Triple Click - The State of Video Game Consoles

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

Is it just us, or has this console generation been... weird? Kirk, Jason, and Maddy assess the current state of console gaming on the PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X/S, and the Nintendo Switch 2. They talk about diminishing returns on graphics, the huge leaps in pricing, and why it'd be bonkers if the PS6 came out next year. One More Thing: Kirk: Resident Evil 4 Remake Maddy: Pokopia Jason: Ratcheteer DX Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

My fellow gamers, I am here to declare that the state of consoles is not so strong. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week we're talking about the console generation, the PlayStation 5, the Switch 2, and the Xbox series X slash S. Let's get into it. I'm Jason Shrier. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello.

Hello. Hi. Welcome back. We are here once again. Guys, I was in San Francisco last week. I know. You were gone last week. Welcome back for real. Kirk and I were texting a little bit about the funniest part of San Francisco, which is all the billboards that are just entirely about AI, but not just about AI. They're also like all addressed towards startup founders. So it'll be like if you're not using AI, you're never going to get that exit. You're already behind. When I was there recently, it was actually Super Bowl. weekend. Coincidentally, I was visiting my sister. We went into town and we were in North Beach and there was a billboard that was a giant photo of a skateboarder doing an ollie, like a pop in a sick ollie flying through the air with people watching and then just next to the skateboard, it said

chat chippy. That's it. What more do you need to know? I mean, right? It speaks for itself. So, hey, if you want to listen to a podcast that is not made with chatGVT or with AI or with startups, right, Kirk, we don't use AI for this, right? Are we a startup? Before I said that. I don't know because they were not a startup. I am not secretly editing this show with AI, no. You should support our show, which is entirely listed and supported. You can go to maximum fun.org slash join and help us make this show possible.

And in addition to making this show possible, you also get bonus episodes. every single month, including one we just published about the documentary King of Kong, a fistful of quarters, a very messy and fun documentary that we watched and talked about. And this month at the end of this month, at the end of March, we will be running a spoiler cast, a beans cast, as we call them, about Resident Evil Requiem. We will all play through that entire game and talk about it, story, spoilers, and all. plus there's a whole backlog of lots and lots of bonus episodes that you get if you sign up now go to maximum fun.org slash join and become a member today. A couple more things before we get into the episode today. First of all, next week on the main feed, not the bonus feed, we will be talking about the video game esoteric. We're going to do a triple play and I wanted to get people a heads up. Yay. Early because it's a really cool game and if you haven't checked it out yet, you should.

ahead of next week's episode. And the other thing is I wanted to give you guys a couple of quick thoughts from the game developers conference where I went last week. First of all, several people asked if you two were there again, like he were last week, last year. And if we were there in spirit. Yes, you were there. Your ghosts were there.

But you guys were not there. One guy came up to me with a triple, with his, he wanted to show me his triple click pin, which I appreciate it. Always welcome. Which, of course, you can get during the Max Fun Drive. It's true. It's true. Coming up. But a couple of quick thoughts. First of all, AI was everywhere, just like in San Francisco. It's crazy how like everywhere you turn there. She's like someone like promoting their AI service or AI tool. Codev also a big thing. Codev is something that maybe we'll talk about more throughout this year, but it's becoming a humongous tread in the video game industry. That is. Yeah, I'll explain. Outsourcing has been a thing for a long time. Codev is kind of the new buzzword that kind of refers to outsourcing. outsourcing, but it's a lot more, I guess in depth, it's a lot more full service. So like, outsourcing might be like, I'm going to, I want some art. So I'm going to hire a studio in Asia to

make me art for cheaper than I can make here. Whereas codev is, I need a whole UI system. So I'm going to hire a studio that's going to make me a UI system. And it's become a very popular thing to do, even among studios that were just like entirely independent in the past. They're now relying on codev. And so there were a lot of codev studios at GDC just kind of making, making deals and promoting themselves. It was really interesting to see. Has anyone pitched the idea of AI powered codev? You will not be shocked to hear that.

