Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Xbox 2024 Showcase Predictions - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - Xbox Showcase BIG QUESTIONS - How Hyped Are We? - Ads - How We’re Reacting to the Showcase - General Predictions - Hardware - First Party Games - Jeff’s Final Predictions - Back to First Party - Bethesda - Activision - Third Parties Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome back to Kind of Funny Games cast live for Wednesday, June 5th, 2024. Of course, I am Tim Geddes, your host, and I am joined by an amazing crew of gentlemen today. Of course, we have the new face of video games blessing at Ayoje Jr. Good day, Tim. The master of hype, snow bike, Mike. What up, Tim? The big daddy himself, Greg Miller. This is the SGF conference I'm most excited about.

The nitro rifle, Andy Cortez. I'm excited about my Baja blast. And we have two very special guests. joining us as well, one of the greatest of all time. It's Jeff Grub. I got my Amber Dick S.P. I'm just going to be playing video games the whole time. Focus.

Focus, Jeff. Look at me. And. Pokemon. The best voice in the business, Paris, Lily. What's going on, everyone? We got a bit of a delay from San Diego, it seems. I'm so delayed.

We'll have to figure all that out. But while we do that, I'll get into all the rigmar roll. Of course, this is the kind of. funny games cast each and every weekday. We come through live right after the kind of funny games daily. Our daily news show. This is our Xbox Showcase predictions episode for Summer Game Fest. All week long, we're doing predictions episodes leading into Summer Game Fest that is two days away.

Blessing. How wild is that? That's crazy. It is crazy. Two days away on Friday, of course, we will be live reacting to the Summer Game Fest showcase and then breaking it down afterward. If you're hanging out with us, you should all day. just be right here on Twitch.tv slash

kind of funny games or YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. It is a great time to hang out with us and just be in chat, just like D.H. Ruvinator, shubby jubbery and jinker's QQR. Y'all are fantastic and thank you for being here today. Games Daily was an awesome episode with Jeff Grubb

and Blessing. They talked about a little Xbox handheld rumors that I'm sure we'll get into a bit more in this show. Up next after this, we're going to have Nick, Mike, and Andy playing some Eldon Ring continuing there. adventures. Fire giant time. It's fire giant. Fire giant.

Oh my God. It can be a disaster, Tim. I'm rooting for you all. And then today, if you're a kind of funny member, you can get the Greg way that is. Greg talking about how vindictive Portillo the weeder dog is. Good thing. This bastard's dead. All right.

Let me just say that. Holy shit. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Fargo, Brady, and Delaney Twining. We appreciate all of you. So very, very much. Today we are brought to you by Pankle, the developers of vampire survivors. But we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's start with the topic of the show.

It's Xbox prediction time, everybody. Xbox showcase happening once again. It'll be followed by a full direct of Call of Duty Black Ops 6. So we're going to go through a whole bunch of different things that might be there, might not be there, and give our thoughts on them. I do want to start with a couple big questions to get the mood right. The questions are going to be, just so everybody can start thinking about this. Do you have any personal predictions?

that you want to make. Just let's not have too many. If anybody has one thing, you don't need one, but if you have one that you're like, I just want credit for this prediction in case it happens. Let's make it here. Second, what is your hype level for this show? And then third, is there a get hype thing

that could announce that is like not out of the realm of possibility, but just not really likely. If so, let me know. Let's start with any personal predictions y'all have. Does anyone want to jump to the front of this? I'll get mine out of the way because I'm going to combine, I'll combine the thing that is probably not likely to happen, but also maybe a prediction that it could still happen.

They were working on one versus 100 at one point. I don't know if they're still doing it. At this point, it feels like a kind of a long shot, but if that was like the shadow drop, I would like, I would lose my mind. That would be such a perfect game for that. So I'm going to like hold on to some hope and believe that that could happen. That would be incredible.

How does that get you going, Mike? That's a great pull. I would love to see the Xbox community come together and rally around that. That's a big one, Jeff Grub. We just seem to get farther and farther away from it, for some reason. That's my worry. The people that were working on, it did, like, some of them left. So, yeah, that's, I think the big concern there.

I'll build off of Jeff. I'm looking forward to the next Gears installment. I would love to see Gear 6 at this thing. I think it would bring a lot of hype and a lot of energy to the Xbox side, especially having that franchise, what that team, the coalition is going to do with Unreal Engine. Like, it's going to be pretty awesome. my prediction I'm going to make in terms of all the shadow drop talk

that's been going on I know that the conversation has been more about it being a game but I think it's going to be many games I don't think it's wild to say this but I think that we're going to get a lot of Activision games shadow dropped on game pass where there's going to be like so many of these things they're out today

here you go easy prediction but I think it's going to happen there is on for like every single call of duty that's the thing is like if I really want to double down even more I think it's going to be call of duty focused more than anything. Like I think the

pie in the sky, it's call of duty, it's Crash Bandicoot, it's Transformers, Cybertron series, it's Tony Hawk and all that stuff. But I think being more realistic, it's like all the call of duties, they're here. Greg Miller. Here's what I said at Zalbisjah. This is my most my most excited

showcase. Save for the people in the back. Ladies and gentlemen, this is my SGF. It all comes down to Sunday when I'll be watching it on a delay with you lot. Um, so I don't want to dream too big because somebody to confirm things, Tim is what I'm the most excited about, right? So to get nuts with it, just make a prediction and put it out there.

I think we'll hear about the next fallout game. I don't think it's Bethesda's thing. I think it'll be somebody else. I was. Hey, there was. The F word. I, you know,

you know, you have like, do you have a get height moment that's not going to happen? I'm going to answer that one too while I'm here. Sorry, I think it's definitely a personal prediction that I want to make that I'd like credit and pass on the best. and get the Andy. How did it, Greg, no?

You know what I mean? I would love it to be like, we're here to talk, let's talk about the next fall. It's not coming from Bethesda. Clearly they're working. Here's whoever we have working on. I think the get hype moment would be

Fallout 3 remaster is real and it's dropping today, today, whatever. But I don't think they'll do that. Paris, let's jump off that. Well, he just stole my idea. But what is that yet? Are you with it's a different team?

Yeah, I think a different team and mine more specifically would be. I think I, give me fallout in New Vegas too. Just literally, literally do that. Just keep it in New Vegas, call it a sequel to that. Different studio doesn't have to be obsidian. I think that would be amazing. Now my get hype moment,

I think when we think about these shadow drops and everything, I'll stick with fallout. Why now to fallout three remaster? Why not let that be it? Exactly. You want to stick out on some fallout vibes here? I mean, I was basically gonna echo what Greg said of, yeah, I think we get a new fall,

announcement. How you like that excrable? It's pretty good. Yeah. No, I was like, it's hard to like concentrate here because I'm fucking focused on this X-Ram. Good job, Jen. And I'm like smelling what Andy smelled the other day. It sounds good.

But if I'm not going to do a fallout, I'm going to put forth my own prediction. I mean, Pangeo Cazui, choice for Bob. Is that a prediction or is that get hype? I mean, it's a prediction. Yeah. Wow. Wow. I think, you know, where there's smokes, there's fires.

Twycer Bob, what, a week of a so ago, talked about like, yeah, we've, we're partnering with Microsoft. We have a game they're working on with them. I think it'd be really cool, really neat to just drop the name. We're doing Banjo. That would be like that now. Can I, because I assume this was going to come up later, but since he uttered the words, I got to say it now. They fucking better announce Banjo Cazoozui.

They better. At this point, after seeing Astrobot last week, yes, I'm talking about the competition, seeing that last week, we know what 3D Mario's coming. probably next year. If Xbox does not utilize his IP, what are they doing? Seriously, we're at the point that they need to announce

that game exists, someone's working on it, and we're going to get it soon. They've got to talk about it. Is that the dream mascot platformer, Tim, for the Xbox side of things? I mean, Paris and I, he's beating the drum all the time on Xcast. Is that the one?

When we talk about a wealth of IP, so many names to pull from, is it banter? Yeah. Come on. Jeff. We'll talk about some of that stuff

later in the show but I will say specifically we're talking about like the toys for Bob of it all. I think the most likely outcome is Spiro 4

but I do think that Banjo makes the most excitement potential for people and I think that like specifically for Xbox and

owning it like I think Banjo is the right answer. Over a crash? Yeah. Crash. I mean

Crash is I think the biggest of them but Crash has kind of been having his moment the last couple years like we got the crash four

we got the the trilogy remake. We got even the cart racer remake. We got Crash Team Rumble. And we got Crash. Yeah,

we were so good at that game. We've gotten Crash. I'd like more, but we've gotten Crash. I think it's Spiro's time. I think it's more exciting than Crash for sure. Conquers more exciting than all of them. And the people know that.

The people don't get the fuck out of here. Know that the mature squirrel is where it's at. Everybody knows the mature squirrel. All those children have grown up now. Yeah. And they want that. They have adult sensibilities. They want that.

They don't grow up. And they're all sitting. two seats away from you. And you'll talk about wanting it, but then you'll get it and you'll be like, oh, fuck it. You know those gift websites have three random words.

Mature squirrel sounds like two of those words that would be in there for that. All right. So before, does anybody else, go for it. Let me give you some hype. I have two get hype moments. I'll give one for a smaller community

and then one for the big community. The smaller community would be Halo Wars 3. It would be fantastic to see Halo Wars come back live in action. I think we've seen Age of Empires really shine on controller and on console. Halo Wars 1 and 2 is that thing. It is that game. You'll get more Halo in your life.

Halo Wars 3 would be fantastic. And then for all of you Gibroni's out there, it would be Phil coming out and saying, hey, we're figuring it out with guitar hero. And everybody would lose their marbles if we could figure out how to get guitar hero back. Any other good hype's here? Would they lose their marvels? You don't think so? I don't know.

You would lose your Marvel. Remember when we all were like a Times Prime for another one and rock band four came out? We all played it one night. We're like, oh, okay. We'll see. We'll see. I think people would go wild for a guitar hero. Okay.

I was asking the panel in general. Andy, would you go wild for a guitar hero? I would not. No. Thank you very much. Blessing, would you go wild for a guitar hero? No, I wouldn't. I would go wild for a guitar hero.

Yeah, you love it. Rock band less so, but like guitar hero, like, yeah, we're just doing it? Yeah, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Kat, are you going wild for it? Give me DJ Hero and then we'll talk. Oh, I would go on the DJ Hero. I would.

I'm not joking. Yeah, for real. I've been so much money on that. I played at one night. I was like, hey, this shit's hard. I don't know. I got to say it. I know that the timing is definitely not right for this.

And like, if I'm being real, it's probably not going to ever happen. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 plus 4. Like, I feel like it was ripped from my heart. The potential was there. They keep talking about it. Tony Hawk's out here. Do I believe the words? coming out of that man's mouth?

Not at all. Not at all. But I know he's talking to people. You know what I mean? I mean, he was at a concert, right? He was like, this guy on the drums, he's worked for a company, and that company could be working on him, Tony Hawk.

You know what I mean? And was that video a year old? Yeah, it was. You know what I mean? Does it still give me hope? Of course it does, because I'm a sick bastard like that. Okay.

Any other get hypes? I mean, I assume we're going to get into it. We have a comprehensive list. Yeah, where it's like, I want a bird and the good stuff, right? I want fable. So then let's start here then.

Just one round around the table. On a scale 1 to 10, the kind of funny scale. How excited are we for this Xbox showcase? Andy Cortez. I've had a lot better luck just saying that I'm not expecting much and hopefully getting kind of wowed by what the announcements could possibly.

I'm going to go ahead and throw, I'll say 6.5. Whoa! That's what we said for. summer game fast. I put a 6.5. Greg Miller. You know,

these words have never haunted me, Tim. There's no way this can be bad. That's right. I am a 9 out of 10. I am ready. And again, they have me with, hey,

we're going to talk about shattered space. Hey, let's talk about this fall at 76 expansion. Good, good. That's, you know what I mean? Two games that I've been playing for a month now, just nonstop, back and forth.

Can't wait. Love it, love it, love it, love it. You throw in? Let's just say, state in the K-Ura. It's 9 out of 10. A fallout 76 expansion. He had a Starfield expansion.

