd love them to make that an awesome game. And again, I'm speaking real early right now, even just with what I played of Crash 4, I'm like, okay, they could make this old thing feel new again, but still make me realize why I love the first ones like that.

That magic's there. Tony Hawk is just such a specific thing where it's so arcady and the things I love about it are so specific that I expect this one and two remake, and if they give me the three and four stuff, to be kind of everything I'm looking for from this. When Guitar Hero and Rock Band came back, they made all these changes. And it's just like, I don't want that.

I don't want to play with two levels of frets on the guitar. I said, that's guitar here. I think didn't Rockman come back with like the exact same fucking campaign? You're like, how did this not change? Yeah, but even with that,

though, they failed because it never felt like they, they didn't add enough. And the things, the packages that they gave didn't feel like there was care put into it in the way that with Tony Hawk right here, I'm like, oh,

they got the original songs and they're doing all the stuff. Like, there's just so much love being put into it. Whereas Rock band felt like it was just kind of like, Not even the greatest hits. It was just kind of like, oh, yeah, here's this hodgepodge of what you remember from it.

And it was just, it was so complicated to get all your old songs back together in one place and all of that. Whereas with this, it's like, here's the package. Let's go. I hope the demo comes out August 15th.

I mean, so like the plastic instrument genre died for a reason because people stopped having room for that and less interest in playing it. Unless something goes really wrong with skating, it's ideally just discs. So it should, be a big issue of like, okay, cool, the new Tony Hawk 3 and 4 is out. I'll play that.

I'll download that on PS Plus or, you know, buy it for 20 bucks. That should be a new ride controller. Oh, God, the ride. Remember it? It's full of technology. Thanks, Tony. Great, great comment. Thanks. I'll remember it about ride is that one trailer they showed of like the, it's like two seconds of a dog using it. And I'm like, okay, why did you guys think this is a smart way to show this game off?

All right. bit Greg yeah buddy you have been playing grounded and I'm really interested in hearing your thoughts on this because I saw some tweets about it and like the hubble about around the internet is that this game is a bit more consequence than I would have given credit for based on the steam concurrence based on the even just the Xbox kind of excitement about it what's yeah it jumped to it jumped to the top of the steam charts yeah and then obviously it's on game pass as in game preview on Xbox game pass which is how I'm playing it uh yeah I it's been interesting when it first got to announced and obsidian's like you know they just put out outer worlds or we're just about to put out

outer worlds and then they're like hey on top of that we're doing this thing and you open it up and it's like what the fuck is this and it was like all right cool honey i shrunk the kids that's cool obviously exploring the backyard being a small kid having your giant juice box and having your giant baseball and all that stuff all right fine and then i remember washing in there like and it's a survival game i was like uh like no i'm not about that life that doesn't i i don't starve was like enough for me and then like since then the survival of a game and people keep saying rust and they keep throwing stuff out like that. I'm like, that's just not my jam or even arc, right? I was, for some reason, getting closer and closer in

that last trailer they showed at the Xbox game showcase. I was like, well, I have GamePass Ultimate. Why not? You know what I mean? I'm in the mood to try something new. And so I pre-installed it and started it last night. And I thought I would jump in, play for an hour or so, and then pop over to Persona 5 Royal, which I'm working on. And I was totally had a great time and played it, all night long and when I was starting to wind down I beat all the single player story content. I beat the story stuff they have and it's very clear obviously it's a game preview

early access. So when you get to this point there's like a pop up like cool you've done all the story content that's available however you know you can talk to this NPC you'll get some daily quests you can go out and do that kind of stuff and keep exploring the map. Just as I did that and started screwing around I was like maybe I'm going to sign off Andy

text me he's like do you want to play I was like sure he joined my game we ran around for a while screwing around like what I tweeted last night is and please if everyone can and i don't mean you the the you know blessing in ron tim i mean everybody in their cars right now grab the wheel real tight i want you all to take a deep breath and hold in and not immediately go to your jokes your fucking hilarious jokes it's honey i shrunk the kids meets fallout 76 and all the good parts and even good ideas of fallout 76 not the bugs not the whatever blah blah blah is there good parts yeah the good bugs of uh

exactly the good bugs of this one of having the you know the ants that chase you all the got the ants that are chasing you. Ladybugs have so many hit points. It turns out spiders are just the most terrifying motherfuckers on the planet. Of course, yeah, they've got a whole bunch of points for their slider. They can, you can sit there with it

if you're afraid of a spider. If you're afraid of spiders in the menu, you can go in and use this slider to make them less and less scary until they're just like blobs that you don't have to worry about it if spiders aren't your game. Anyway,

survival for me meant it was going to be this punishing thing that, you know, basically you would die and start all over and it would just be a pain of the ass and it would be more about crafting your shelter and doing this thing, blah, blah, blah, like, getting into it and playing through the story stuff, like, it did exactly what I want out of a good

E3 demo, which is it ended and I wanted more and I'm anxious for more and I want that final game because I thought the storyline that's happening in it is super interesting. You know, you're a kid, you've been shrunk down. They don't, there's not like a cool cinematic cut scene and everything to start. You just start and my character Willow is who I've been playing as. She's having this narrative of like, all right, cool, it's just a bad dream. I'm just in the, and as you go through, she comes more and more to terms with it before you start running into, uh, some NPCs. You get, started getting audio diaries that, you know, you plug into your contraption or whatever that then play, you know, what's been going on in

the world. And you're doing little things, but it was, it felt like I started as I was playing it. I started crafting the tweet later on and thinking about it. I was like, this feels like fallout. And I don't even mean fallout 76. It just feels like fallout of I was there. I started to explore this world. I didn't know. I'm at, you know, you know, it pops up. it's like you've discovered the you know whatever red raspberry juice box okay cool and that's on my map now as a landmark and it feels like a toned down version of that kind of fallout a smaller experience of that uh me and these characters figuring out what's going on the world uh getting your first like npc who's going to be a quest giver and stuff and having him be voiced and really funny and really