There's AI powered everything, man. It's like dialogue systems. It's MPCs. It's all sorts of crazy stuff. AI powered networking at GDC. You don't even have to do it yourself anymore. AI will shake hands for you. now. You don't even have to get sick from doing that.

Could you imagine that would make things easier? You just set up a chatbot to take your meetings for you. Make things easier and also way less fun and kind of take everything interesting out of there. Then you get a chat bot to get on social media afterward and tell everyone how you're sick and how the chatbot gets sick. Yeah, I mean, there was some bleak stuff at GDC too, but I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about some cool indie games because I also saw some cool indie games all I was out there. Three in particular, I want to highlight. One is called At Fate's End. It's a new game from

the makers of Spirit Fair, which is a game that I think we talked about when it came out. Thunder Lotus was their name. That was a cool game. This one is really cool. It's like, it's a combination of like a 2D beautiful action platformer and also a deduction slash investigation game. It looks super cool. There's this wild game called Screenbound that was a platformer that is set in a 3D world and you're holding this game bowl. that has 2D graphics on it. And as you move, you are progressing both in 2D and 3D, and you can look back and forth between the screens

and see your character in 2D and 3D. So like on the 2D screen, kind of like imagine Fez, except instead of switching back and forth, it's all on the screen at once. So in the 2D mode, you might see a ladder, and then in the 3D mode you have to navigate around the 3D space until you find that ladder. It's pretty crazy.

It's like the, I'm kind of, is there a little bit of the world? ends with you where you're managing two spaces at the same time? Oh yeah, that's a good pull. Yeah, that kind of, kind of similar and it's like confusing your brain a little bit. This would be a perfect DS game, yes, except it's it's all on screen screenbound. That was wild.

And then third, this is a game I think I'm most excited about this year. There was a new demo for Mina the Hollower, which is the next game for the makers of Shovel Night, a game I've been excited about for quite a while. It's a Link's Awakening style 2D Zelda like crossed with Bloodbourne and Castlevania, Souls-ish stuff.

And that game is coming up pretty soon. It's supposed to be out this spring. There's a new demo. It looked awesome. But most importantly, a friend of mine who has played an earlier version of it, who does not work at the Game Dev Studios. So he is not biased. But he's like friends with people there.

So he got an early version. He told me he thinks it's going to be a game of the year contender. I was like, fuck yeah. I'm so excited. Yeah, it's really cool. So I wanted to bring you guys that news, especially, that Meena the Hover I think is going to be sick and I cannot wait until we can play it

and talk about it. Yeah, very likely something we will talk about on the show. That's it from GDC thoughts other than some Xbox stuff that we'll get into the rest of the episode. But actually this is a good segue because at GDC, Microsoft talked a little bit about

what they're calling Project Helix, which is their next-gen console. Essentially it is a living room PC that also plays old Xbox game. So it will be an Xbox that also runs as a PC, which is something that I feel like Xbox should have done like 10 years ago. But hey, why not try to do it just in the middle of a RAM chip crisis and global turmoil and tariffs. Yeah, now is the good time. Rapping up prices. Now is the time

to do a living room PC. And that actually is a good excuse for us all to assess the state of video game console. So that is what we will be doing today. We're going to talk about the Xbox as well as the PlayStation and the Nintendo Switch 2, talk about the state of them, where they're at, what's going on in the world. I guess first and foremost, I would ask you to, how are you feeling about this console generation? It's now been a little over five years, close to five and a half years of the PS5 slash Xbox series generation. Of course, the Switch 2 came out less than a year ago, so a little bit younger than those two. But still, we're kind of in that PS5 generation, let's call it. We've talked a little before on the show about how weird it's

feeling. How are you guys feeling now in March, 2006, about this console generation? Maddie, why don't you start? Super weird. Before we started recording this, Jason, you made a joke about the idea of the PlayStation 6 and next Xbox coming out. 27 and that made me Google it and that's allegedly when those are supposed to come out. That can't be right. That can't be true. It feels as though these consoles just came out. And I think part of that is the COVID of it all. And part of it is everything else we're going to talk about, which is just delayed development cycles and a variety of other problems, including various tech shortages, hardware shortages, I should say, that have led us to the situation we're in now,

that is just ongoing. Hardware shortages are the name of the game if you play games and care about them. So yeah, I feel really weird about it. And I really had to rack my brain to remember everything that came out on these consoles and what distinguishes them as compared to the previous generation, especially for Xbox, but not just Xbox. I had to refresh my memory on the PS5 as well. The Switch 2 is newer, so it's funny that we're including it here today.