Nine out of ten. Listen, I understand all you over there with your monocles and your ivory towers. Don't want to get down here in the mud with me and the other Xbox biggies, all right? But we're in here. We're rolling in Todd Howard's filth and we're having a great time, all right? I don't get mad when you go play Genshin, all right? When you're excited for the new street fighter, a shirt to come in. Like Genshinx is more successful than fall of 76.

Oh, yeah, a thousand percent. Yeah, no, no, no, no. Just imagine it like this way. Just imagine it like this way. What if Avengers was still going and was getting its own press conference? Here I am, everybody. I don't give me shit, I'm having a great time. 10 out of 10.

Yeah, exactly. But then you want to dream a bit, right, of like, okay, what if it was something crazy like State of the K3? What if it was, hey, here. Something crazy. Something crazy. Hey, just so we know, State of K3 has the makings of a great game. No.

Listen, I'm not a hater of State of K. Oh my God. State of K2 is good. It's just missing a couple of pieces that would have made that a great game that people would go wild for and you would love. It's good, but I don't understand the sentence something crazy like Stated K3. So stick

with me, Grubb, talk to me about it. Because my answer to that question and the explanation of something crazy is I think Stated K3 is kind of fucked, right? Where it was like, here's the teaser trailer for it everybody years ago and then guess what? Everyone's left the fucking studio and no one knows what's happening with it. And I don't expect

State of K3 to be there and I kind of wouldn't be shocked if it never happened. So for me to be crazy. clearly ever wild bucket. All right. Yeah, exactly. It would be crazy. I feel if I'm totally wrong.

And they're like, here's a playbill and it's out this summer or it's out in the fall or whatever. I just, I don't see that happening. Rumors are there zombies kind of like walking in undead labs right now? It's the same way for me.

I think the fable thing is crazy because I just don't think they're ready to have a deep dive. Let's show you, blah, blah, where are we at with that. I want to see that. I hope that happens.

Yada, yada, yada. So again, for the two things I care the most about from Xbox, awesome. You got them right over there. Look at that fucking sexy Indiana Jones Are you kidding me? I want to see that game

I'm going to get that I'm going to be excited to see about that You want to throw in the fucking rumor That there's an Xbox handheld You're talking about bringing a console on the go with you Mikey This is Greg Miller's year of Xbox What's your hype level? I'm actually at an 8 out of 10 right there I know a fair amount of things that I've been tracking

throughout the years doing Xcast with Paris So that I'm expecting about 14 items For this year alone that we've been tracking And then beyond in the 2025, I have a number of things. But the possible rumor of an Xbox handheld and then a maybe shadow dropped video game, I'm pretty jazzed up. But I'm going to be a solid eight out of ten with room for them to wow me and room for them to disappoint me. Do you want to talk about, are we going on the bullet list?

No, we're going on the bulletin. What are you giving it? I'm similar to Andy. I think I'm probably at a six. Not that I don't think it's going to be a great showcase, but I think if more, These kids are crazy. Let's start Expecast, you and me. It's like, what is X-Ban?

They not really tease that much that I'm like, oh, I can't fucking wait to see. Bro cars in Starfield. You're kidding me right now? I can't wait for the Call of Duty direct. You know, like, I think, honestly, I think the Call of Duty direct is what would take it from like a seven down to a six for me. Where it's not a Starfield direct, right? It's not an Indiana Jones direct. It's not even an avowed direct.

I'll play Call of Duty when a Black Ops comes out and I'll enjoy it for what. what it is, right? But like, that is your star player here. That is the thing that you're like, hey, you know, we're gonna do our showcase but then tune in for Africa, how long they say. Let's say 30 minutes of a college duty deep dive. I think that's exciting for a group of people,

but for like speaking to your core audience, the people that are there for the banjos of the world or for the Indiana Jones or for the Halos or for like these games that you associate with Xbox to go, we're gonna take the most common denominator. That's like doing like a FIFA showcase. Where it's like, I don't, cool, all right, cool. You're speaking to a mainstream audience,

but you're doing a whole director on this thing. All right, cool. I get why they're doing it. I get that. They had to make Call of Duty feel like an Xbox thing. I understand completely the marketing side of it. I just think for me as a player, I'm just like, all right, cool. I'm going to be sitting here for 30 minutes being like, yeah, gun shoot good. Sound good too. Yeah, but like Codd is like one of the biggest games on planet Earth, right? So like to have that. I mean, so is Genshin Impact. And like, they didn't get an impact showcase after this. You'd be like, what the fuck? I mean, they have a big win with Call of Duty. And to have that, I mean, it's not going to really love here on this table. But

like for the larger audience, I think they're going to go wild for 30 minutes of Call Duty blackup action brought to you by Xbox. That's a pretty big win in the general public size. I disagree. I don't think the general public watches this. I think the hardcore gaming audience watches these like directs in these videos, but the call of duty is going to sell a million, billion copies, regardless of whatever they show whether it has a big time here.

I think I understand where Bless is coming from because for me, it's like the known quantities don't really excite me. And if they happen to pull out a random kind of gameplay trailer for Perfect Dark, I'm still not super stoked about Perfect Dark. I'm not super stoked about, well, you know, I'm excited for a vowed and, let's see, Clockwork Revolution and even possibly Outer Worlds 2. Those are maybe the three IP that I'm like pretty excited about. but when we talk about like their heavy hitters,

I just don't really care a whole lot about perfect dark. Even I know it's like in a really, really bad state right now. I don't know if like I doubt we see any perfect dark here at all. But whatever they have cooking right there, it's not like I'm kind of like sitching to see more of whatever that is. That's my thing is I am more excited for a perfect dark. It comes out of taste, you know.

And it does come down to taste. I think with Call Duty thing, Andy kind of hits it with like the known quantity aspect of it, where whether or not it would have been, Xbox Direct, we would have gotten the Call of Duty breakdown, right? There's always, there's usually every year a call of duty event, especially for a Black Ops year. We would have had that in August. And so like, to get this as part of the Xbox showcase, I'm just like, cool, this is what we would have gotten anyway, so it's not as exciting for me. I would have preferred, yeah,

like a perfect dark thing. I know it's probably not ready or an Indiana Jones thing or something that is more, I guess, aimed at like the hardcore gamer crowd. But yeah, like, I mean, I'm, I think I am also like lowering my expectations so that way I can be wild. I am looking forward to them lift, like hitting me with surprises to then lift that hype for me. I'm at a 7-5 with this, but I can almost argue an eight. And I feel like maybe at the end of the day and after this conversation, I feel like talking to these beautiful gentlemen here, I might end at that aid. And I think that when it comes to the call of duty thing, I'm kind of in between

blessing and Andy and Mike, where I feel like them choosing to put call of duty here is a statement. And I want that, I think that they're trying to have the brand association, obviously, but I want to see them step up call of duty and to wow us to as much. as they can. I know that that's a very, very, very tough sell. And I don't think that it's necessarily going to happen. But I think them positioning it the way that they are, I feel like they are more confident in this than, oh, it's just another call of duty. Even though I know the irony of it being it's called to be Blackop Six. It's like this is a known quantity, but it's Xbox now. That could mean something different. I'm excited to positioning it here. I'm hopeful, not expecting,

but hopeful for that. And for me, I'm high on this because a lot of known quantities, we know a lot of the games that they're working on already. There's a lot of questions I want answered on dates for things, on the status of some things, and there's so much room for announcements of what teams are working on. But coming down this list, as I was making, I was telling Greg, I'm like, coming up with the list of

PlayStation, it's like, all right, cool, there's a handful of things to talk about. There's a whole bunch of third party shit to talk about might potentially would be there. Going down, Xbox's showcase, my God, there's like a hundred things that are like, oh yeah, it would totally make sense for that thing to be there.

Am I personally very excited about most of those things? No, but I know a lot of people are. And Xbox, I feel like in the last couple of years, has put together really great showcases in terms of them being entertaining and fun. And I thought last year's was great. So if we get some follow up to that and that level, just with added answers to the questions, maybe some fun announcements that I'm actually expecting. I feel like, yeah, I've won over my eight.

Paris, what about you? So I'm wearing this X-Cast shirt for a reason. Number one because of all you, jabonies, as Mike would call you, and your weak predictions that you're having right now about expectations. So blessing is lowering his expectations. I'm raising mine. Right a 9.5.

Yeah. Oh my God. Here's why. Here's why. Being serious for a second. Here's why. Obviously, just 2024, all these rumors, the speculation, business updates,

doom and gloom, just everything that's been going on with Xbox in the first half of this year. This is honestly their first opportunity to control the message. This is their first opportunity to be proactive about what they want the community, the gaming world as a whole to know what direction Xbox is headed. Activision has been fully acquired. They're being integrated now. Bethes has obviously been around for a few years. They're at 30 plus studios at this point. When you go down the list of games that they potentially could show at the showcase, The options are damn near endless of what they could show us.

They don't even have to show South the Midnight Fable or anything. They can lean into gears. They can lean into perfect dark. They can lean into unannounced things. Obviously, fallout's a big thing for them right now. There's so many things that they can do. Then you talk about the services that they have. What is the future of GamePass, right?

What is the future of cloud? I mean, there's the potential that they can integrate, not just GamePass games into cloud streaming, all Xbox games into Cloud Streaming as an example, right? When you talk about this from a hardware perspective, clearly Phil has just been hinting all over the place about this handheld and it seems like we're gonna hear something about that.

We know we're gonna get an all digital series X most likely at the showcase as well. This is their time. If they, through all the, oh, they're not selling hardware, they're not doing this. What does Xbox need to do to have a win? This is their opportunity to have that win. This is their opportunity to flex their muscle of

Xbox game studios and all the IP that they have right now. Show us what the future of hardware potentially could be for them. Show us what the future of services could be for them. So you got damn right. I'm going into this excited because it should be. It should be a 9, 9.510 showcase because they've been eerily quiet this year or, you know, in recent times. That's that's not normal for them.

Normally you see Aaron Greenberg tweeting every five minutes. about the showcase and time length and this and the other. I almost feel like let's be quiet and let the showcase speak for itself. We don't need to speak for the showcase. So yeah, I'm going in at a 9.5. I would say the quietness is probably because of the layoffs and bad news. Well, yes. But that goes into part of what I'm saying.

It's been so there's been so much bad news surrounding Xbox the first half of this year. if they're ever going to have an opportunity so to have people view the brand, view the future of what they're doing in positive light, this is the start of it. And I don't think it's just the showcase either. I think the fact that Phil's going on with Ryan McCaffrey right after,

that's their opportunity to answer some of the hard questions that they're clearly not going to address in a showcase as well. So this is the time. If ever, if they can't do it at this showcase, then when?

That's my take on. I feel like we ask that question every year, though. Right? And this is, This one's different though, blessing, because I had even tweeted that.

And of course, that was the first thing people immediately said to me. I think this one is different because they've clearly changed business strategy. It's apparent. So tell us,

tell us clear cut. What is that business strategy going to be? So people can set expectations. Is it going to be that now Bethesan Activision games are going to be multi-platform? Okay, tell us that.

Is there going to be select titles after a period of time that are going to go to other platforms? Tell us that. What is this handheld going to be? Is it going to be this hybrid device? Is it going to be layered on top of windows? You can integrate Steam in the Epic Store and all these things into it.

This is their time to tell us, good, bad, or indifferent, what their strategy is going to be. And then obviously, as a community, we can go from there. Grub. Yeah, I'm at an 8 out of 10. A lot of it will come down to execution. I think it really helps to showcase if there's surprises that just come out of completely nowhere. That's what I think of when I think of a show. I think those PlayStation showcases of dreams at E3 where, you know, they,

just one after another, big surprise. That helps you get to a 10 out of 10. That'll be difficult because Microsoft has so many, like, games already announced that they need to tell us about. So they're operating from a point of disadvantage. But 8 out of 10. And if all the games look really good, I'll move my ranking up to like a 9. That could easily happen.

I'll say, I'll set some stuff like, you know, not going to spoil anything. But the numbers I'm hearing is about two hours and about 30 games. and at least a handful of those are games that we've never heard of before. So it's like, okay, that's a good place to start. And that's kind of like, you know, if all those games hit really hard, I could easily make that eight.

And then that's where I expect if they nail the execution, we'll get up to that nine out of ten. Very, very cool. I want to take a quick word from our sponsors before we get into the nitty-gritty of a bunch of predictions. This episode, A Kind of Funny, is brought to you by Punkul, the developers behind vampire survivors. Did you know that Vampire Survivors is out on just about everything?