interesting and wanting to know what went wrong and how i got here and what exactly the experiment was like there's all this stuff going on and then on top of that is the crafting aspect of it of I'm picking up a whole bunch of stones I'm picking a whole bunch of leaves right uh I have this pebble and I take the pebble back to these little again you're little but these little like science huts and you put it into the analyzer and it analyzes it and that then gives you recipes to make things with it and you can do this at the hut you know three uh items you find every 15 minutes but then there's other huts you could run to but it's you know I did it the game starts going through when I find this uh giant walkie talkie talking

like device and I jump on the big button and it starts doing something but one of the laser two of the lasers are blocked so I have to go fight a bunch of mites and then I have to craft an axe to chop down the thing so the lay and it's just like it wasn't the survival game I'm used to of like hey man you got it you you need to drink right now like I had the meter and I had the hunger meters and my health wouldn't refill if I wasn't you know fully satiated but I didn't feel like gun to my head. And even when it was like, all right, it's getting nighttime. And she's like, oh, man, I bet a bunch of bad bugs are going to come out. I better, you know, do something. I better put down a shelter. Rather than have to make the whole house right, I just made a lean to that like I was able to go to

sleep, wake up and go back to it. And it seems like it's the right. It's right now. And granted, this is a demo for all intents and purposes, right? This is the right level of survival I want out of this kind of experience where I didn't feel a time crunch. I wasn't like, oh shit, I got a fucking drink. You know what I mean? Like it was. Uh, all right. cool, let's go explore. It did have that fallout vibe of like, what is over that ridge? Where is that thing? And, you know, the first time I died, it started me back to where the, you know, the game started. And I had none of my items. And I was like, fuck, I had so many things. That sucks. And sure shit, on my map, I opened it up. My backpack was where I died. Ran back there, ran past all the enemies that

killed me. Grab the backpack, put everything in my pouch and I was good to go. I had everything back to where I was. So it's like, oh, it's not even punishing for exploring. It wants me to go out there and actually see what happens. and find out, can I fight this ant? I have this spear. Can I beat this ant? No, I can't. And this ant will hunt me across the goddamn map,

but it was fun finding that out. Imrod, you were playing Carry on? Carrying. So it's been a couple Devolver digital showcase things. It's that basically it's John Carpenter's the thing, except you're playing as a thing. So you're basically a massive meat and tentacles that is trying to escape from a lab,

And that's the entire story. It is, you're in this lab, you're trying to get out. You occasionally get to these flashbacks of, like, people in the past, and it's not quite sure what they're getting to until the end. And at the very end, you do, like, the idea is that you were trying to escape out of this underground facility. They're trying to keep you there for very obvious reasons of you constantly eating and killing people. Yeah.

It's a Metroidvania in concept, but it's not a... So I review this game for PC gamer, which I think is, it might be up now, I'm not sure. but I think I gave this game like a solid seven. It is not a particularly excelling Metroidvania in a lot of ways. The controls are neat and tight, and like killing people when like rushing through just eating things is fun, but the game is mostly a puzzle game that as you go to room to room, we try to figure out like,

okay, how do I get past this room, how I get to the next thing, how do I open up the next door? But there's no map and there's a lot of backtracking, and the game itself is quite short. I think it came out to about four or five hours. Wow. So you go through when you're being led by the nose until you get lost at some point

and then you're like, okay, well, where am I supposed to go? It's a lot of going through doors trying to figure out, well, does this power work here now? Do I need to go through this? With no map, that becomes a little confusing. And it really harms the sense of visceral consumption that game is supposed to have of you constantly just driving through these areas

and trying to kill things as fast as possible before they unload a clip in a bullet into you. Like, so I liked it over. I liked playing it. It's a very good game pass game, like, similar to grounded, the fact that it's there's like, why not just try it? But I don't, I think in the realm of very good

Metroid videos, it's very hard to make a convincing argument to play it. You're saying that it's four to five hours might actually be the thing that makes me complete the game because I started it and I'll, bless you, Greg. Greg is in the middle of, oh, wow, this is really going.

I was about to call the police. I was like, yo, he might choke. but like you know playing it it's a Metroidvania and at a certain point I was like all right within the first 45 minutes to be playing this game I pretty much get what it is and I like what it is right like it is it like it is two D horror as Tim says and so you're going around you're playing the thing you are murdering all these scientists and it is really fun to to get from point A to point B in that game because they've really nailed how that thing controls um but you know me knowing that it was Metrovania, I was like, oh, is this 10 hours?

Because I don't want to spend 10 hours. And so, like, it seems like a really cool short experience. Like, that might be the thing that actually brings me back to it. It's basically broken up to thirds of, like, how big your monster is. At the start, you're very fast and you're, like, moving around, just consuming things. But at some point, you get, like, to a middle size that allows you to break through some doors and take over people, which is, like, a surprisingly fun mechanic of sliding your tentacle through things and like you can you can freak out people in a room that has no point whatsoever to do

this of like just sitting in the ceiling busting out fences and growling from the top and it will cause them to scream and run around like that's fun even though it's pointless that's neat but at some point you get like way too big and it becomes actually kind of really unwieldy to control to the point where you don't know which direction like you need to get up a small airway and you cannot do it easily because both sides seem like they should go up, but only one side does. It's a neat little game. I don't think that I would necessarily say, like, oh, you have to go out and play this right now.

But if you got Game Pass, give it a shot and see. It's a nice little game you can finish it in a night. Speaking of this, I also played Devolverland Expo, which I don't know if you guys are familiar with this, but basically during the last Devolver showcase, where they did the whole bit where, you know, it's a Nintendo Direct, but there's murder happening and all this different stuff.