But we got to. I mean, it is technically an X-Gen console. So we're putting it in the VIII. They are. They're on their own timeline. But yeah, it's weird. Yeah, Maddie, as far as 2027, nobody said anything officially. That's been kind of the assumption slash rumor, in part because the previous console

generations have been about seven years. PS4 was 2013 and then PS5 was 2020 so it like goes to figure that PS6 would be 2027. That would be bonkers if that actually happened. I feel like that would be the lowest selling console in history for a number of reasons. But also the big, the chip shortage makes us all a giant question. So I don't know if anyone really knows what's going to happen in fall of 2020. 2007 at this point. Kirk, what's your take on the current console generation and how it's gone after five and a half years?

Yeah, a lot of what you just said, Maddie, is true for me as well. It's just weird that it's been six years because it in some ways doesn't feel like it because I think that's true for a lot of people, and I do think a lot of that is COVID. One thought, I guess, I'll throw out there is for the first time, I just really don't feel the need for more powerful hardware. It's very interesting that we're in this world where the most – I'll use the word exciting because it excites people, even if it negatively excites them. But the most exciting advances in graphics processing are these AI upscalers and, like, software that can improve the visual fidelity of a game without requiring a whole ton of processing. So it's kind of cutting back on the hardware requirement. by using creative rendering techniques.

And that, you know, I'm talking about DLSS and FSR, etc. And so, you know, I've been using on my PC a 40-70 graphics card for several years now. I'm not even sure I would have needed it. I think I had something slightly slower than that earlier. But it's just felt like everything kind of runs fine. My PS5 feels plenty powerful. I, you know, I don't know. I played Ghosts of Yote, that game looked insane and ran at 60 frames per second.

So I guess that's the thing I'll throw out there right now is that I just don't really feel like there are games that are majorly pushing the envelope technically. And so even though the timing matches up, it's seven years between generations. Like you said, Jason, I'm like not feeling like I need a more powerful console. So I could just keep my PS5 and keep playing games on it. So that's why it feels a little abrupt to me. Yeah, just to echo that really quick, we didn't talk about this in our Resident Evil Requiem episode,

but I played that game on PS5, and I think you two played on PC. And that game looked freaking amazing on my PlayStation 5. I really, I was also using PS Remote Play on my PC, looked amazing that way as well. Of course, when I'm using PS Remote Play, which I love to use, I'm line in Ethernet cables in my PC and my PS5.

So there's no lag. So it really feels like that full experience. And there was a day or two where I forgot I didn't have the game on PC and was like, oh, right, I should be booting up the PS5 instead of PC. Like, that's how good it looked. It looked great. So I just, I'm in the same boat, Kirk. I feel like I don't know why I would get another PlayStation, just as one example. I mean, we're going to get to it with the other two, but it looks great, you know.

Does it feel like there have been diminishing returns from the last generation to this one? Because it doesn't feel, I think we've talked about this in the past, but just to reiterate an old point, Red Dead Redemption 2, which came out in 2018, today to me, looks just as good as anything from the PS5 generation. And there's been some beautiful games, don't get me wrong. Ghost of Yote is really spectacular looking. But there have also been some beautiful games that aren't necessarily pushing graphical fidelity in terms of, I don't know, the number of hairs on someone's head or the kind of the realistic quality of the grass and the way that the wind moves. There's also a lot of games that