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I wanted to get a little housekeeping out of the way here. On Sunday, we're going to be coming in very, very hot. So we're not actually going to be live reacting to the Xbox showcase as it happens. We are all going to put our phones away.

We're not going to look at social media at all. We're not going to get spoiled on anything that Xbox talks about. But we will then live react with the chat down at 1 p.m. is the target goal. 1 p.m. Pacific time on Twitch and YouTube.com slash kind of funny games on Sunday. If there's delays, we will communicate that on Twitter.

You'll have an Instagram live shoot from the plane again. The reason we do is we're flying from L.A. from Summer Game Fest too here. There might be some issues. But anyway, plan for 1 p.m. Most of you will have watched it already. Just watch it again to see our reactions. Or if you're super, super cool, you can hold off a little bit too and watch live with us and it'll be fun. And then a little bit more things I want to promo.

Jeff, you're working on some cool stuff too down in L.A., right? Yeah, yeah. We're going to be doing our GBI at night. So you watch these guys during the day. You can watch us at night. We'll be having the couches. Paris will be on there. Paris will also be at the live show at the bellwether, live in Los Angeles.

We're doing that. Tickets are available now. It's been a lot of work, but it's coming together. And I would really love we could see some kind of funny faces out there. So you go to bit bit. Bit.ly slash GB at night to get tickets. Yeah, everybody, go do that. Now let's get in to the predictions.

I have a whole bunch in general category that I want to go through. Let's go around. Does anyone have an idea? What is the shadow drop? Real quick, we should be, like, this is a thing where this might not happen. We should definitely talk about it, but like both the shadow drop and the handheld is a new rumor. I think there's a strong chance that these things don't necessarily happen. But if there is a shadow drop, I said it on the kind of funny games daily.

I would love it to be one versus 100. And I think that would be really cool. I think the other possibility is that, Wutang game I heard about like a long time ago that's supposed to be like Diablo like. What? You really? Yeah, it's supposed to be a Diablo game where like the classes are just the guys from Wutang

and that is such a good idea. I don't know if it's still in development. I heard about this years ago. That's me just kind of like hoping and hoping there that that actually comes through. But the reality is if there's a shadow drop it's probably tower board. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said earlier, I do think the shadow drop will be the Activision stuff.

Yeah, I mean, we talked about on KOTD. I think it seemed like Jeff and chat were both aligned on like Towerborn is probably the thing, so I'll just go Towerborn also. Yeah, I think that's for me, I have no horse and race, nor do I have a real prediction, Towerborn sure, whatever. But I think it's more of the fact that I was interested to see so many

people jump to on the internet, bigger games, like big games you'd expect, I'm like, no way, right? Like we're not, none of us are expecting it to be anything. Not of consequence, I'm not trying to insult anything, but like you think of a hot-fi rush, you don't think of an Indiana Jones. Yes, for sure. I'm going to say it's Banjoo Kaz.

Yeah, he's going to put in that Angie out there. He's just saying things. I like Towerborn. I'll go with 33 Immortals. We've seen this game already been demoed and people have played that pre-Alpha. So I'm looking for 33 Immortal

possibly to be the shadow drop. Not really full Xbox tiger, but I think it is something that's an easy win for them to be like, this game's out. We've been supporting them. Go play it right now. Paris?

Yeah, I mean, I like the Tower Born theory, but I also just saw that they're still signing up people in a closed beta or whatever. So it makes me want to lean towards that. So I'll just stick with that. It's probably some type of a remaster of an existing IP from Xbox. And then, you know, they don't have to worry so much about, hey, we needed to market this ahead of time.

Just go play it now. Jumping into this next section, this is, I took this straight from our summer game fest showcase predictions. A bunch of different games that might be there, might be here, might not be anywhere. So I'm just going to name them. If anyone thinks any of these games are going to be. at this conference. Let's talk about it. Judas Hollow Night Silk Song, Wonder Woman, 007 from I. BioShok or Borerlands 4.

I think Holo Night Silk Song could easily show up there, right? This is where we're expecting it. It was at the, was the Xbox show not last year or the year before that, right? Two years. Two full years. We did see it get rated recently. I mean, if we accept that maybe there's a shadow drop and then we say maybe it doesn't have to be first party. I guess I'd have to read the rumor a little bit more closely, but

Hollow Night's Silk Song shadow dropping could potentially really happen. And I think that a lot of people would be very excited about that. But yeah, I don't think we get through this weekend without seeing Hollow Night's Silk Song, and I do think it's at the Xbox show. I think especially because of the developer direct and them having, you know, there's that icon, there's that thumbnail of a Holo Night. Here's all the games coming on in the night. And like that shit didn't happen. but like it really feels like they are closely tying themselves with Hollow Knight's Silk Song and this IP in a way that no other like platform is really doing. And yeah, I could I could definitely see some sort of news,

maybe not like a, I don't think a shadow job, but I do think that they will try to be involved somehow in the hype. I'm going to say Bioshock. I think Bioshock, that would be a nice surprise to see that show up at the Xbox showcase because I kind of think Judas Keely might have that at the summer game for the showcase. So I'll go by a shock.

That would be a nice one. Mike, what about Kingdom Hearts 4? Oh, man, come on now. Let the light guide you. I would love to see that, Jeff. Into insanity. You know, I'm betting on that of Jeff Keely even though he's lying to me,

but like, I know he's not. But, you know, we'll hope. I know we have the 007 game for Mayo Interactive. I don't know if it's on here later in the dock, but they're also working on a, Dragon game. Project Dragon. Yeah, Project Dragon.

Oh, I see it is on here. I would expect that more so, just because I believe that project is tied with Xbox. I'd be really excited about that. Yeah. Any other thoughts on the games I mentioned? I heard Wonder Woman's not doing very good.

I don't remember where I heard that, but yeah. I know you're making fun of me for saying, but have you heard that as well, or is that not even on the Jeff Grubb radar? No, you know, you hear those things sometimes, and I think what you say, was, what does that even mean? Games are in trouble all the time. I mean, Andy, you mentioned the thing about Perfect Dark,

and then immediately after that, I hear of nuts, it's doing okay. It's just some people thought it was kind of rough a few months ago, but it probably will be at the show, that sort of thing. So, yeah, it could have had troubles, and they could have figured it out because that's just game development. You hit a big one-month milestone, and it's like, ah, and now we're ready. Oh, we could be. Do we get the replaced release date?

Paris, let's start with you. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it's time. I think so. That'd be awesome. Please, that would be incredible. I just want to see more footage of that game.

I just want to live in those soaking them visuals. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, dude. It just looks so good. I do think it's time, but I also feel like it being time is just because it was announced a long time ago, but it's the type of game that it might be three years out still. You know what I mean?

I hope not. But I'm not expecting to get the release state. I just am hopeful for it. I want to know that it's still alive. I just want to sound to live. You know? Yeah. I hope they show a good one, a good trailer for it, and then put the 2025 release date on it.

Because I counterpicked this in the fantasy draft. And so I don't want to have to worry about it this year. You don't want to worry about it this year. Contraband also is like, yeah, we probably do see that. That's another one that's been two years, right? I think if any game hasn't had an update in about two years, we should expect it here, except for maybe when's the last time we saw Outer Wilds? Because Obsidian had, or Outer Worlds, excuse me.

Because Obsidian's going to have a vowed here. So will they have Outer Worlds? too as well, that'd be surprising. Whatever wild. Oh, well, for a while, it's a little beast. Mike, do you think we see the Wutang game here? I don't know about the Wutang game. I'm more, my eyes are on contraband.

Like Jeff Grub said, I don't know if that's real or not, but I would love to see it for sure. Contraband to me is up my alley, right? Coming from Avalanche, having this multiplayer heist-type vibe is like, I'm all about that. I would love to team up with friends, getting some cards, and maybe do some Fast and the Furious type moments in this.

That's what I'm looking for out of this. Let's move on to hardware. A lot of rumors going around, obviously, the rumors of the handheld that we're talked about today. There's been the rumors of the discless Xbox Series X, and then also rumors of a new controller with haptic feedback. Jeff, what are you expecting hardware-wise to get from this? Yeah, I think I'm going to plant my flag in the ground for, yeah, the discless Xbox Series S, yes, and the handheld probably not. If they listen, yeah, please boo me. They could be like, hey, we're working on something and then they flash like the silhouette of a handheld.

That could happen, I suppose. And if they did that, I would count it and that'd be great. But I don't go into this expecting to get details. Part of this is just like, I feel like that was happening. Those rumors would have been out there for a lot longer than this. That doesn't mean it's impossible, but it just seems one of those rumors that's very convenient right now and unlikely. And it just, we know that they're interested in doing a handheld. it's going to happen.

But I think the timeline feels very crunch for them to be talking about it right now. And they did talk about hardware just a couple months ago, right? When they were doing the recent apology tour, we'll talk about hardware later this year. And then we'll talk about the next gen hardware after that. It's like, man, if they were going to do something more this summer, they probably would have said something, I think. Yes. So I'm leaning more towards what Jeff is saying. But I could see a Project Scorpio type of presentation.

If you remember that where a year ahead of time, they had a bunch of talking heads talking about what it could be versus actually showing the hardware itself. So I think it would be something like that. They acknowledge the handheld is something that's real. It is something we're working on. Here's what we think it will be. And then it obviously goes away for a while before they officially unveil it. And then like you already said, the discless Xbox Series X just seems like a no-brainer at this point. This is one that will never be able to be proved.

but do we think that there will be a handheld in a bag somewhere in a hotel at SGF? No. You don't think so? No. I would love to just think that like one of these Xbox execs is like, you know, this is the new hand we're working on. But they're just like, you know, they're playing a little game in the hotel room.

I mean, I think it'll happen in the same way. Was it this last gamescom where we heard reports about Nintendo showing off the new switch to people lines? I think for sure that's happening. Yeah, actually, you're right, bless. Yeah. Yeah. You know that there. Does it get left out of a bar somewhere?

I don't think that happens. You and me dress like bell hops. We go room to room for having. Oh, you know what? Mr. Spencer, you left your bag down? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

With the apron kind of on the sides hiding in there. Mike, what do you think in hardware-wise? You know, I think Jeff and Embron and the Don Con had a really great conversation earlier this morning. But I do think if you're going to show off a handheld, you do need to come correct, right? Like, as an Xbox fanboy that I am, like, I really want this to shine. make a statement. I want something that will last me X amount of years. I hope it is not something that is kind of half-assed and just

kind of put out there to die. So I need them to really come correct. I don't think this is now the time. I do think we see the next mid-gen update of an Xbox Series X. Do we think the Xbox Series X is any better? Is it just discless and white? Just discolus and white. There might be more storage, right?

This is the one when you make two terabytes, right? You put two terabytes on there instead of one terabyte, that sort of thing. Fair for the environment, too. Yeah, they'll talk about that sort of thing. It'll have a smaller motherboard. They'll have the shrunk die process, so it'll be more efficient. It'll run cooler. But as far as the way that it outputs games, you're not going to see a difference.

It'll be like that the Xbox 1S, right? Was that what that was called? Yeah. Moving on then just to Xbox first party stuff. Let's start with the big one. Gear 6. Do we actually expect to get it at this show? And what do they call it?

Gears of War six. I think it's just going to straight if you called Gears of War six. They might put a subtitle on it, but I think they go back to the of war. So that's something you care about. There you go. Yeah, I agree.

Gears of War Six. And I do think it'll be here. No, anything's, I mean, like just continuing the story. Yeah. Yeah,

we had to finish the trilogy here. Yeah, yeah. Can you imagine? That shit's going to look in Unreal 5. Oh my goodness. Mike, if it wasn't continuing the story, what would you want from it? I really loved what they did with Hive Busters, Jeff, where they had the one-off,

really exploring something new. I think they did a fantastic job with that. Actually, that's a must play on the Xbox library. But I would, Jeff, personally, I did not really vibe with this, you know, start of the trilogy. So if they were to take a hard left turn and get out of it, I would be totally fine with that. Maybe go back, relive a Marcus days. I think everybody's really tied to that original OG4. So if they go back to the croup and just find a different way to tell a story, I would be all about that, Jeff.