They introduced, like, this game called DeVolverland Expo, which was available on Steam. And basically what it is, is it's this first person shooter, I guess, but it takes place in the abandoned Devolver Digital E3 booth. And so, like, you go into E3 and you, like, look around. And it's essentially like this playable market. marketing material that's available on Steam.

And I played a little bit of it. I got to the part where I got to the Carrion booth, you know, watched the trailer because one of the objectives was watch the Carian trailer. And that's what I was like. Horatious. All right, enough. Like, this is, this is fun. This is cute.

But cool. Like, what a weird, what a weird company. Devolving's very real war with E3 has been my favorite, like, narrative over the past four years. Because they, they fucking hate each other in a way that's like, honestly hilarious on this perspective man it's a really cool idea i want to announce the digital devolver playable demo or whatever that was a really cool idea yeah i wish there was more gameplay in it because like there are you do like shoot robots and stuff um but it was it was such a

weird thing where i was like at a certain point it felt like way like way more marking material which it is like i can't like fault it for that but at that point that's what i was like all right peace like i had fun watching the carrion trailer but no more i'm gonna be completely real about this stuff, I don't think there is anything cooler than Devolver Digital. And I think that the way that they handle all this stuff is so clever and so funny and just so, like, so oddly specific that it's like, it is making jokes and kind of, you know, making very, very clear commentary on an industry, right? But I don't understand who the specific group is because it's not me.

and I think it's me. How is it not you? I don't know because when I watched the devolver conferences, I'm always just like, it just goes so adult swim and it goes so weird and wacky that I'm like, I just, I don't understand it. I don't understand who. It just proves to me that there are so many different circles

within this Venn diagram that we're in that it is not just the specific like one in one in the middle, then there's the two big ones. Sure. There are so many subsex of what we're. we do. There's a, being a gamer is not one thing. It's not 10 things. It is thousands of different things. Because it's like, I don't know, I am the type of guy that literally wakes up at the morning and goes to bed at night looking at video game forums. I'm a 31 year old man. I've been doing this since I was nine years old or whatever it is. And like, I feel like that type of snark and

that type of like jadedness and all of it is like in my DNA. And there's just something that just goes over my head. I'm the, I'm the target audience for all that. Last year, DeVar Digital was probably my favorite publisher. If you look at their games they put out, right? Because Katana Zero last year, I adored. Ape Out, I adored. Gato Roboto, I adored. Like, DeVarri Digital in general is a publisher whose games I generally fall in love with.

Like, they put out the, like, they have this good balance, and this all kind of aligns with what Imran's review of Kieran is, right? It's this Metroidvania game that lasts for four to five hours. hours that is like this weird that has this weird gimmick of you playing the thing and you just murdering a bunch of stuff and it's very stylish um but like you know it's this quick get in and get out thing right um and that kind of aligns like katana zero is also like four hours long uh got to rabato is like probably like a two to three hour long game um and they're all these stylish two d games that are retro throwbacks but that are also like very fun to play and

very competent in their gameplay and like even my friend pedro will be another one to bring up here even though i didn't love that game as much still like falls in line with the you know super stylish like has a lot of attitude but like is a very quick play did you say in al-in miami oh how man yeah that's that's devolver distilled and yes i want to be clear i'm not at all talking about the games okay i'm only talking about the marketing like i played that devolverland expo for whatever reason. Like I like I like I know. It's brilliant. Yeah.

Like I don't know what compel me play it. Whereas I think that there I don't know. I hear what you're saying to an extent, Tim, right? Is there the devolver fanboy? Is there the person that like rider die understands and loves devolver and watches every one of the conferences and like I don't know. Has that connection to it the way you have the Nintendo, the way that I have the PlayStation, the way that blessing has to Roman reigns in the WWE.

Oh my God. I don't know. I can't speak to that. But what I know is that everyone respects them for making wacky-ass shit. Everyone is that, oh, I know, I know. And like that, you know, their conferences for being satire of what a conference is, right, of selling their loot coin or whatever the hell it was,

the Bitcoin knockoff thing they were making fun of, to have Nina Freeman be this hired crazed actress who, well, an actress plays this crazy character named Nina Freeman. And then they put her in the PlayStation 5 fucking rundown. of like all the real heads of different companies and developers being like, this is PlayStation 5. And she pops up because no one at PlayStation fucking knew or paid attention. That's brilliant.

And that's like such a joke that even if we don't want to do the reacts to the devolver conferences because I really do feel it would be like reacting over a kids in the hall episode. Like I think at the end, you still get the jokes out of it and the distalment out of it and what they were going for and like what they did. Absolutely. I guess I want to be extremely clear about this because I don't want any single person thing that I'm talking shit.

I am not. It is nothing but reverence. I don't feel cool enough to get it. I feel like there's a problem with me when it comes to this because I love the production value. I love the effort. I love how much they give a fuck. And also they're promoting dope games.

They're trying to do something unique to promote dope games. I love all of that. I am just extremely jealous that I feel like this should be for me. And I'm too stupid to fully comprehend or have the patience to get, I don't know. There's something there. But anyways, keep doing you, Devalver, you crazy motherfuckers. I feel like the irony poison brother of arcade crew. Like those kind of games and that like marketing of like today.

Like here just let's the game talk to themselves. Then DeVolver's like, fuck that. Let's do a whole fucking show. Like you said, it's like the too many cooks special on adult swim. Yeah. Take it to 11. And that is every show. It really is like 20 minutes of content and then like three minutes of them of actual game,

like games being shown. And it's like, all right, man. Like do your thing. And to Tim's thing, right? Like, I think even for me, as I'd say all the stuff that they're doing with their conferences is for me. I feel like with the last couple, they've not necessarily hit the mark 100%. I think this year wasn't written that well. And like I've said out of Twitter, like it's too self-referential.