look beautiful to me. I mean, Pokemon Pocopia looks beautiful to me also. And that's all because of style and art direction and not necessarily because of pure processing power and graphical Fidelity. So yeah, I don't know. To me, it feels like both because of the lack of huge leaps over this generation and also because graphical fidelity just has kind of isn't as interesting as like great art direction. To me, the actual evolution that this generation has made doesn't, has been underwhelming, I feel like. I guess it kind of relates to some of what we were talking about with the longer development cycles and the delays from COVID, where they're also just, there haven't been as, it feels as though, it's weird to say this, I guess, let's think

this through. I was about to say it feels like there haven't been as many games, which is flatly ridiculous on its face, because as we know, there are 7,000 games released on Steam every day or whatever it is now. But there have been fewer games like, like you were just describing Jason, and Red Dead Redemption 2, that really pushed the envelope. And of course, GTA6 is kind of coming up at some point that's going to come out. And that will probably, you know, feel like a game that would run better on, you know, on the PS5 Pro, for example, like where maybe it won't run at 60 frames per second on the base PS5, and that'll be a noticeable difference. But that's kind of the one, you know.

And there just aren't that many games like that, I guess. I think what you're identifying is a legitimate feeling. feeling, which is, yes, that contrast between like 20,000 games released on Steam last year, yet it doesn't feel like there are that many games. What you're identifying is that real lack of blockbusters, the lack of AAA games, because all of these big franchises that used to be 10, 15 years ago, we were getting new entries in some of these huge franchises, if not every year, at least every two or three years. There would be a new uncharted and new Assassin's Creed and so on and so forth. And nowadays, there are five to seven year gaps between those, which has led to, and also a lot of

the studios of these bigger publishers have shut down. A lot of these bigger publishers have pivoted to focus on or put more resources into their huge games as service. And so they've been releasing fewer games. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, just a good example might be the Bioshock franchise where there were three Bioshock games released between 2007. and 2013 in those six years, and since 2013, there have been zero Bioshock games released, which, I mean, that to me is a good kind of, like, that's the exemplar of like this AAA problem that we're running into. Right.

And I mean, I guess the third one, Bioshock Infinite, being followed by a, like, massive crackup and the departure of the creative director and sort of the implosion of the whole thing, which then you have to rebuild from that, you know. But I suppose that is still in some ways kind of emblematic of the sort of thing that has happened across the games industry. Yeah, that's the story of a lot of studios. Look at Rocksteady, right? They made three Arkham games.

I don't know the years out the top of my head, but it was in pretty short succession within a six to eight year period. And then they spent seven years making suicide squad. The founders and a lot of the key staff at that company left. And now they're picking up the pieces and trying to figure out how to make another Batman game. with a whole new leadership team and that presents its own struggles. It's just we're in a very different ecosystem because of all the layoffs, because of all the money chasing with games as a service,

because the games have gotten so much more expensive to make and the budgets have blown up so much. One of my favorite stats, I probably said this on the show before, but I'll repeat it again, is that budgets in the games industry are not often made public, but these two are. So it's a good kind of example of this. Uncharted 2, which was released in 2009 from Noddy Dog,

cost $20 million to make according to NoddyDot. The Last of Us 2, which was released 11 years after that in 2020, cost $200 million to make according to NoddyDog. That explosion has led to a lot of different problems, and I think we haven't seen growth in the consoles to account for that. Here's another fun step, by the way. the PlayStation 5 has sold 92.2 million units, which seems like a good number. It seems like a good solid number, almost 100 million. I believe it's outsold the PS3 at this point. Total lifetime

outsold the PS3. But this is slightly behind the PlayStation 4, which had sold 94.4 million by this point in its own kind of generation. So PS5 right now, 92.2 million. PS4.7. same time, $94.4 million. So we're not seeing that growth in the console space. And so if you're seeing budgets explode and dev time explode, but you're not seeing growth, that's a problem. And so a company like Sony can get growth in other ways. It's doing subscriptions. It's charging more for the hardware than it did in the past. It's selling most of its games digitally, which is a huge increase in profit margins over physical sales. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head,

but if you're Sony and you're selling a PS5 game on your PlayStation store, you are taking 100% of the revenue, as opposed to if you're selling it at a GameStop, you're taking something like 50% of the revenue, maybe a smidge higher on every copy sold. So that's a huge margin. So they are seeing growth, but the budgets are exploding.