I would also hope they ditch the semi open world thing that they did in five. I just don't feel that landed. I would really love to see them just go back to the roots of the original. Like you said, Gears of War and just go back to that gameplay style. Are they making a Hell Divers style game and gears? That would be incredible. Just all the freaking hive coming out of the ground.

It's their version of Hell Divers. Think about it. Horde. Horde divers? Yeah. There you go. You want it, everybody. Yeah, I think there's a chance that they do take that hard left turn, Mike,

and they either, you know, an extremely distant sequel, like, oh, 100 years later, or an extremely, like, before time, like, prequel, something along those lines. Do we get a Gears Collection? And if we do, is it coming to PlayStation? Mike? I think the Gears Collection would be a big win. We saw that with Master Chief Collection to have all of those games kind of bundled under one umbrella that you can now play on this next-gen hardware without having to

go through your closet and find everything. Gears has that lineage. I mean, we saw Andy and Ray jumping back into gears and like exploring this together. It is a game franchise that is beloved. It has a lot of great stories to tell. And also has some wicked dope multiplayer with Horde mode and more.

So if you could put that all in one package and also possibly sell that out to PlayStation and other consoles, I think that would be a massive win. But do you think they mention anything about, like, they don't say the word PlayStation on stage, do they? Like, no.

No, I highly doubt that. Coming everywhere. Would it just be, yeah, would it be one of those, all platforms or whatever? I don't, I mean, I understand what Paris is saying earlier in the show about, like, what is going to be the messaging for the business going forward? And do we talk about multi-platform type releases? But like, with how hardcore the Xbox fan bases, I feel like that would kind of just be like a little knife in the ribs again. Yeah.

You know, to your point, I don't think they're clearly going to do some kind of multi-platform. strategy. We know that. But I don't think you, I don't think you badge any, any of these games with PlayStation on it. I think you say day one on game pass and leave it at that. I also, can you legally do that? Like as Xbox, could you be like, oh, and this game is also coming to PlayStation on your Xbox showcase stage? Like, I wonder if there's any guidelines around that. Because I, I would imagine that we get a game announcement of, yeah, Gears Collection or for any game that is coming multi-platform. It happens on a blog post afterwards where it is. This is America blessing. Freedom of Speech. You could say PlayStation wherever you want. Yeah. But I don't think you do that.

on a blog post afterwards, not on the actual stage. I think they make the rules of whatever they want to do, but I don't think that they would do it for like goodwill purposes. Unless that's the direction they're going, but I don't think it is. I don't think it is. But like that would be the definitive we're going this direction. Grub, any thoughts on a Gears collection? I've never heard anything about a Gears collection.

That doesn't mean anything. It could happen. I think it's a good idea. You know, the problem that Xbox has is they have these backward compatibility layers to make games look very good, so it's kind of hard to sell them again. Where you could do that is, it's on PlayStation now, or, you know, even putting it out of like,

and we made it so it runs really good on Steam deck, so go get it on PC again. Or properly on Steam at all, because after playing Gears of War I for the first time, like, I think it's only available on the Microsoft store, and it's not, you know, it's just not the most player-friendly thing to buy a game on the Microsoft store anymore.

Unless it's like an Xbox game, Game Pass PC app that's like you can go get that there because the Gears trilogy is the old gears games are still not available on the Xbox Game Pass PC app. Mm hmm pairs. So if I can give my uninformed opinion on this I don't think it's a collection. I think you remake the original Gears of Warren on Real 5 and yet it's on PlayStation. Do they say PlayStation on stage and then get rated by the police? blog post later.

Yeah, exactly. blog post later. Do we see double finds next game? What do you define as C? Do they talk about it? Like is it announced? I don't think so, but I could easily see.

We have so many studios doing so many amazing things and there's a package that has logos and just gameplay of something you see going on there, but not like, here it is. Here's Tim Schaefer. He's talking about X, Y, and Z. Last year's developer director just really kind of threw off

any expectations that I have for what these things can be. Like, if you were to have asked anybody at this table, are you going to see Indiana Jones at a summer game fest presentation or at a random developer direct in the fall or whatever? Like, you would have gone with the former. And so, like, I feel like now anything's on the table with these developer directs are like, yeah,

maybe they mention Double Fines next game and as a developer direct whenever that happens again, here's a first glimpse of the gameplay. Like, I don't know, I just kind of like threw off it. What I expected these could be, you know? Fable, let's talk about it. God, yes. Is it here?

Do we get a release date? No release date. I'm hot and cold on if it's there. I'll say for prediction wise, does it? What if you have more stuff to say, though, outside of it, you know? What if you have new games to announce? Yeah, I say no to both. Yeah.

I think it'll be there just based on hearing that there's going to be 30 games at the show. And it feels like, they can fill that out with a bunch of stuff. But I think it does show up there. I agree that no release date. I think that's one you just, you had that gameplay showcase last year. I thought it looked okay, but I was like, I don't understand what I'm actually doing to play the game. Could you show that a little bit more?

I think they want to take that opportunity, show that off here, and I welcome it. Hey, real quick, too, sorry, Jeff, in your background in front of the PlayStation's sacred symbols there, is that one of the new Ghostbuster PKK meters? It's not a new one. It's like one of the cheapest ones you can get. Oh, no, I'm well aware of it. Yeah, I mean, they put it out. Sick, man.

You are so sick. They put out for obviously, yeah, afterlife is when they originally dropped it. But Frozen Empire saw a few more on store shelves. Yeah, I love it. That's the Hasbro-Mouthamount from 2019. Mishamishire. Andy, you say Fable has to be there. Like, how strongly do you stand by that?

Super strongly. I think you need to show your Xbox audience that there is a big single-player game on the horizon. There are multiple big single-player games to look forward to, and this is going to be one of them. Showcase how the visuals are. You know, I thought visually it looked. really impressive, even though that was just like a super early look at it. That extremely vertical, slicey, of course. But yeah, show me why I should want a Game Pass subscription

or show me why I should want an Xbox hardware. And a handheld, you know what I'm talking about? And a handheld, yeah. Yeah, I think we just need some sort of update on it. About it's time for a date, right? Yep. It has to be. That's the one for me. I'm like, it has to be there.

We have to be getting a date. And it has to be this year. I think we get a window. I don't know if we get like a... I could see winter 2024. I think we get a lot of windows like that. Yeah. Why I put specific dates on things these days?

Just say fall, winter, that sort of thing. I just think we get a date this year. Like, and I think that ends up happening for a vowed. Does it look better this time? I took it on the chin last time with how people felt it looked in how... I think it looks like a bad looks. That's what the game is. Yeah.

I think it's going to look like a modern obsidian game. Like, you know, they may show other glimpse. of what the gameplay can be because I think they heard a lot of that feedback from last time of I was kind of awkward talking to this one dude and maybe that ability looked odd and maybe the lighting wasn't great in this situation

when you're fighting these random enemies but yeah I think we're going to see other glimpses of like here's other ways to impress the audience with you know more spells more magical things to make this hardware look you know this is why our game is premium Outer Worlds 2 Is it time Andy

I don't know I'm kind of like just worried about that game in general I don't know why I have no reason to be I have a reason to be worried about all games and all developers nowadays but like it just feels like

after that first glimpse it's been kind of radio silence a lot of games do that I just got a weird vibe there's weird energy in the air Tim weird energy weird energy everybody do you agree blessing I mean I think

avowed is probably what that weird energy is, right? I think it's all, let's focus on this. Let's get this out and then afterwards. Let's focus on our world's too. Now, the other scenario, they cancel it, you fallout instead. Right? Like if they're like, no, but that's just like, actually, yeah, let's let them work on it. And then obsidian's like,

fuck yeah, we could do another fallout. I don't think you do fallout and outer worlds. Those are very similar types of games. I would love that from the bottom of my heart, but there's no way. I think just the pride, right, Obsidian would have. They would mutiny, right? They were like, all, cool, cancel.

Let's do what they can do this. Yeah. Outer Worlds is like fully extracted from a private division now, right? Outer Worlds, too, was always going to be Xbox published. Do we, can we remember that? I can't remember for sure. I don't remember that, but I am private division ain't doing much anymore. Right, yeah, exactly.

That's what I was like. Maybe that's the stink you're feeling, Andy, is the first game was private division. So, uh, Grover, I want to stick with you for this one. Perfect dark. Yeah, please. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect dark sounds like it should be there.

Yeah. Really? Yes. Yes. Yes. So, listen, I think it was one of those things. Like game development's hard and people working on that have their opinions. But these things do come together over time.

And it sounds like we'll get, you know, like a real look at this thing. And I'm hopeful. I don't know why I have such a soft spot in my heart for Perfect Dark. Of course, I got on N64. I really liked it. I have no love for Perfect Dark Zero. But I'm like, yeah, bring back Perfect Dark, make it a great game. I really, really want this.

Honestly, if Perfect Dark looks good, that's the showcase for me for some reason. That's what makes it at 9 out of 10. If Perfect Dark can look like Doom, like their version of we're going to make a Doom-style first-person shooter game. Yeah, it was like Doom 2016 levels. Yeah. That's a good barometer. Yeah, Jeff, because I actually got a question for you on that, because something I keep saying, I want to make sure I haven't been speaking out of ignorance.

But I agree with you about Perfect Dark. If anything, open to show with it. literally kick off the showcase with Perfect Dark. But didn't Matt Booty say to you last year on the couch, they could have shown it last year or the creative director wanted to show it last year and they just had so much stuff that, you know, they're holding off? He did say that. Yes, absolutely.

So it's like, again, I think that there's such a messiness to these things and showing stuff off. Like, what does that mean? That had been another cinematic thing. I think this year, if they show it off, it's gameplay and it's everything that we want it to be. so especially after saying that last year. And yeah, this is what Crystal Dynamics has been working on.

I think we're going to get the fruits of the labor. I'm genuinely surprised by this. I thought the perfect dark was not going to be there. By bless, what about you? Yeah, I mean, I think the updates we've gotten. I think maybe it was Jeff that had clarified that like, I remember what, probably a month ago, you're like, yeah, it seems like it's in a rough place, but then you're like, yeah, like.

Talk to more people and that changed. Yeah. And so I could see it being here. I think it'd be cool. I don't know if we get any like window or even a 2025 or anything like that. But I think for a game that you announced, what, how long ago, four years? It feels like it's been a forever since we got the announcement of a perfect dark. It was before the Xbox Series X came out, right?

It got announced. Yeah. And so I think you do want to update people on that, remind them that it exists, give people hope that it exists. I'll tell you what. Just give me some new images that we can use for thumbnails because goddamn it's real hard. Yeah, using the same trailer over and over again for the only B-roll we have. this trailer was December 10th, 2020.

Game Awards. Game Awards 2020, yeah. Because it was Hellblade the year before than this. Clockwork Revolution. This is the Bioshock like one from In Exile. Mike, do we see it? Yeah, I think you could see a small update from this. I'm not expecting a 2024.

This is 2025 and beyond for me in my list of things. But I think the in exile team is working on something really special over there. And I think they're probably excited to show a little glimpse of it, but I don't think it's game time here for us anytime soon on this. My mind keeps going back to Grubb earlier saying, well, there's 30 games. So like that, I just keep on thinking like, well, odds are that we're going to see a lot. But, you know, again, this.

We got Xbox. We got Activision. We got Bethesda. Like 30 games ads up quick. Yeah, you could put 22 games in a sizzle reel. My thing with this one is that, yeah, we saw it reveal last year. It looked really cool. But me and Jeff Grubb were talking about this before this, where Xbox.

is so just big in terms of the amount of studios, the amount of projects and the amount of things that you would feasibly have to show at something like this. And I feel like they've not really built a cadence of, oh, and you can expect to see this again next year. I feel like it's always, no, we got new shit to show you because we always have new shit to show you now. I feel like the one of the only games we really had that cadence with are things like Hell Blade 2 that we saw multiple game awards in a row. But yeah, like something like clockwork, I think it could be a really nice contender to show up every year and go, hey, here's a new update on clockwork.

This choice should care. But I don't know if they've built that cadence with their first party yet. South of Midnight from Compulsion. This one I'm really excited for. I'm not expecting to see it though. I feel like it skips this year.

This is the really cool like the one in the South like semi stop motion kind of art design that looks really, really rad. I'm very excited for it. But yeah, I don't think we see it. Do any of you disagree? I think that sounds right. Yeah, I'm with you, Tim.