They're getting a little, this is what happened to adult swim after a while too. This is my point. Who is this for then? Well, then I, I feel like it, I don't know. I'm curious to see like the amount of people. people who really dug this last one. Like even the people who would be in the target audience for this last one. Because I feel like, I feel like somewhere along the line, they've kind of missed the

mark of feeling as fresh with it. Like the first time they did this, I was like, okay, let's go. Like they've really done it. You know, Nina or whoever the lady is on stage is killing people. It's great. They did the same thing again the year after. And I was like, great. And they've kind of kept doing it.

And I feel like I'm, I don't know if I don't know if there are people out there that after the last one. like, oh yeah, man, like, I'm devolver fan number one for this one. Nina Struthers, Nina Struthers. Nina Struthers, thank you. Nina Freeman, of course. He makes video games.

I got very confused there. You can only be a young revolutionary upstart for so long before it starts getting a little rote. And I think that's kind of where devolver is going with their shows. I'm like, okay, cool, the satirizing E3 thing. That was funny the first three times. Now there's no E3. So now you're just kind of like poking at a thing that we know somewhere exists,

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purposes. We are in August, days away from August. What's going on? Both Xbox, PlayStation, have had their big coming out parties for the Series X for the PlayStation 5. We know that there's rumors of an August event for both Xbox and PlayStation. Xbox has said every month's going to have something. So what could that look like? What will the August of event be? And then they didn't have something for Jim. I'm still very salty about that. Wasn't there an IGN thing that? month but it wasn't like anything big it was just them talking about you already known hmm mm-mm i think they might have a blog post they might have a blog post that was like celebrating xbox or something something like no there's no new there was no new info it was just like hey there's

smart delivery again the thing we already knew about it doesn't matter we're not looking back guys we're looking forward we're looking forward what does the next couple months look like on the xbox and sony front imron do you want to start so Are we, I guess I'll start with what I've heard is that it does sound like, like you said, both have shows this year, or this month. From what I've heard, they both have to talk about hardware this month in terms of like pricing, availability, blah, blah, blah. I have also heard that, I don't know if it's this month or later, but they both do have

more software to show. So whether like they do it now or before the launch or even after launch, they both have things that are going to be like, oh shit, I can't believe they're revealing that here. I would hope that they do that sooner rather than later, but I would like, I expect that Microsoft knows what deals they don't have, so they know what to prepare for. Microsoft also, if Lockhart is a real thing, knows it is better to show that thing off after Sony says $499 or $5.59 or $5.99 or whatever. Like whatever Sony's price is going to be, it's going to be probably pretty high. Lowest I see them possibly going is $4.50. So if Lockhart is a real thing and they want to show it off,

I think they're going to wait until a Sony does theirs first. So, Greg. Yeah, but they're playing chicken right now, it kind of seems, when it comes to price, right? Yep, 100%. Do you think that there's a chance that that chicken game runs past August? No. You got it.

We got to get this done, right? You got to put up your pre-orders. You figure like how many of the retail partners have to be sitting there waiting. What is Amazon thinking right now? You know what I mean? They want this done and this is usually done so much faster. I shouldn't say faster. So much earlier than this.

So much earlier than August in terms of getting this out there. And I think, yeah, it's always that it doesn't surprise me. I'm wrong for you to say that you've heard that they both have big, holy shit announcements left in their tank right here that they sell a few in the chamber because you have to, right? you're going to give us this medicine, you got to give us sugar with it too, right? If you're going to give us a shot, you have to give us a chaser. And so if the shot's going to be, hey, here's PlayStation 5 and it's $599, you know, $599,000,

you know, $599 U.S. dollars, like, okay, but you better on top of Miles Morales, on top of horizon, on top of whatever else you've got, bugs and X, you got to prove that, hey, this is the other big thing and why you're doing this. And so I think, honestly, for me, and it's a little bit different with Xbox, but not 100%, But with both of them, this next one has to be about, I think you get a full flood showcase from both of them. And I think it is, here's the final price, here's the final date, and here are the services that really make this next gen. And I know that Xbox is all about services. And we know so much already about GamePass and then bringing in X cloud and doing all these things in September even.

I still think that you want to show all that and how that works as an ecosystem on the Xbox Series X, what the new Xbox home screen is and how this all. interacts together and what it's looking like to make it one ecosystem. And it's the same for PlayStation where do they answer this Xbox game pass ultimate? Do they double down on what PlayStation now is? Do they radically change that? Do they change PlayStation Plus? Do they announce that PlayStation Plus is getting VR games on top of this and that you're still going to continue to get this, that, and the other?

Both of these guys, they've got the headlines, they've got the juice. You need to get out and talk about what could be considered bad news in the pricing, but also what all the fucking loser dorks like us want to know. I want to just show me what does it look like when a fucking trophy pops on PlayStation 5? What is it the different, you know, ecosystem for that? Is it so much faster? That's the thing, you know, people always write into PSI love your even games daily, but they're like, you know, man, what would you like to see PlayStation 5 steal from Xbox or

PlayStation in general see it from Xbox? Man, playing grounded last night, just how snappy the fucking menus are in Xbox, how fast it is to get to anything you want to go to when you know how to get to what you want to go to. Whereas PlayStation, the amount of times I fucking exit a game, tab up twice to tab over to my trophies, and then for no reason at all, it pulls me back down to the game.