And as a result, I mean, we're seeing a lot of problems. Do we think, Jason, that the real, reason why Sony isn't going to be releasing games on PC anymore is also financial. I don't feel like that was spelled out when they announced it, that it was because they wanted to sell more copies on console specifically, or if it was because they didn't feel they were selling enough on PC or perhaps a combination of those two. I feel like the fact that we don't know that and can only speculate is part of what's interesting about the decision. I mean, both could be true, I guess. Well, they didn't announce it. We actually announced it for them on triple click.

It's true. A couple weeks ago, I inadvertently announced it. And then I did a story like a week after that on Bloomberg reporting that like Ghost of Yote and Saros and other upcoming Sony single pair games. They're not getting PC releases. So they haven't officially said anything and they declined to comment when I called them up and was like, hey, do you want to come on this? So there's no reasoning known as to the decision? Well, maybe they'll say something like in an an audience call at some point in an executive interview. But my understanding is that there's a few reasons.

The main one, I think, is that the PC sales just weren't there for a lot of those games, largely because they came out at this, like, irregular cadence at just random times a year or two after they came to PlayStation. So nobody knew what to expect for them. The other reason I think is because some people within Sony feel like it hurts the PlayStation brand and hurts their sales if they're putting games on. PC. We talked a little bit about this a couple of weeks ago, how that was kind of the first part of Microsoft's push to multi-platform and cannibalizing their own Xbox sales. So I think there are a few

reasons behind that. But I mean, the reality is that this console generation feels like it's stagnant. And it feels like it's stagnant from a numbers perspective. It also feels like it's stagnant from a graphical perspective and an output perspective. It's so, weird, you know, related to Sony's plans for PC. Something I meant to mention, I think, when you were first talking about it and didn't think of, is that Sony bought Nixies. And that's one of the main things. I think that's worth highlighting. That just strikes me as a really unfortunate factor here. If Sony stops making PC ports, at least other single player games, I don't know what that means for Nixies. Presumably Sony will still be making some things for PC. Uh,

their service games or multiplayer games or something. So to anyone who doesn't know, Nixies came up making ports of other games for PC. I believe they came on my radar when they made fantastic ports of the Tomb Raider games in the early 2010, starting with the 2013 reboot. And they made these really amazing PC ports for Crystal Dynamics because those games were released on console. And Crystal Dynamics, I'm not sure about this, but I think they basically didn't have a team to make a PC version in how. house. And, you know, this is at the time, 2013, it was still pretty common for console ports to get a really terrible PC version, you know, with no mouse and keyboard integration and no graphics settings. And it was a whole mess. And so you didn't really know what to expect. And I remember

playing those Tumrator ports and thinking, wow, these are great. They look great. They run great. They're really using everything on my computer. And seeing that brand, Nixies, you know, when you log in, I kind of immediately learned, oh, okay, that's who did this port. And that's what they do. And then they went on to become known as this fantastic sort of PC version creator. And then Sony bought them, which seemed like this moved toward, okay, now Sony is like going to buy the people who do the best PC ports so that they can regularize and kind of standardize their process. So to hear that they're now pairing back on that just makes me concerned for Nixies and

for the people who work there because clearly there is a lot of talent at that studio. And I would presume it's the kind of talent that you build over time. with people who do a lot of projects and get very good at what they do. And it's just the kind of thing that these sorts of acquisitions tend to destroy. When you buy a company that does something very well, and then your corporate mandate changes, and you either lay them off, close them down, or tell them, okay, you're making a God of War service game now.

Good luck. And I don't know if any of those things are going to happen, but it would be a real shame because those folks have been doing very good work in this very specific area for a long time. It's possible that they get moved to the category I was talking about earlier, Codev, and they just essentially work as a support studio for other PlayStation divisions. But I don't know. I don't know what episode is.