But see, that kind of, just goes back to what I was saying earlier. I don't think any of those, those games that we saw last year, we're going to see this year unless they're about to come out. Then I think you obviously want to show it. If there's still a ways off, give room to exactly what Blessing is talking about, all these other games and studios that they have.

Give them a spotlight at this showcase instead of repeating what you did last year. And there's like just a logistic issue there where making assets for these shows is a time-consuming thing. Even if it's a CGI trailer, it's like it's months of work. It's two months of work almost at minimum. If you're going to build something that has gameplay in it, it's significantly longer than that. You can't do that every year for every project. So I think Paris is right.

If a game is still ways off, let it rest, come back to it when you're actually ready to release the game. Also, I got to get going here pretty soon. I got to go play Dicatana because I have abusive coworkers. So I guess I'll open it up real quick. Is there anything else you guys want me to talk about before I go? Yeah, I mean, let's spoil something, you piece of shit, ruined like you always do. No, I mean, just Jeff, while we have you, we have Bethesda, we have Activision,

do you have anything you want to say about those things? Bethesda Activate, like, for those specifically, it's like, I think that you're right. It's like those are the kinds of things. We'll get some more backwards compatible stuff. They'll have some games to announce, but it's going to be most of the stuff that we've heard about. I think there will be around five games that we haven't heard about before.

And that's from across all of their verticals. What those are, I really don't know. I think we'll probably see some like familiar faces on stage, like some popular voice actors, I'll say. I won't spoil it beyond that. I think you might see at least, at least see their names. And then Dragon Age,

I was teasing this one. Dragon Age, uh, I, I joke that Dragon Age dreadwolf won't be there and will be there. Dragon Age dread wolf probably won't be there. Dragon Age will be there. If that makes sense,

that's as much as I'll tease. There's really, We're going to. Let's go. Inclusion is coming back. Yes. Well, thank you so much, Grub. One more time.

What do you want to pimp out here? Yeah, hey, come to the live show. Bellwether. Tickets are on sale, bit.ly slash GB at night. Check us out. It's going to be a lot of fun, especially if you're in the area. But even if you're not, if you get a VIP ticket, you get a lifetime of GB premium. If you get the regular ticket, you get a year of GB premium.

So go pick that up. Take advantage of the deal. Thanks, guys. It was awesome talking to you. I can wait to see you. Excited to be on the show Saturday, Jeff. Yeah. See you.

John Maloy in the chat says Annie just went to a 7 I went to a 12 bro like Yeah Like oh my god A Dragon Age Origins remake or rematch Anything give that game some love It's so incredible

And it looked like garbage back in the day You know what I mean Like I am so excited to see that game If we can see that game with a new coat of paint Holy cow Get out of town Oh that's awesome for you Moving on from that we got

Do we see Everwild? No No. Do we ever see Ever Wild ever again? I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think so. Yeah.

I'm, I, this really bums me out because I, I don't want to put this energy into there to add to the other bad energy that I've been feeling, Tim, but this, this whole situation reminds you of like, um, hey, uh, squad who made Firewatch, uh, Valve is buying you and Camposanto and now we're going to have you work on other Valve properties or toys for Bob with Crash. hey, go work on Tony Ha, or go work on Call of Duty. Baccarious, yeah. This worries me a lot with the squad that was working on Everwild.

And I wonder if there's been some shufflings in those, you know, offices. Hey, we need help over here on this. We need help on perfect darn. We need help on this. Can you shut down rare? No. Oh, you're right. I forgot they had to see a thieves.

And I think there's a dedicated to people that wants to see Everwild come out and actually do good. And I think we will eventually see Everwhile. Is it this year? No. But like it's, they've held on to it for a long time. And I think they will continue to hold on to this. But Sea of Thieves floats that boat. They don't have to worry about anything at all. See of Thieves is a killer live service game.

And they already have season 12 through 14 already announced slated. Like we're moving forward. The next big thing would be their next big tie-in, right? And we all hope it's one piece. Do I have to watch the one through eight to understand it? I mean, hey, let's move on to that, actually, Mike. See if Thieves, what are you expecting? I mean, like I said, we've already seen C of Thieves 12 through 14 with the seasons and kind of the updates of the sandbox and the gameplay that we'll see.

I think the biggest announcement that would get more of the general audience type is some sort of tie-in. They've done a really good job with that. But I do think, hey, we're going to see, hey, this is the new things we're adding to the sandbox. There's a lot of cool tools that can be used. There's a lot of new gameplay mechanics that people will vibe with. And it's just a great game. And it's now even on more consoles, right, to get more people excited for it. So, yeah, I think we get a nice little general season 12 through 14 update.

Greg, we talked a little bit of the start of the show about state of decay. Yeah, we did. Do we see it? I don't think so. Again, my, just what it sounds like in the scuttlebutt and people leaving. And I just, I don't know where that. I don't know, period. But I right now, educated guessing, don't know where that game is in terms of development.

And I don't think that it's ready to show something else right now. I think you wait until you are nearly ready for the beta, nearly ready for the release. and you put it out then, not just do another. Let's check in on this game. We showed you a trailer for it forever ago. It's a great comment from Wilder, a state of delay. There was a lot of Never Wilds earlier.

I liked that too. Does anyone disagree? Do we think we see State of K3? Never mild? Paris, do you think we ever play State of K3? Do you think that? I think we do play it, but to your point,

I don't think they show it again until it's ready. I think we see it. Sorry, not here, but I don't think the game's canceled. Yeah. I think it exists. Yeah. No, it has such a good groundwork.

Like I said, right? You're currently loving hell divers, right? This PVEE shared sandbox. That's what state of the K is, right? And if we can get this shared world that is always online where you can jump in when I'm not offline, when we're not tethered together, they have the base of something that's really, really good

and what the online community seemed to tend towards right now. I think they got a hit on their hands if they can nail this. They have had some issues over at the studio before, so we'll see if they can get back on track. But they got something there. They do. I think there's also a great barometer that a game like Dead Island 2, which has sold 3 million units.

Solo, what out? I haven't played it. I heard it wasn't that great. I think that's a good kind of game for them to look at it and see. Like, we could have some of that chunk as well, right? Especially if you are trying to implement, you know, State of the K is very much, I know, Dead Island 2 had some, you know, multiplayer.

You could play with friends, stuff like that. but I know state of decay is very much like this is kind of an online multiplayer world. I really think they could go for a chunk of that audience. And they've seen that you can have success in this world while still making like a zombie game that kind of looked. Dead Island, too, to me, looked like dead on arrival when it arrived. And it, like, it did well, shockingly. Me and Beans and Mike, we got it covered. They were in there.

L.A. Forsa. Horizon. Six. Is it there? And is it Japan? baby. No. We're still focusing on

Forts of Motorsports. Let's not forget about that right now. So we will get updates for motorsport. I don't think it's time. Playground, I'm sure they have plenty of people working on different things, but it is fable right now for them.

And then probably next year, we talk about Forts of Horizon. It's not time yet. I think five. I think five has been so successful for them that there's no urgency to rush in six. Like six might even be next gen at this point, if you ask me.

Moving on from that then. Dead Rising Remake. I brought this up last year as just one of my predictions. I don't think it's this year necessarily. I do think we will get that at some point though. And talking about these zombie type games that could like hit the right market. If Xbox wanted to own it a bit more like that,

I do think we'll get this eventually. But maybe not here. Yeah, I mean, it does seem like an easy win to kind of try to port a game that doesn't require the most amount of, you know, this isn't going to be a gigantic budget project. You don't need to have a gazillion resources on it, but it'll still sell because it's a very beloved franchise,

very beloved game, and if it's going to look even better and look incredible with updated visuals and lighting engines, I think that's a really solid win for them. Yeah, it's an interesting one. The original is so special, right? But you can play that with backwards compatibility, and it's already elevated to the point right now

where it is playable and it's fun, right? It is older when it comes to gameplay. But I mean, if we're going Dead Rising, we probably should do like a new reboot of its, right? Probably still in the mall to hit those touchstones. But I do think if I was going to do that, I want something brand new to really showcase it. I don't think we go back.

But it is a beloved franchise on Xbox. It had multiple games there, but they're all playable right now and they look good. Very good point. Do we get a Minecraft spinoff, a dungeons, a legend, something like that? No. I don't think those.

two did all that well. I think they were loved by some, but I don't think they hit the mass audience like they wanted with a Minecraft or a Roblox. I don't think they were looking for it to be that big, but I don't think now is the time to announce another one of those. I think we've tried and probably

we'll move on from that right now. Makes sense. What was the second version? Dungeons and legends. Legends. It was an RTS. And I want to start with you with this one, Paris. Are the words banjo or kazoo? we uttered.

Well, I already curse. So I won't curse again. But yes, please, God, just do it. Just acknowledge that you're doing something with it. Please. I mean, and that's obviously from a personal standpoint, but I even just think as far as, and we've talked about this on the X-Cast a million times, that Xbox does not have that family-friendly IP that is similar to an Astrobot or a Mario.

They've had a few attempts at it, but it's just simply not landed. one that's just been sitting on the shelf that you could utilize. Phil did acknowledge last year that hey, banjo fans, we hear you. So you would imagine there's got to be something. So yeah, I'm fingers crossed. We at least get an announcement here. I really don't think so, man. I want it. I don't think so. I know. You talking like family friendly. I just immediately think of this is kind of off topic, but I just, do we think Xbox tries to compete with PlayStation at all when it comes to TVs and movies.

Let's get our IP with Netflix. Halo show. You know what I mean? Well, like, I'm when I think of this, I think of like the fact that we had like a random Ratchet and Clank movie several years ago. It tries to compete as such an interesting

question is such an interesting definition where I could see they're still going to do entertainment properties. Are they going to make a big deal of an Xbox studios and this is the head of it and they're overseeing all the L.A.'s. I don't see that being the they do it. Yeah, I mean, we have Halo. You have fallout already,

which is under the umbrella now. Yeah, you're right. Of course, you look at gears of war. We'll be on the way eventually here. You'll get some sort of gears, uh, entertainment property there. You have plenty of IP to draw from if you really wanted to start doing stuff like that. I guess when I think of competing with PlayStation, I think of how PlayStation will just randomly announce, hey, we're doing a gravity rush movie. It's like, what game?

You know what I mean? Like, do we see a random kind of, did we get a recore movie? I don't think we get that at this show, or these type of showcases, but I mean, they are doing it. I mean, like, Halo,

like jokes aside, like Paramount Plus, they have that fallout, obviously, on Amazon. And I feel like with the family-friendly conversation, it's like, now that they have Activision,

they have crashed, they have Spyro, like that. They have so much. Oh, yeah, the Minecraft movies coming up. Yeah, they got that stuff.

I just don't think they're going to, like, put a branding to it. Barrett, you have tears of the kingdom footage up right now. Oh, shit, my bad. Is it time for Blinks the Time Sweeper? No.

No? No? No. Just let it go. Oh, man. I do appreciate it in your run of show, though. You really highlighted and capitalized time. Yeah, yeah.

It's important. Yeah. People need to know. People need it. It's not time. But one day it will be. Mike, is anything Halo shown? That's what I put down in the category that says big, biggest misses.

It will be Halo. I don't think there's anything. I mean, I'm sure there's some sort of live service update that they will give us. But I don't think there's anything halo of substance that will get me the hard Halo fan excited like I need to be like I want to be. If it's a Halo Wars, then I'd get really excited. They have a lot of great updates out right now. There's a lot of awesome user-generated content.

They have a zombies mode. They have a battle royal mode. They have stuff in there thanks to Forge. But I mean, what we're missing is a single-player campaign expansion that we want that we know we're not going to get. So I undermine that's the biggest miss of the year. We'll be Halo. So that's all the Xbox stuff, unless somebody has something that I

I haven't thought about. Let's move on then. To the good stuff. The good stuff, Greg. All right. Let's talk Indiana Jones and the great circle. We're getting to release date. Right.

Have to. Like an actual locked in date, date for this one. That feels right because we already got the window. This year. Yeah. Running out of time for this year. Totally. You assume this is the game's big moment, right, Mike?