I'm like, you motherfucker, just let me go. You know what I mean? That's the kind of stuff I want to know about these new systems, is that now let's get into the maybe, gritty bells and whistles. Yeah,

they still have the create button they haven't said anything about. Yeah. There's rumors going around now that an actual multiplayer games will be hooked into the OS in a way that, like, you can see, oh, so-and-so is racing somebody right now. Do you want to join without actually having to go into the game to do it? Like,

it will be cool to find out when they actually say it tell us but it's august and usually when a company has like they're a little hesitant about announcing something i'm always worried that it's going to take a year plus like remember they announced suspend resume for ps4 at reveal and it wasn't until like i want to say nearly two years later whenever bloodborn came out that didn't actually have it is that true fuck i don't remember that at all yeah i remember that too wow like it was not there at lunch Bless, what do you think in terms of PS Now specifically? Do you think that at this next state of play, it's going to be talked about it all? PS Now.

Ooh, at the next state of play? No. Like, I think right now the strategy would be to wait and take everything in and see what Xbox is doing. I think at a certain point, like, PlayStation Now is going to have to change. I think at a certain point they're either going to have to bundle that in with PS Plus or make some kind of dynamic change with how those systems work. Because at this point, I very much expect for Xbox online play to end up being free somehow. I expect that shoot a drop at a certain point because why not? Especially if you're trying to have your system or your ecosystem all work as one.

When you have such a heavy PC presence, right? and when you want to have a presence on something like Switch or other systems, you might as well get rid of as many barriers as possible while maintaining reasons for people to want to invest in what you have to offer. And so Xbox GamePass pretty much speaks for itself, especially GamePass Ultimate. Now that's going to be getting XCloud, and now that we're going to be getting all these first party games through it,

like that service speaks for itself so well without having to have online play be the big factor for the reason why people want to invest in it. So with the big moves that Xbox is making on their side, I think PS now, even though, like, right now it's fine. Like, it's not necessarily a thing that is losing PlayStation money by any means. In fact, like, it's fairly, it's relatively successful. Maybe just not as much compared to what when you look at what Xbox GamePath is doing. But even still, like, there's not any rush for PlayStation to change things on their side. I think the big question I have for myself

and that I might even have for you guys is do you think by launch we see a big shift for PS Now and PS Plus or is that later down the line? If it happens, it would be later. I think right now they're pretty much, Sony is locked into this strategy of PS Now is the side thing. They have their own retail stuff to worry about as the main thing.

And I feel like the one thing that will always hold PS Now back from a GamePass style service is that I don't think Sony wants to put, say, the Last of Us, two, Miles, Reynolds, whatever, on those things day one, while for Microsoft, that is key to their entire platform. Like, it is extremely important that Halo was there on GamePass day one. It is not at all important for Sony that Ratched and Clank is on their day one. This is the argument we came out of Xbox game showcase, right, solidified, is that,

Tim, you in the post show were very clear about it of, like, Xbox is not fighting the same fight anymore. Like, they are all marching in their own ways. And so to your question of, like, yeah, PlayStation Plus, PlayStation, PlayStation, now being changed up for a launch no i don't think so because i do think playstation is very much in the mindset of like this isn't broken why fuck with it like let's just do what we did with playstation four but call playstation five let's be committed to these indies to get everybody ready and then hype up the cool first party stuff will have and build

on that and if we're super successful people will come to us and nobody the people who give a shit about PlayStation now are fine with it the people who they people just pay for PlayStation plus not thinking about it keep that going don't worry about it it's Xbox that had to get hungry and creative and crazy, I think this generation, because they didn't have these first-party exclusives that were lighten the world on fire. So they were the ones that are like, well, let's really get fucking serious about X-Cloud. Let's really get into this game pass business. Let's do that.

And now it is a services versus launch lot or services versus library thing. But I do wonder what PlayStation's response to service would be when they start talking about their UI and what you're getting when you subscribe to PlayStation Plus. How long do you think the status quo can stay as far as what PS Plus and what PS now is? because I'm with you that right now you don't fix what's not broken. But I feel like at this point, right, even though Microsoft is finding a different battle, at a certain point, like, there's going to be a convergence where people are going to be talking about PS Plus, comparison to Xbox GamePass Ultimate, you know, because they are such

comparable things and because Xbox is making such dynamic and big decisions with GamePass. If the status quo on the Xbox side becomes, hey, don't pay for online, you can get that free, but you also get all our first party games and you get this, this, and this with our subscription service. At a certain point, PS Now and PS Plus both look like almost terrible by comparison. And like I know that that would have to reflect in dollars and cents for Sony to feel the need to change things. But even with that, I feel like at a certain point, you're going to have to change things inevitably because the way those conversations are going to go are just going to make your service look just pale in comparison. So kind of point to that.

What's real interesting, and I think doubling down on what I said in the Xbox post show, is that everyone is just in a different race at this point. And I think that with a lot of comments that have been made since the showcases happened from Aaron Greenberg, Phil Spencer, and just other Xbox entities, it's interesting to look at it where PlayStation is so firmly doubling down on the PS5's a next generation console. We believe in generations. We're going to keep that going.

And it's not about the services. It is about this. and what the console does and the games that you can only play on this console. And you look at Xbox and it kind of feels, especially when you look at just that showcase, now that we're a week removed from the showcase, I stand by everything I said about it, but there's one extra thing that is extremely clear. What was the point of the PlayStation showcase showing that they truly believe in next gen gen in games you can only play on PS5?

What was the point of the Xbox game showcase? Every single game here is playable on Game Pass. Right. It's a good commercial for Game Pass. It was a fantastic commercial for Game Pass. But the question mark that gives me, though, is if the point of that showcase was being able to say every single game here is on Game Pass, what games weren't there because they're not on Game Pass that are going to be on Xbox Series X, but couldn't be in that showcase because they didn't fit the sole goal of what that showcase was. So that was the thing I was talking about on Twitter the other day was eventually Xbox is going to come into, I guess I turned it the Netflix problem, where Netflix at one point was an aggregate of streaming content from other content providers like NBC, Universe, like all those other places that had the office, had all those shows on there. And eventually those places realized, hey, we could make more money if we didn't put it on your service or we think you're low-balling us for the amount of value our content gives your service.