Hoping for the best for them. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Sony already shut down Blue Point. Yeah, I was thinking of that in light of this. And a little similar. Also, you're making a good larger point, Kirk, about how spoiled we've been in the past decade by PC ports just in general and how great so many of them are. Like now we can joke around on the show all the time about how,

oh, you know, all you need is a PC and a switch these days. But that definitely didn't use to be true in part because, not just because PC ports weren't available, but because when they were available, they weren't very good. And that would then put the pressure on the player to get a console because that was the better version of the game, even if it was technically available in another format. And something else I'm thinking about in light of this is the huge success of Hell Divers 2

and the tension that we talked about at the time of that also being a PC release. And could Sony truly take credit for that success? I mean, certainly they did and have. But that kind of was also a fun bit that we could have at the time of like, you know, who really gets to call this theirs? Is it the PC gamers game or is it the PS5 gamers game? And it's everyone's game, of course. But that I feel like is another striking bullet point in the PlayStation 5's legacy.

Yeah, Nixie's, by the way, actually worked on Helldivers to ports as well. And I think, I mean, no matter what PlayStation is going to keep releasing their service games on PC, so maybe that'll give Nixie's some work if they're still doing those multiplayer games. that Nixie's helps with PC versions or other ports for that stuff. Yeah, I want to bring up another point, which I think is important to this generation of consoles, which is that everything has gotten more expensive. Games have gotten more expensive. They've gone up from $60 to $70, and some companies have even flirted with $80. Nintendo released Mario Kart World Tour. No, Mario Kart World Tour is another thing. Marriott World at $80.

last year. Yeah, you remember that? You remember when Mario Car World was $80? I do. Remember when Xbox said Outer Worlds 2 was going to be $80 and then took it back? That was disastrous. Outer Worlds 2, by the way, a game that would have been a big hit, I'm guessing, if it had sold at $50 instead of $70 in the first place.

But anyway, games have gotten more expensive. Hardware has all gotten more expensive. It's usually at this point in a console generation cycle. The consoles are discounted instead of going the other way. getting pricier because of, again, all the global factors that we mentioned earlier, likely to get even more expensive as time goes on. Who knows what's going to happen with this RAM thing? And here's a really telling stat.

This is from Matt Piscatella at Circano, which is an analysis firm that handles sales figures and stuff like that. They report sales figures or they report rankings every month. Matt Circana said that the number of, of, so, okay, so video game hardware buyers in Q4 of 25. So essentially the last part of last year, anyone who bought video game hardware buyer, anyone who bought video game hardware, 53% of that group had a household income of more than $100,000 in the U.S. A record high, Piscatella writes, and up from 40% in Q1 of 2022. So in Q1,

January to March of 2022, 40% of people who bought consoles made more than $100,000 per year in the U.S. And then just three and a half years later, that number has jumped from 40% to 53%. More than half of the people who bought consoles had a household income of $100,000 or more. In other words, so that means people are making more money. Everybody's getting rich thanks to you. If you play games, you will make more. money. You heard it in. That is, that is exactly the causation to that is that is the correct

hypothesis. Yeah. So, so gaming and especially console gaming is becoming a luxury habit for people who have money. If you could afford to spend the $500 plus on a console and then the $70 per pop on games and then you probably have to buy PlayStation Plus if you want to play with your friends and pay for that plus the accessories, the controllers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You have to have a lot of disposable income. So it's very easy to see why a lot of people are instead moving to play games on their computer, which they probably have anyway, that are cheap to get on Steam a lot of the times. A lot of times you can find amazing games at these crazy discounts that Seam has all the time.