You're going to come out. You're going to show it. You're going to remind everybody how great it is. I would say Jeff Grubbs tweet teasing a voice cast, right? we already know Troy Baker and stuff like that. You assume somebody else is joining him on stage or them on stage talking about this. And I would say, yeah, you end with an actual date. This is a big moment.

Put your flag down. This is what our fall looks like. And we're excited to be a part of it. I, my hope for this, I'm very excited for this game. My hope for it is it's before December. Like, I feel like the talk has been this is going to be a December game. And something about that, I'm just like, don't do that guys. Yeah.

That's not going to be good. Really? Yeah. That's a problem. December games just don't do well. It's just I look. over the list. It's like, you have 14 games that I've tracked that are all for

2024. You are jamming in a lot, right? I feel like end of the year, this is the cap. This is the touchstone of like, we've ended a good, successful year. Here's Indiana Jones to put the flag on it. To put it out after Black Friday and all that stuff. Exactly. That's my point. For an IP that's this big,

that is this well known in terms of the mainstream, I think you want it on Friday or Black Friday shelves. So when people are shopping and trying to get that deal and pick up the Xbox and X amount of games for this amount of money off, you go and get it, yeah. And people in the chat saying Smash Ultimate as an example,

that is definitely an outlier to games releasing December. Indiana Jones as a game franchise does not have the same level of Smash Brothers. Yeah, I mean, Indiana Jones, right, you're talking kind of, and I wouldn't agree

what numbers would be wrong with me, right, of like Avatar, right? And Ubisoft put that Avatar game out to die in December and it did what it did and no one's ever fucking talked about that avatar game again. I don't think...

That was December? Yeah. I don't think that Xbox, Bethesda, machine games look at this like Ubisoft looked at Avatar. Like this is something I think they want to be, hey, we can do the uncharted thing. We can do the narrative game thing. We can do in open world swash, buckling an adventure. And I also think they want the attention of we did it right. We're doing a real Indiana Jones thing.

And you want that EW interview that is Harrison Ford talking to Troy Baker, even though again, Harrison Ford isn't in the game. But he is Indiana Jones. and you have to imagine they're going to throw a lot of money at it at some point just to say something about this game. And if I could throw one other thing in there, wouldn't they want this to at least be eligible for the key lease? I'm not saying it's going to win anything, but you never know. You'd think so. You know, Troy Baker's performance or something like that gets nominated. Yeah.

So it's talked about. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I think that all of that makes a lot of sense. And I think on top of that, like the nomination, this would also be if I'm, you know, talking on my own, my own, my own. monologue here of what I just said. Trying to get Harrison Ford, too, the Keeleys would make a lot of sense as well, right? To have something come out there and have him come on stage, Al Pacino-wise, to give it out.

It's him and Troy, right? You get that moment that was Pedro Pascal and Ellie from the show, whose name is escaping me alongside Ashley, alongside Troy, and unite them on the stage, right? Unite Harrison Ford and Troy Baker out there on the stage. That'd be a dope fucking moment. Now, granted, yeah, it could be a dope moment. That's also like the game just came out today or come out tomorrow or wherever, so it could still be a December thing.

Or it could be a moment that happened to. that next key, Keele's because maybe this game doesn't actually come out this year. Yeah, that's obviously always possible in our video game world. I think the fact that they said so early that this is coming this year, I think they're incredibly confident they're going to make this year. And I think, again,

in a year that is filled with bad news for Xbox and even the current climate of, you were a little bit away from it, but we're not forgetting all these closures. You don't want more bad news like that. You want to come out and deliver on this and deliver on the promise of what you hope. a AAA fucking awesome Indiana Jones game is.

And don't forget, you could have him come out with Anthony Mackey, not only talk about Indiana Jones, but promo cap, which would be like two months after that. Sorry, what did I miss? We're talking about Indiana Jones talking about that, talking about where it comes out, and then into what a game awards would look like. It started we would try to get it nominated for game awards,

then would you have Harrison for that game awards? Cool, cool, cool, cool. I was like, Anthony Mackey, an idiot of jones. I don't know about that. Wolfenstein. Nope. Nope.

Don't worry about that. Dead franchise. On ice for quite some time, if not ever. Just like dishonored. New doom. 100% yeah. I mean, right,

back to blessings where there's smokes, there's fires. I think that's a Timberian thing. Okay, sorry. Well, you said it at this show. I've heard it around kind of funny enough that we're going to commit to this. That's what we're going to say.

We're committing, baby. Anyways, though, yeah, of course, right? I think this has been rumored and, you know, where there's smokes, there's fires. So many smokes out there. So many smokes. Smoke what you got. Wait, wait. Can we rewind for just a second?

Number one, Wolfenstein's not dead. How dare you? And second, why not? Why can't that get teased? Wolfenside? This is another game that machine games is working on. Yeah. And I'm saying that in like a way that, like, I fucking hate saying it.

Wolfensstein, too, is like, one of the best single player's stories in the last a decade, but like, that franchise didn't do well for them when they rebooted it in numbers-wise. I say, like, under the kind of banner now of Xbox and them attaching that studio now to a big IP, maybe in a way to, like, protect that studio, at least for a little bit. I just, I don't know, man. It reminds me so much of how dishonored has been treated with Arcane of, like, Dishonored also did not do well. They had to move on from Dishonor to make something sexy, which is why we got a game in death loop. I feel like they're just a little misguided Barrett on this.

I feel like Indy is going to do better than Wolfensstein. I've been saying that for a long time, but I don't think Wolfensine's anywhere close to dead. I just also think we've gotten a lot of Wolfenstein in the last decade. And like it being on a little bit of a break, I don't think is assigned as the franchise. It's been seven years since Wolfenstein too. Yeah, that's not that long for game franchises when there's the amount that we're talking about. But again, in that seven years, they've been focused on Indian Jones.

There's also Youngblood. We don't acknowledge Youngblood. We don't acknowledge Youngblood. Come on to us. But we acknowledge it in terms of dev time. It's not like they've been working on indie for the last seven years or whatever. And they did a VR game or did somebody else do that VR game? Somebody else I think did the VR game.

But yeah, I think Doom is going to be one of the stars of the show. I think you spend some time on Doom. I imagine that is 2025. But I really hope it is, again, I figure if I said it earlier here or if I said it on KFD, but I mentioned like I hope they kind of get back to the Dube. of it. I love Doom Eternal, but there was something about Doom 2016 and how that, the way they revealed the gameplay for that game is like seared into my memory. It was that same, I think, 2015 E3 where they showed off fought for, did all that stuff. And I think they showed off

to Sonder 2. The Doom showcase during that was fucking metal, where it was them showing off all the violence. It was them showing off like the high energy, the high octaneess of it. I hope they get back to that. I hope they show how, like, whatever updated like engines or whatever updated visuals they got for this thing. I hope they show us fucking like tearing into demons and all this shit. And I am very curious about the setting, right? Like this was the one that originally originated as Doom Year Zero. I forget what the new name for it is, but like Doom in the fucking medieval times.

But yeah, I'm excited to see what they do with that. I hope they still keep that same energy though of like this is fucking violent. This is demonic. This is going to scare your parents. I just want to say like the amount of games we've talked about, they're like, oh yeah, we definitely think it'll be here. We're talking about like Gear Six. We're talking about new Doom.

this showcase is about to be awesome. Like I feel like just that stuff alone of just the known, quote unquote, known quantities. Like we're talking about big games that we're expecting to get new announcements here. I think that's really rad. Moving on to some updates. Oh, Paris. Go for it. 9.5.

I mean. Way. Blade, Arcane. Do we see anything? No. No. No. I wish, but no.

We're not there yet. Absolutely. Now, Greg, I'm going to just kind of toss this over to you. we got Starfield shattered space. Fall of 76 Skyline Valley. What do you got? I think these are going to be... This is the eldest scrolls online.

No, 100%. I mean, you're not incorrect. I mean, we can make that joke, obviously, and I definitely you can make that joke about Starfield. I think fallout 76 has been having a moment. I don't have the numbers in front of me, right? But it has been the after the show, the fallout franchise, saw this many players concurrently.

Then 76 had this many concurrence. And then it's been in the last week or and a half. they put out some stat of like the the numbers they've had, which are outrageous. So many people have come back to 76 or come to 76 for the first time. And it kind of is, there's a little bit of dip, I think,

between the show and here, but I think people have been committed enough to go in to be like, oh, the game's fun or whatever, and then to get to Skyline Valley, right? Like devs dropped a dev diary of like, hey, here's an overview of it. Barrett, I linked it in there

if you want to throw it up for B-roll of, hey, this is what's happening. This is what it looks like. And it's going to add this. And it's, you know, expeditions have been a big part of Fallout 76 of going to the pit, or leaving the actual thing. This is expanding the map.

And as somebody who, for the last month and a half, month has been, oh, this is Starfield. Can I see Fall at 76 Skyline Valley? Yeah. You've been jumping back and forth. Sorry.

It's okay. For this one being, have I? I don't think so. I thought I was in 76. I mean, I thought we were talking about Starfield. But I pivoted just,

it doesn't matter. This is not good content. Fall on 76. They're expanding the map with this right. And I think, again, as somebody who's been playing both, Starfield and fallout for this month and a half period pretty much exclusively with little dips here and there. Like,

coming to fall 76 to 46 to fall 76 to 46, what I love so much much about 76, even though I think Starfield's a better nuts and bolts game, is the idea of what's over the ridge, what's over there, let's walk around, let's, yeah,

I can fast travel between spots, but then it behooves me to run between things and see what's up and go on and check, check out their crazy little story or the little quest or the little thing. the idea of that map getting bigger, having more stuff in there, having a whole bunch of new polished quests. And again, the learnings of years and years and years

of what 76 has gotten right. And of course, the numerous things that's gotten wrong, that makes me incredibly excited. As a person who was there for the beta and the launch, who didn't love it and stepped away, came back for a weekend with Bless,

and now is something like 70 hours plus into 76? Like, I'm excited for more content, new content, updated enemies, updated quest. new things to run out there and go off and do and explore for, right? So go ahead, please. It's not a secret.

I played it last week. Break the embargo and tell me everything. Brace the embargo. It's not a secret. But next week we'll have a lot to talk about for sure. Okay, good. On 76. And so then, yeah, like, again, why I'm excited, of course, is this is just a conference

that lines up with what I've been obsessed with recently, right? So that's great with 76. Excited to play more with Mike. Excited to play more with Joey. I don't think we'll get Nick back. but to jump to Starfield Shattered Space, right? Another one that was, hey, they put out the video that we had that Bearer, it's going to show again of here's the update, 60 frames a second, yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then at the end of this, they go, all right, and of course, shattered space and vehicles and stuff like that. You know, we jumped in, me and Mike, and this is right when I was obsessed with 76, jumped in to do the 60 frames a second patch and give a test and yada, yeah. And in that stream, I was excited to return to Becky Lynch, my character. I was excited to get going. But I was like, oh, man, I wish I could play Fallout because I've been playing so much fallout. But I did this.

And then I wanted to do the review of Starfield with the updated stuff. So I went home and played that night. And playing that night, kickstarted the addiction of Starfield again, where I played Starfield for like two weeks and ignored Fallout 76 to be in that and have the, I think, higher quality quests and higher quality writing. and higher quality connection to my character and what I'm actually doing role playing in there, right? Of the layer of it being

new game plus five, the layer of I'm prepping my life for Andresia, let's get this apartment. You know, I got to hustle and get this apartment for us. I love you, Andreza. Gotta get this marriage, got to do all these different things, right? But just being all fucking in on it. But

being in on Starfield, and even 76, but for this instance of Starfield, it was bumping up against the same friction points we all had in the review. It was, all right, cool, go to the mine and do this thing. Of course, I come back and I'm like, all right, I remember this mine from the first,

then do it again and do a different mine and a different thing. And like, oh, right, every fucking underground mine has the same layout. This is so dumb. You know what I mean? Like, what will something like shattered space be? What is it going to add for new environments?

What else is it going to fix quest-wise and world-wise and all these different things? It's like a bunch of best spies across America. I have the same layouts, Greg. Of course. In-and-out. It doesn't matter what planet you are. Here's the question I have, though.