So they had to say, like, well, in this alternative, in the games industry, the difference would be like, we'd rather just sell it for 60, 70 bucks than we would to put it on GamePass unless you pay us a lot more for it. I think Microsoft is going to, as GamePass becomes a bigger thing as time goes on, and it becomes the centerpiece of that console. And like the centerpiece of the entire Microsoft strategy, they're going to have to either start putting up more to get like, for example, cyberpunk isn't going to be on Game Pass a day one. And they have to say that out loud so people don't think that it might. control remember when fail Spencer accidentally like slipped up and said oh control is coming to game pass and their sales cratered and they had remedy had to go like no no no it's not please please

don't assume that it is and people still think like oh yeah I'm not buying it just in case it might one day any day now that's going to be a problem for other content providers of trying to figure that out maybe the solution isn't we're going to put our games on our own service like netflix ended up doing but it will become the thing of we're going to sell our games separately and then maybe when they're done selling will put them on GamePass, or you have to pay up the amount of value that we would have gotten from selling those games separately that we're losing now because we're putting them on yours. The other alternative is Microsoft does what Netflix does, and they actually make their own content

solely for GamePass. That's kind of what this show showed us of like, yeah, there was some, a few third-party things that didn't actually like, that were from XGS and they were being published by Xbox Game Studios, but they were not like, I'm going to, let's say Dead Rising, example. Like they have Capcom come up as a dead rising game. If that's not coming to X-Dex game pass and they wouldn't show it here, they have to start making all their

own stuff for it. And that's going to by nature change the kinds of things they make. Like Netflix doesn't tend to go above three seasons because that, like, at that point drop-off happens for subscribers. Will they start making more games and service games? Would they then green light stuff that

like Sony is big in narrative single-player games like Don of War and The Last of Us? Because those are one and done. That could do a month of GamePass subscribers doesn't get you a year of them. So with that, jumping off of that point earlier, when we were talking about Xbox Live, you kind of seem to be extremely on the side that they're going to get rid of Xbox Live as a paid service after what Blessing said. I tend to agree as well.

But in the last couple of days, Aaron Greenberg was doing a couple of interviews, and he was saying that Xbox Game Pass is not yet profitable. They believe in it. And obviously, there's so many different factors in business deals and things that we don't know about that are behind the. the scenes that aren't apples to apples, one for one of where the money's coming and going. But as of April 2020, we know there are 90 million Xbox Live subscribers. Why would they get rid of that revenue right now?

Because at some point, it kind of sucks for like people. So if you're playing X cloud on his phone, you don't have to pay Xbox game plan or gold. If you're playing GamePass on PC, you don't have to play Xbox gold. They're telling their most loyal customers, hey, thank you for paying this extra money for buying a Series X. Thank you for being the people who love Microsoft the most. Now, give us 15 bucks a monthly motherfucker. That is a silly idea in the long run, especially if you're trying to democratize how you can play Xbox anywhere. You can play Xbox anywhere except on your own Xbox because then it costs you more money. Yeah, I think that's the exact reason,

right? The idea that, oh yeah, I want to get an Xbox Series X, but like, why should I get an Xbox Series X when I have to pay monthly to play games online versus just playing on a PC where I can just play online however I went. Like that feels like such an arbitrary, uh, barrier on Xbox. Well, is this the genius of like game pass ultimate though is that you roll it into that and

then okay, cool and you can play anywhere and blah, blah, and then by the time you eliminate Xbox live, you're already into the $15 game pass ultimate, which is on PC and it's on the console. It's on the cloud. So you're not even thinking anymore.

Right. Don't call it gold anymore. And it's like, it used to include gold, but now it just includes playing the game anywhere. And then that becomes the one service to rule them all. And it becomes a weapon against PS4. 90 million plus game pass

X million plus whatever. And then that's the number that they have. Yeah. Also, games with gold stops mattering as much anymore because you have game pass. So yeah, just put those games on there. Yeah, you get rid of that too.

You have to worry about that. So then going back to the Sony side, if they're not going to double down on services because I agree with kind of the sentiment of the group here, like that the timing isn't right for that. Their whole statement is hardware and software that is next gen. Greg,

what could state of play look like? Now that we already know, honestly, so much about a lot of the, the core Sony IP. I think it could be a number of things, right? I think, again, PlayStation, you know,

if you go back and watch the PlayStation 4E3 conference, right, where Jack lays out everything and fucking punches Xbox in the face, like, again, you can, they can dress up all the services they already have. Yeah, I mean, like they can give you a number, some kind of PlayStation now number and announce that it's bringing in this back catalog of PlayStation 4 games or something to that, right? They can talk more about what they can actually explain what the fuck backwards compatibility means to them, right? With this, it's hundreds.

It's 100 games. No, it's hundreds of games. Well, it's going to be the most popular 100 games. Like, just fucking be very clear about what backwards compatibility is. You then, yeah, you get to touch on this. Again, even if it was like we're not revamping PlayStation Plus, but just making the commitment of you're going to get a PlayStation 5 game every month. on top of the PlayStation 4 games that are backwards compatible with the thing that way and the other thing. But then I think you get into the fun stuff of what the, yeah, the menus and the UIs look like.

Are these plates on the PlayStation 5 removable as this, you know, was going around the internet the other day? Are there other, what are you doing for controllers this time around in terms of, you know, actual colors and stuff and launch and lineup that way? I think you get into the real nerdy stuff here. I think this is, and in terms of the games, of course, like you just said, I think, yeah, you could tease more first party stuff if you wanted to. I don't think you need to, but you could. Maybe you just have one big announcement, whether that's, you know, something from, you know, a distant, distant tease of Last of Us multiplayer from Noddy Dog. You know what I mean?