Or that are baseline cheap anyway. I mean, peak, one of the most popular games last year was $8. Claire Obscure, the game of the year winner everywhere, was $50. And I believe on Steam, it was out sale for 10% off at launch too. Blueprints and, I don't know, Mugenics just came out. That was $30. A lot of these incredible indie games on PC are just much cheaper. And so it's easy to see why a lot of people are moving in that direction

and why I think that's a big reason why console growth has stalled that I think is important to note here. Yeah, it's kind of fascinating to frame PC gaming is the cheaper habit because I, I think of it as still being expensive because of the rig I have. But I think you're right, Jason, that most people are not me. Not everybody is a beef rig. Most people are not paying for all that extra beef in their sandwich. Most people wouldn't even call their PC rig a rig.

They would just call it my laptop. They wouldn't. They'd be normal. They'd be normal and have a normal thing that they would say about how it was just a computer. Yeah. Or they might just buy. My rig. Imagine going to work to be like, hey, I brought my rig guys.

It's just your laptop. My MacBook air. It's like a surface. I'm going to start referring to everything as a rig. But yeah, I think you're right, Jason. And I also think it's worth noting that a lot of the games that you listed like a blueprints or like you didn't bring up Silk Song. But those games look really great on a laptop or a Steam deck. They look really good still on a device that has significantly less processing power.

We kind of got into that at the beginning of. this conversation and when it comes to things looking great on the PS5. And one presumes the Xbox, which we have the end to discuss. But regardless, I think that's something that makes the PC weirdly welcoming in a way that it hasn't always been because it's kind of associated with that tinkerer mindset and like, oh, you need to know so much to be a PC gamer, that elitism. And I don't know, has that finally changed? That would be great. I would love to see that cultural. shift happen for real. Yeah, I think there's a kind of a category shift going on in that what we talk about as PC gaming is it's like a niche of playing games on a computer, but it just is not really

that meaningful to most people. I mean, most people like we're saying here, I mean, if you don't play games on console, which many people don't, you can just play games on your Mac, on your laptop, on your school laptop. A lot of people's schools give them a discount on some kind of a MacBook, something or other. A lot of people have a surface that their work gets them, you know, that runs Windows. Yeah, that you could play a lot of games on, just with the integrated graphics. And, you know, we were mentioning cheap games, but then also, just because we haven't mentioned it, there are a ton of free games. I mean, so, so many of them, and some of them are really great. So that whole world, I mean, to me anyways, you know, we're all of a certain age, and I think

we think of this console PC, you know, these two circles in a Venn diagram a certain way. But that PC gaming descriptor, I don't know, it's like we need more specific terms for the person who calls their PC a rig, you know, and like has to think about how to cool it. Okay, that is like I think a relatively small subset of this bigger world of just people who play games on some kind of PC, something that can run Steam or, you know, Gog or whatever, Itchio. Another factor that I think we in the U.S. don't think about a lot is that a ton of industry growth in the last like two, three years especially has come from China where they are big, big PC game players these days. And there's some crazy stats out there about like the population on Steam and what chunk of that is in China. It's pretty huge. And a lot of games, I believe Edmund McMillan, former guests of the show, a few weeks ago was talking on social media about how he sold Mugenics tremendously well in China

despite not actually supporting the language. So I think that's interesting as well. A couple more quick stats. The Switch 2, which we can get into a little bit as well, because that's kind of in its own world in terms of the console space. But the Switch 2 has sold 17 million units as of, I believe, February or so, outperforming the Switch 1 in the same time period. That's so surprised. to me, because I think of the Switch 1 as just a powerhouse of success, and it's just interesting that the Switch 2 is outperforming it by this point. But it underperformed in the U.S. and Europe over the holiday season. Got it. It did not meet expectations over the holiday. Xbox series S&X, we don't have sales figures. Microsoft got embarrassed in like 2015 or so by how

badly they were losing the console war, and they stopped reporting sales figures. But estimates suggest that the series consoles have sold like around 35 to 40 million and it's just kidding. I was just going to say 35 to 40. 40 total. Yes. Yes. And they're all and they're all Maddie Myers. Hey, I didn't have to buy one.