Obviously, Paris can't speak too much to specific things on this. But, like, what do you think they do in the showcase? We brought up the Elder Scrolls online type thing. Like, is there a lot of time focused on these updates? Or is it kind of just like, hey, these things are happening. I think Starfield gets a lot of time. Not like a massive chunk, but like, this is the first expansion into a brand new, you know, IP from Bethesda that we're all looking forward to, mixed reviews or whatever you want to say.

There's still a big fan base that wants more of this. And this is their first big expansion. get a lot of love on that. I think Mike's 100% on the money. I think Starfield gets a meaty chunk and a meaty narration and this is what it is and this is what it's changed and this is what the narrative is because we don't even know what we're doing in shattered space, right?

Fall 76 and Skyline Valley, I need far less information on. It's going to be a trailer. It's going to be these new quest. It's going to be this new thing. You assume it's going to be a date you know what I mean of like, hey, drop it on. You know, of course, right now if you go to 76's dev map community calendar, right? It only goes up till June. where it talks about Skyline Valley Update in season 17.

And so people are all sorts of hypothesizing, when does it actually drop? Because June 6th is gold rush. June 13th is double mutations legendary vendor sale. June 20th is double. So it's like you assume this is imminent, right, based on what they're saying here for June. That's great.

I don't need to be beaten to death on that. More to do, more to things. This thing. Look at this enemy type. Great. Cool. Whatever. Give me a trailer.

I'll be done. But yes, I think shattered space is your second chance at a first. impression. Hey, a lot of you bought this game. Hey, a lot of you were understandably disappointed by it. We've already had this patch that did the 60 frames and did all the stuff and changed how you could earn your own XP and be close to the ship or not close to the ship to send your stuff back. That's great. Shattered space isn't an update. Shattered space isn't a DLC. It's an expansion. Here's how we're changing the game. And I expect that to what be September, October, November. I expected to be out that way and this be the real,

hey, we're introducing you to it and what we're doing in vehicles and you own it and you didn't like it. This is your chance to get in. Hopefully we fix the problems. Andy Cortez, what does the Elder Scroll 6 gameplay demo look like? It's a great question. A couple dragons walking down a walkway. Walking pathway.

Okay. I'm so sick of flying. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a family. They have a little baby dragon in a stroller. Oh, got you got. Jokes aside. Elder Scroll 6. None of us assume it's even mentioned, correct?

No. Fantastic. We can move on. Elder Scrolls online. Speaking of that, do they talk about that here? Yeah, they continue to put out large expansions. They will get their time. That team has worked hard on creating a live service MMO that has thrived and survived in this climate of many MMRPGs that have come and gone. So it will get its time. It will probably be more like a sea of thieves where it might come and go pretty quick.

But they will announce something and probably push you totally. like, hey, we're going to have a live stream on whatever dates, or you can catch the full details on a blog post, but they will have something to keep this community going. We need to set an over-under for all of SGF, not just Xbox, or for the amount of times that we hear somebody, a developer on stage or a voice on a video, say it's never been a better time to jump back in,

something along those lines. It's never been a better time to jump back into the Elder Scrolls online. Like, you're going to hear this for a lot of different franchises. It's never been a better time to hop into Fallout 76. How many times are you here? And they're right! I'll set the over under at six and a half. Oh, I was going to go 4.5, but I like that. I'll go under. You go under? You take the under?

I'll go under. Under three. Under, wow, okay. I think we have three exactly. I like that. I like that. Yeah, probably under. Because there's a lot of live services out there. And it's ever been a better time to hop into them. Jason Leeland says the ESO expansion came out two days ago. I feel like that's the thing where if, and I'm a little out of, my element, obviously, because I usually glaze over at the

Elder Scrolls online part, like many of you do for 76, and I probably did in the past as well. But I feel like those usually don't get the hey, I'm a person and I'm talking. It's just like, here's a bunch of trailers and cool shit. So I don't think you'll get the better than I would go under as well on the prediction. We talked a little bit about this. We don't expect Fallout 5.

Duh. Fallout or Oblivion remastered announcement. I think both are possible. That's when I start dreaming. You know, I want Fallout 3 remastered announcement. I want to see. I hope that is happening

and I hope that's like shadow dropped and yeah, but I don't want to get like going on it. And I also do think Bethesda slash Xbox is in such an interesting place where, you know, when it was,

oh, everybody loves the fallout show. Man, there's no new fallout game to play. But then suddenly there was like, oh, well, there's an update to fallout four and 76.

Oh, it's like, okay, well, fuck, like pick a lane. Like, I think, oh,

and Starfield in there too is getting an update right at the same time. I feel like that was cumbersome, especially as me as a Bethesda fan of like, Oh shit. It was me with the pancakes and Melissa Joan Hart, right? There's just too much. To do that again today, I'm like, hey, now 76 has this huge expansion and you're getting this huge expansion for Starfield and fall three is rematch. I'm like, fuck, all right.

Let's move on then to Activision. This is the first Activision, E3, Summer Game Fest time, whatever, with Xbox. What do we got, Greg? This is when I meant the list to the top of it, too. Diablo 4 getting a huge expansion this year. We're clearly going to hear about it at this thing. This is why I'm just like, yes, somehow Xbox is. built the perfect conference for me.

All the games I've already spent hundreds of hours in are just getting new things to do. Vessel of hatred, let's fucking go. Mike, let's start with you on this. What does the library announcement of Activision titles look like? Does it even happen? The giant back wall behind Phil or Sarah Bond, that's what it looks like it's a lot of titles coming your way, you would hope. Does it happen?

Yes, I think this is a community that celebrates having their games ready and available, thanks to backwards compatibility. This is something where we are justifying the rising cost of Xbox Game Pass with anything that we can do to shove games in there and say, yes, here it is. And with Call of Duty servers being turned back online, like Blessing said,

right? These are things that are easy slam dunk wins, right? Are they going to have mass appeal where all of a sudden Tim Gettys is playing every single Call of Duty every night? No. But people will celebrate that, being able to jump into a campaign, maybe play some of the multiplayer and then leave. There are so many titles on this. that can be added into that, that are just easy layups that, yeah, I think now is the time,

especially we didn't have that roundtable like we had with Bethesda, me and Paris have talked about on the Xcast, right, of like, when will this happen? What do we do? Having the backwards compatibility titles in this would be an easy layup win right now during the summer game fest. Plus, what's your read? I agree with that. I think that being a shadow drop, I think would be strong. I do think that it would be a big deal. I think that's something that we would see a lot on social media, on TikTok, of people going back and playing Black Ops maps and, Like you see people being like, oh man, I played this level 10 years ago. Let's go back and play them.

I think you get like a lot of covers like that. When they turn the servers on, we saw like a big boom of players coming back and having fun in those games. I think doing that and then also putting it on Game Pass and having that access for people, I think you have that second kind of, or you have that kind of second wind again, but possibly even on a bigger level because game pass just allows people to get in there and play it for free. So yeah, I think for sure we get a shadow drop of that. I'll take all the calls. Several great callouts in the chat as well from YouTube and Twitch.

people mentioning that since there's no blizzcon this year expect oh we're going to talk about world warcraft oh uh paris what do you think the activation uh game pass situation is going to look like yeah and i agree what's already been said but i think someone even just mentioned world of warcraft i'm fascinated to see if there's any type of game pass integration into world of warcraft but yeah the the the big prize is going to be bringing as many of those backwards compatible titles into Game Pass from Activision. I think that'll be a huge one form. Do you think they're going to focus on college duty

or do you think that there's a chance they also lean into the Crash Bandicoots and Spirals, Transformers, some license. Yeah, I think there's a definite possibility. Obviously with Transformers, there might be some weird licensing thing that goes on, but I think Crash Spiral stuff like that, why not? Why not highlight those as things that you'll be able

to play via GamePass? Wow, was the fun one for me. Me and Paris have talked about it a lot on the Xcast of how do you integrate this, how do you get people excited, right? Wow does not need to be put in a game pass. And it's its own juggernaut. It can survive on its own.

It doesn't need that. But having a nice boost to the arm and getting people that might be lapsed players or people that never thought of jumping into Wow involved thanks to game pass would be a big win, right? That would justify me as a consumer saying, okay, I'm willing to pay $16 to $20 a month right now. Oh, snap, six months from now, they say, hey, Mike, we got to go up to $25. But we got Wow in there. That's usually $15 a month. We got X, Y, and Z in there.

These are things that, like, got to happen to just continue to bolster. Okay, maybe I can pay this much. It's already getting too much, but, like, you're getting me there. And then as well, like, wow is such a beast with so much content and a new expansion coming out this year that it's like, hey, if we figured out some way to give you three months of game pass thanks to, or three months of wow subscription thanks to game pass, you can get in so many new players. And maybe all of a sudden they want more. That's the win. You got to do it. Absolutely nuts

That there are 7 million active players And wow This was from two months ago But that's just still such a Disgusting amount of money And one day Maybe they'll figure out how to put it on console And that would just break

People's brains That would explode to the maximum If they could do that Be like Final Fantasy 14 kind of 14 it would be something So then we got Other Activision stuff Overwatch. Is there anything, Andy?

Hey, this is still happening. I think there's a good chance that they show off a new hero or a new arena or game mode, something like that. I don't think there's anything. I don't think they spend much time on it. I think they've kind of taken their licks and like, hey, we have to...

Isn't that crazy, though? Like, that game just came out like, what, two years ago? Um, I, I also think that it's it's doing still pretty well and it's a lot more stable in terms of player count now. But it's obvious, it'll never be the juggernaut it was. Now it just has to kind of, I think they've got to start fending off Marvel Rivals

and this upcoming Valve project. Yeah, if I was Overwatch and the team, we would be figuring out a new hero, some updated maps, something fun to announce here because, yeah, Marvel Rivals is right around the corner. And I think Overwatch's players are looking for an excuse to find something new that is just like that, but has that fresh cone of paint, can bring back those vibes that you used to have. I think you've got to have something

to just show off a little bit of and get them excited again. Any other Activision thoughts? What if we brought out StarCraft? What about Heroes of the Storm, Tim? There's so many properties that we could bring that would bring so much excitement. I don't think we're there and ready yet,

but in the future, right, you look at an RTS like a StarCraft, you definitely are bringing that back. Here's of the Storm is an easy mobile win. I know they kind of put that on the back burner, but like if you could bring that in, you jump into the League of Legends, like these live service, these community-driven games that you want,

that we've seen all these companies try to, hey, I want your time, I want your dollar, I want your money. Xbox has a lot of those, and now they have even more with Activision Blizzard King. Here's the moment of like,

you could find different avenues and really touch a lot of people there. Moving on to some third party things. Kojima Productions. Will overdose be there? No. No. I'll say no.

That's a Jeff Keely special. I'll say I think it could be Yeah What do you what do you think it might look like I think just an initial Mysterious trailer Like I think it'll be something along lines of like

Some kind of cinematic I don't expect gameplay I don't think you get anything too deep But I think it is I think as Xbox you want Kojima to continue to be on your stage And you want excuses for For people to go

Oh shit like I identify I identify this with Xbox I think if Xbox and take that from Kili Then they do it Um Sega do we see anything there persona crazy taxi Metaphor will probably get another trailer

Since that's Atlas's like big game this This fall I don't think we see anything persona feels a little too early Moving on to Capcom This is one that we've brought up many times this week As we've been predicting different things Starting last week with PlayStation This week even with the summer game fest stuff

Do we get another Monster Hunter Wilds look? Probably not No Do we get a Resident Evil announcement? Definitively, no. No, I say. Will we get a trailer for Pragmata, bless? God, no.

Any Capcom fighting game news? No, not on the Xbox stage. Although, am I right in saying that Marvel versus Capcom Infinite was at the Xbox show? That's what I feel? Well, I can look it up. No. I still don't think we're going to get anything here.

That was, what was the live event PlayStation used to do every like PSX. That was PSX I'm pretty, that was at the same show I'm pretty sure that Last of Us part two got announced. Oh yeah, so many in chat says PSX. I remember being in that theater and like Last of Us like exploded that room

and then Marvel versus Capcom Infinite also exploded that room. Yeah, huh. Yeah, I don't think we're gonna get any of that. Metal Gear Solid 3, Delta. No. I feel we're seeing the game this weekend and I'm now kind of convinced. I don't remember what I predicted about summer

game fest, but I'm now predicting it, I can see it at Xbox. I think you're, the more I think about how Keeley and Konami had their thing, I could see it being at an Xbox event. And the reason I say that too is like how much I believe in the Keeley

Konami stuff, I'm not exactly sure. Like I feel like at the end of the day, Keeley's going to do what's right for business as opposed to just like the friendships and broships and all that stuff. But today they talked about that from the creators of Silent Hill. Here's this game that we're showing it. I'm like, oh, you really don't like

Konami Deer, you know what I mean? And I, that's conspiracy theory shit. But yeah, because of that, Snake Eater. Xbox. Yeah, I'll say it, Xbox too. Um, Square Unix. It's an interesting one. I'm not expecting this.