Something to that extent. It could be something else from a first party we haven't heard from. But then you could go in more with your third party partnerships, right? Like, I don't know anything that's coming. I haven't heard rumors on top of that. But if it is partnerships, exclusive content, if it is, you know, just more indies that we, that you want or haven't heard from yet that are able to come on. it. You know, even right now, right? Like, even today, uh, Drinkbox teased a new game, right?

It was the big old blinking eyes gift. And then it was like, yeah, but if you guessed it, we're on a new IP, excited to talk about it later. And that could mean next year, that could mean at gamescom. That could mean at the Xbox. That can mean a PlayStation. Like, it could be nothing. It could be, they're excited to show you eyeballs. But to your medicine point that you're making earlier. Yeah. What's the blow? What's the chaser here? Because if, if we assume that the cost is going to be high and the hardware and all that. That stuff's going to be the bad news or the availability and all that. Do you think the UI and all that stuff is enough to soften that flow?

Well, I think you, what they, I mean, the way I would expect them to do it right is to, uh, follow up in one of their, hey, here's the recap of all the shit you saw last time around.

Here's several new games from people you love, whether it be indies, whether it be third parties, whether it be exclusives kind of thing like that. And then you end on one, big announcement of a game everybody wants to see and I don't know what that looks like or whatever that would be from somebody that you have been on

pins and needles to see from or something from maybe that's where with this whole if I can this whole rumored San Diego game that was going to be is it is Sony San Diego working on an uncharted game and because there was a whole naughty dog you know working with a bigger studio another studio studio is that where that happens is that where you know you drop that at the very

end that is just the uncharted it's Sony it's Sony it's Sony it's it's Sony it's Sony it's Sony Santa Monica then naughty dog and then the uncharted vuzuz alo or whatever fucking somebody swinging through doing something and just the uncharted title treatment i mean i suspect sony is in preparation like they're in a place there they could do the nintendo strategy of having one really fucking good launch here and then kind of like not coasting is not the right word but kind of being had a more regular system from then on out

if they did do that this would be the place to do it because they're in a good position to have their studios ready to launch major things over the next couple of next 16 months. And that's the thing too. I mean, you figure if you could even, if you wanted to like knock it out of the park and drive this home,

bookend it, right, and start with, uh, I would say maybe even start with a god of war two teaser and then end with an uncharted teaser if that's what the Sony San Diego thing is an actual thing that people have heard about. Yeah.

See, I feel like that's doing too much. Like I feel like that's actually too much. Like in, in June, we got so much out of that PlayStation event. Like we had, I forgot,

I lost count, but like what, 17 games or something like that. that are mostly exclusive, or at the very least launch exclusive for PlayStation 5. I think we're also kind of discounting third parties. If you remember in May we got that Xbox third party event. That was the next gen third party games.

And that was the thing that came out and somewhat underwhelmed. But we've not necessarily had PlayStation's answer to, hey, what does third party support look like for PlayStation? I think we did, didn't we? Resident Evil 8, Project Athia, all the Bethesda games. There's more. They're holding on to some things

that I'm really surprised they're holding on to and I wouldn't be shocked if they showed them soon. Yeah, and I think there's still so much more to say in terms of what third party because I feel like we have such a clear idea of all right, this is what Xbox Game Studios is working on.

This is what the first party output for PlayStation is and we have like some idea of what third party next gen games are, right? Like we know Far Cry, what number are on six? We know what Far Cry 6 is. We know what Ubisoft got going. We don't know much of what EA is doing for next gen.

And with that, like, there's still, I feel like there's still so many questions. We don't even know what the next Call of Duty is. And so, like, that is something I wouldn't be surprised to see at a PlayStation presentation, especially because historically, PlayStation is usually aligned with Call of Duty. Like, those are the things I expect to see. But then also, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to get a couple more, like, PlayStation Indies. Like, that's the thing that they've really been going hard on, especially when you look at the June event, right?

Like we got bug snacks, goodbye, volcano high, jet the far shore, the little devil inside, odd world, soul storm, stray, solar ash. And right now I'm just looking at the PlayStation Indies page that they have on the website because they've really made it a thing to take ownership, which is nice to see. Like even Fall Guys is on there where the heart is. And the games that they announced outside of that event just on Twitter slash the PlayStation blog. I came a super fun way.

Fall Guys. I didn't talk about it, but it can't fucking rocks. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, Fall Guys is awesome. but yeah like i i think there's there's a lot of options there i don't think i don't think whatever the next playstation event is going to be i don't expect it to be as focused as the june event but maybe as big in terms of all the stuff they have there like i can see it being more of a hey this is just a big presentation of what we have right and it could be updates on oh yeah more inspired man miles

morales morales here's call a duty uh here's a ubosop here's far cry six gameplay like here like i can I can see it being more of an amalgamation of those things. So with that, the rumors right now are it's a state of play. And Ron, you're definitely way more insider than we are when it comes to this stuff. Do you expect it to be state of play? And if so, is it the traditional state of play format? Or do they kind of adapt the June format a little bit more to make it a little more fresh? I believe it is a state of play.

I have heard that they have been, everyone complained about the previous, ones being like, why don't you just copy Nintendo Directs? They've been like, well, let's just like, let's try to format a little bit more after Nintendo Directs when they were still a thing. But I expect that's kind of what we're going to look is not just, not terms of like colors and, you know, it's the same voice and the same zoom in and zoom out. It's probably more like, okay, we need to bring the, a little, things a little bit harder now. Because you can tell they've been trying, like, Resonable 3 was revealed at 1, 567,

a remake was re-revealed at it. Like, they are capable of being big news ones. and now was a good time to unleash one with big guns. Very exciting stuff. On the Xbox side of things, Greg, what do you see happening at whatever showcase that ends up being? You mean in terms of games or in terms of services or just in terms of general? Let's just stick to the games.