But there is the opportunity. I mean, 16. Cross-Boppel. A couple things here. Final Fantasy 9 remake. There's been rumors, recent rumors in the last couple days. I think since we even talked about the summer game fest stuff of like, yo, this game is real.

It is happening. It's not just an Invidia leak thing. It's like going to happen. They were talking 2025, so I don't think we see that here. Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy 7 remake. Rebirth, remake, yeah. I don't think rebirth. I think remake.

We don't know the actual details about this stuff. I think that there is a chance. I think Xbox clearly would want that. I don't expect it. I don't expect it. I'm just saying that there is a chance. I definitely think there's a chance. I think we've seen a lot in the people.

past how Phil's always tried to show that, hey, with a lot of these, you know, developers and publishers from, you know, overseas, we're trying, we want to be more in that market. And I know they've had a lot of failures there for sure. But I could definitely see them, you know, announcing, hey, remake is coming. Rebirth at a later date, no, whatever. 16 is also on the, you know, I can see that definitely happening. It'd be huge. That'd be really, really, really huge, especially with how Squares been talking about multi-plot. So it might be a little too soon, but would be very exciting.

Somebody in chat was asking about Dragon Quest. We've been saying this, like, I'm 99% sure Dragon Quest is going to be at the Nintendo Direct next month, this month. Holy crap, we're in June. EA, Dragon Age Dreadwolf. Jeff pretty much said it'll be there. People in the chat were interestingly saying that Jason Schreier, I haven't confirmed this, but they're saying that Jason Schreier was backing up what Grub was saying, but

implying that it's not an old-school remake or whatever. It's just Dragon Age Red Wolf is getting renamed. Oh. Interesting. Look into that to see what it was actually said, but I saw chat kind of referring to that. Yeah. What do you think about that, Andy? I mean, I don't, that makes me super unexcited. Like, I don't really give a shit about a name change.

I'd love to see more of the game, obviously. Like, I want to see what the game looks like. But, yeah, that makes me a lot less excited than a remake or a remaster of an their title. Bring back, yeah, up from the 12,

bring it back down. 6.2. What a roller coaster. Ubisoft. Do we see any of the Ubisoft games, whether it's Assassin's Creed, Star Wars,

or an unannounced Ubisoft thing? I don't think so. No. I think the Keeley places the mainstream place to get the extra eyes and then, hey,

the forwards happening to. Yeah. And I think they have enough in the library to show as well. I'll say possibly. Yeah. I'm still in mind that...

I got a crazy one. I'm still in mind that you want to push these games in front of people as much as possible. I can see it being... Assassin's Creed Shadows shows up at Keeley. Star Wars Outlaws shows up at Xbox and they go into detail about both of them at the Ubisoft thing proper.

That's actually a good, interesting call. Yeah, I think if you can paste it out while you do it. I got a crazy one. You hear the... You see the three lights, the three green lights. You hear the sound. Michael Ironside's voice. get more at the Ubisoft Ford on Monday.

God. And then they announced at the Ubisoft forward that he's a skin and ex-defiant. Ex-difiant, baby. Let's do it. And then Alan wakes up. Do we get anything? Or is that just purely Keeley?

Mike? Jeff Keeley. Yeah, he's all over that. Yeah, yeah. So that's all I have here. Does anyone else have anything else they want to bring up? Yeah. One thing we forgot.

One thing we forgot. Flight Sim 24 this year. say you missed Paris in a bomber jacket and some aviators. You're right. Flight Sim 24 is a big deal. It is a big, big game coming our way. There's a number of things, but Paris, I'm excited for Flight Sim 24. I think that's the fun part of like now we start to try to throw the darts at where all these dates.

Like I said, there's a lot of games here that are slated for 2024. And I think we get more windows than official dates on some of these. But I do think Flight Sim 24 may be end of summer, Paris. What do you think? Yeah, I'm thinking so. And then I would also throw ARA into that as well. I know that's not going to be huge on a lot of people's radar, and that'll be a PC audience.

But that's another one that slated to also come out this year. So you'd imagine they'd show something. I have Age of Mythology retold. You know, you have another one right there. Like you just continue to build up. We talked about Towerborn there. The list goes on and on of games that you look at and try to find a date for and get excited for.

Wow and Diablo Four expanses as Greg brought up. Just so much content coming out of this. team. Like you said, it's just a large group now. And as Blessing brought up, like, now how do you find the cadence? And this is kind of year one of like, hey, these are the games that are just coming this year. Let's show you next year. And then we'll get to that and start putting out dates. It's going to be a lot of information from this point moving forward for Team Xbox and Microsoft. Let's see. This is why I'm going to say again, 9.5. They have so much content that they can

show. It's trying to figure out what to put where and when and how. to present it. But there's, in my opinion, there's no excuse for them to not have a banging show. Stalker 2 still needs a date, or Stalker 2 has a date in September

that we're waiting on, replace the needs of date, but Stalker 2 will definitely get some time in there. I see that chat is popping off for killer instinct. I don't think we will get killer instinct this year. I think it's probably something that the team is very aware of and is looking for someone. I know they had that conversation if we just don't have someone ready.

We talked about the team behind Rumbleverse that I love Iron Galaxy. you know, R-Vorverse RIP isn't there, so maybe it is time to team up with them. But I don't think this year is the year you see killer instincts shown at all or even revealed. I want to get into a bunch of super chats. Thank you all for super chat. And over on YouTube, we got a bunch of them here. Banderasen says, see if thieves collab is the one-piece real, Mike.

Do you actually think that there's a chance that we get a one-piece, see-of-dieves-collar? Unfortunately, no. I don't think one piece is up that alley. I think it's more like a Peter Pan. I think it's something a little more grounded than one piece. but it would be very fun to have that. I could see... The Netflix is right.

I could see them doing like a going merry ship, but I don't think we go full in-depth on a one-piece, like jump into the universe here and check it all out from that. Opponents Prime says predictions, Fable 2025, Gear 6, 2025, new doom this October. T's of new Halo, Shattered Space, fucking Rips, and toys for Bob Banjo now in development.

I think some of those. Not all of those. No Halo. Not yet. Bustas and Bridges says, nah, it's the lizard spy for me. It's talking about gecks. Yeah, gecks would be sick. Trevor says I'd 100% go wild for Guitar Hero.

Thank you. Don't think Guitar Heroes is going to. I don't think this is the place for a guitar hero. I mean, it's so stupid, but it'd be fun. I don't know. Peter Vaught says, isn't this the first open world call of duty campaign? I feel like that warrants a deep dive. Oh, yeah, this is a very interesting moment.

Yeah, I think they're doing something different here, which would warrant them like, hey, let's take a bigger look for what is arguably going to be the biggest game in the year. Yeah, there's a fun moment for Call of Duty. That's why they're having this deep dive of. We've seen them with Call of Duty modern warfare one into two, try to mess with the formula with two of like,

hey, it's semi-open world. You can kind of go out these missions different ways and we want to be the future of Call of Duty. How do we make it fresh and new for people who are like, I've been there, done that, right? So this is interesting of like Black Ops is beloved. People love that weird mind fuck of Call of Duty Black Ops campaigns. This is going to be fun to see.

Will they double down on Open World? Will they stick to just straight up that? You have zombies as well, which is a beloved part of Call of Duty Black Ops that will definitely get time. You have, of course, multiplayer with brand new maps and what that vibe will be. You have war zone that will get so much more on this. So you have a lot to talk about with Call of Duty that will get a lot of the audience excited. Yeah, we got something here that, like, it makes my eyes go.

Andy they go big they go big uh spider says this use college duty will also be on ps4 and xbox one infinity wards will be series in ps5 only so no big visual improvements likely while i'm not surprised i am surprised they're still coming out there like my god well you're talking about it all the time there's still just a large player base that's why yeah we're not ready quite yet to cut those ties which is wild the thing about we've really blurred the lines with these new console generations here with this one in particular so Yeah, that's just only right. You continue to drop that.

And when the hardest of the hardcore play on low settings anyway. Oh, man. I played Paul of Duty War Zone up in Tahoe on the old Xbox One. How'd I feel? That was difficult. It's not a fun time at all. Semari Kibji brings something interesting here that I'd love your thoughts on. Sorry if I missed this.

Do you guys hope they edit out leadership talking? I don't think their words mean much right now after last month. If I could jump in on that. See, I alluded to this before. I think the showcase itself is going to be unicorns and rainbows. I think the leadership talk, that's Phil with Ryan McCaffrey. I think that's that opportunity for Ryan to ask those uncomfortable, tough questions, the layoffs, the game paths, multiplayer, all those things is what Ryan's

probably going to be talking about with Phil, but they won't have any of that stuff during showcase, in my opinion. 100%. Yeah, that is not the time and moments right there. They'll talk about that stuff later on, but right now it will be sunshine. and gum drops. It's going to be a lot of energy there. What's a gum drop?

Candy. Oh. You've had a gumdrop that's delicious. Like dots. The candy dots. Okay. I'll Google it. I'll Google it.

AA says, I don't care if the show is a five, six or seven out of ten. Because hanging out with you guys during these shows is always a ten out of ten experience. Well, thank you very much. We always have a lot of fun. One p.m.ish on Sunday.

Nerd guidance says, What is that? Phil, call me up. Help me off, Phil. Send me. Nerd guidance says, might an Xbox handheld finally enable Microsoft to break into the Japanese market? I don't think so. I feel like that's, I haven't

heard anything much about like the effects of these PC handhelds in Japan. Yeah, I was going to say what's Steam Deck doing over there? I don't know. But I don't think it's of too much consequence at the very least. Motor World Hype says I agree with Xbox Thanos. I think Microsoft will go hard because all the bad news lately. I also agree they'll go the Scorpio route

with the handheld. Jedi Master Tom says, A vowed will look better. The Coalition joined his development to improve its visuals. Stakes Stakes is showing a lot of hype for banjo saying I'll buy seven Xboxes per ass on my hair.

If banjos mentioned, I think he means per hair on his ass. Which doesn't make it much better. Rodrigo says, Gears closes the show. Gears Collection shadow drop. Okay. I don't,

I mean, I don't think you close a show with a collection. What he means new gears? New gears closes the show. Gotcha. Yeah, gear six close it. Can I dress a chat super quick before you continue?

Oh yeah, you saw a pair, call them out. Yeah, shut up, belief. You know what you guys? We know it well. Assassin and Entertainment says you guys forgot Path of the Goddess. Bless what are you expected from Path of the Goddess, the Capcom game that you know the name of?

I think we'll see it and I'll still be like, so what's it play like? Yeah. That's it, everybody. What an amazing time. Thank you all for hanging out with us today for the last couple weeks. And hey, for the next week. It's about to be so much damn fun.

And we're not done yet. The boys about to go play some Eldon Ring. So if you're watching on Twitch, just hang out. Stay here. You're good. If you're on YouTube, you're going to have to make the jump over to a different YouTube video. And remember, tomorrow we're doing our Ubisoft predictions. And then Friday, we will be live reacting to the summer game fest kickoff show.

We will then break it all down. Then we are all going to go down to L.A., play a whole bunch of different video games and spend the next week talking about them all. It's going to be a great time. Thank you for hanging out with us. Sunday. We're doing the Xbox thing. On a delay, we'll react to it around 1 p.m. Pacific.

Stay tuned for all of that. Paris, thank you so much for joining us. Where would you like people to go to support you? Kind of funny, of course. No. You can support me. I'm over at Gamer Tag Radio, and you can find my personal YouTube channel,

which is my name, Paris. there you go go do that can't wait to see you in real life Paris in just a few short days thank you again to ponkle for presenting all of our summer game fest coverage definitely go check out vampire survivors and thank you all for making this such a fun show what an episode this was until next time i love you all goodbye