I don't know. Like this is the same thing we keep talking about. Like I think the fact that they're coming out swinging both these people that we're hearing that both of these are going to be big, right, that both these companies have something up their sleeves. You do get into this. What could it still be, right? And it is that obviously, you know, when do we hear what the initiative's game is? I don't know.

But I don't know if you partner that here. But it's also, we're on top of Jeff Keeley's, you know, what do you call it, the finale to game fest, right? Yeah. So, I mean, like, there's so much stuff to go on there. I think it's the same thing of Xbox having to drive home what this is and what the Xbox ecosystem is. And I think that they have a really compelling argument for it. And I think that the way they, you know, of course, uh, make us take our medicine is that yeah, all right, cool. The Xbox series X is here and it costs $500, $500, $599,000, whatever, right? But we're also unveiling, right? The Xbox

series S here. It is smaller. It is cheaper. It's the price of an Xbox, uh, one X right now. And then of course, don't forget that next month in September, Xbox GamePass Ultimate gets X cloud. And that's the start of Cloud's ascension to becoming a vital business model for us, where it's been in beta, now it's moving to this, and we hope by the end of the year, or we will, by the end of the year, have it be standard that you can access any game you've bought on your Xbox, in the Xbox platform. And so suddenly you have it behind him, right? So you can play all your Xbox games for either $15 for $399 US or $599.00. The Xbox is the best place to play with the most options to play. It's like, this has to be, I think,

they're pin in it. We've been able to talk so much and see so much and have so much presented to us. This is where they solidify all the arguments they've made into one comprehensive pitch that everybody can look at and go, oh, I get it. The final question before

we end the show and get into the post show, which will be another episode of Bless Up, our favorite game show. Bless who. Damn it. So close. So close. Imron. We're talking about the Xbox game show because they just did, being focused on Game Pass, every game there had to be a part of game pass

so they weren't going to show anything that wasn't. Obviously, that means that any first-party Xbox title would have been there that we're expecting to see of a major consequence. What third-party megaton, realistic third-party megaton, do you think could be in the August Xbox event? I've said it before, but I feel like Dead Rising

is a good one to actually trot out again because it makes people remember times they really like the Xbox. like a very nostalgic feeling for the Xbox 360. Beyond that, let's see. They mostly tie themselves to games rather than get like new, exist, like big things.

I think the biggest thing they could probably get at this point, Overwatch 2. Like, yeah, I wouldn't say exclusive, but maybe like a big marketing deal or like first on Xbox or we have a career game pass. If it's free on,

Game past would be the biggest think. I could not fathom it. I couldn't fathom it. Like, Overwatch is so big. I couldn't imagine a first on Xbox sort of thing for that game. My mind was long. What did they did? I couldn't, man.

I don't think so. I do think it's likely. I think it's, yeah. So here's the thing. The reason we talk about Game Pass and Sony, or PlayStation 5, like, being different battles right now, is because when so. Sony won this past generation. They won it by taking the install base from Xbox, from the 360.

What Microsoft is trying to do now, is they're trying to grow that audience? You can't grow that audience necessarily by taking away from Sony. So that's where that question kind of feels like, I don't know what one exclusive they could wrap up. They would have to make something, I think, they have to, I kind of hit on the next big thing before it becomes a big thing. So it's like they had to have gotten PubG before PubG was all. already big on PC and then came to Xbox. Got it. Greg Miller. And got it. I figured it out, guys.

What Xbox will do there, right? It's finally time. And you talk about, Imron nailed it right? They attached themselves to games, right? Rather than make them their own kind of thing. We've gone around and around and around before with like, all right, well, Nintendo has a Marvel exclusive game. PlayStation has a Marvel exclusive game.

When's Xbox getting one? I don't think they are. Instead, I think what will happen is, and this is, you know, a pie in the sky, get height moment prediction. I think this would be the time, right? How many years, Imran? How many fucking years has it been since we heard about that Guardians of the Galaxy game that was supposed to be going on at Idos? That would have been, God, it was like 2009, 2010? No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

That's way too far. That's way too far. Maybe I'm thinking wrong. 2016? I think of a telltale one. Yeah. 2015-2016 Like that's been like one of those things

Everybody heard about forever ago And never heard any movement on I think you could do a cool teaser trailer there Where you know what I'd be like That'd be that'd be it's not exclusive to them It's just like hey this is where we're making The marketing deal right? This is like I don't want to say a make good

Because that's not true but it's like a Hey this is how we're playing with Marvel And we're going to have well not exclusive content but That's my thing about the RE8 thing It's like R8's not going to be exclusive to PlayStation But it was at the event and Xbox didn't have any of those bangers because at the last Xbox event

because they had to have the game pass messaging. So at this next one, they can do things that are just alignments but are still major things. You know, and I feel like they also had that chance in May. They did. They totally did.

And like REA is a bright memory infinite. Capcom has done this thing for years of they would have one banger at Sony and one banger at Microsoft. Like last year I think was Resdable two? No, year before last Wasn'table 2 and DMC 5 at Microsoft. This year it was

RE8 at Sony and then nothing at Microsoft. So I'm really curious, like, was Pragata made from Microsoft? Did they have something they didn't show? Well, that goes to my point, though, is that DMC wasn't exclusive to Microsoft, which means it wouldn't have been on GamePass. Yeah. That's why I think

if the Capcom game, not exclusive, but just alignment, it would be at this next showcase, presumably this next showcase not being everything if it's a big thing and are we are you presuming that this next big Microsoft showcase is going to be like a huge

thing? Donald crisis which was tied to Xbox true we'll see man we'll see I think this is the kind of funny games cast I love you guys so much we're about to do the post show we're going to do the fun game

show bless who I've been loving this This one sure to be one for the ages for patreon.com slash kind of funny game supporters. Until next week, I love you guys.