She stacked them up into a rig. They sent me one. Well, that's like how the Wii was two GameCube's deck tape together. Maddie's rig is 45 Xbox. Yeah, when I say I have a PC, what I mean is, I'm, I'm living. I'm having Phil Spencer's dream. I'm actually just have an Xbox Series X and that's it. That's all I have. Not his dream anymore. Now he's like, I'm out. Peace. See ya. It could still be his dream. I don't know. I guess so. You never know. I think his dream is to go and like hang out with his kids and just relax for a while.

I hope so. So the Switch 2 that's kind of in its own world and always has been because Nintendo is such a beast and makes so many good games just on its own that are only playable on the Switch that for a lot of people it's become a must have. And I think Pocopia is a good example of that. That game is a smash hit. Critically acclaimed probably will be a game in the year contender and everybody's talking about it and posting jokes about it online.

It feels like if you want to participate in this hot, new, buzzy moment, you got to to get a Switch 2. And I suspect that will be the case for several more moments when a new 3D Mario game comes out. When a new Zelda comes out, it's going to feel like, man, if you don't have a switch 2, you're not part of the Zike guys. That said, I mean, even then, even the Switch 1 was 100-something million units that we're still talking about, like, if the Switch 2 hits that, or even exceeds it by a little bit, we're still talking about a market that is relatively limited. again, comparable to the PS5, I think. So, I mean, there's a lot of talk out there about, like, how much longer can this continue at the same rate without seeing any more growth in that space?

It doesn't feel like there's huge growth to be had the way that there was in the past. I guess my question, the question I would ask to try to answer that question, and the two of you might have a sense of this, is, are Nintendo's budgets ballooning to the same extent that the other types of AAA developers that we were talking about outside of Nintendo? I don't know the answer to that. Nintendo doesn't share their budgets. I think you can surmise. So essentially, when we talk about game budgets, we're talking about the salaries of the people who work there. And the reason that budgets have exploded is because the cost of living in big U.S. cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco has swelled to a crazy degree. And that combined with the length of time of these games, getting longer and longer, therefore having to pay salaries for much more time, that's what's led these budgets to grow exponentially. at Nintendo where in in uh I believe Nintendo is based in Kyoto so I imagine that's where most of NCL's development is um I don't believe that uh that salaries are quite as high as they are here so imagine that the budgets are smaller just for that reason alone but I don't know because Nintendo doesn't release those kinds of figures so I don't know how they compare to say their own budgets from 10 years ago so I guess taking that if we can just sort of assume

that for the sake of this conversation, that that's more or less the case, it seems as though Nintendo has built a nicely sustaining ecosystem for themselves, and, you know, it's working for them. Pocopia is really big, and that's a Switch 2 exclusive, and then they've got everyone talking about it. I mean, even talking about Sony pulling back from releasing games on PC and trying to curate their own ecosystem, I can imagine them looking at what Nintendo is doing and thinking, hey, wait a minute, we should be doing that.

It should, you know, why doesn't it feel like that to have a PlayStation and to play PlayStation games? And the answer to that, I think there's a lot of answers to that. It's never really quite felt the same as Nintendo, or as having a Nintendo and playing Nintendo games on it. But I do think, I understand why they would want that because it seems like Nintendo

is doing something that is actually working. Yeah, I mean, also, Sony was doing that six years ago before they started on this experiment to release games NPC. Right, and they've never quite managed Nintendo's level of just that nice, tight integration and that feeling of continuity. It is interesting to think about Nintendo as the sustainability model, though.

I mean, we're just imagining this because we don't know if that's actually true. But, and I don't know the figures on this, Jason. I'm not sure if you look them up. But I'm sure that the Nintendo Switch 1 is still selling quite well. I feel pretty confident saying that's true. So even if the Switch 2 is not meeting every sales target, despite doing quite well, they are still making money off of the success of the Switch 1. that combined with the success of Pocopia recently,

there's, that's like its own, it's not designed for infinite growth in the way that some of these other blockbuster games and free to play games are. Like, Nintendo is not making Pocopia and saying, people will play this for the rest of their lives. Like that is not,

that is not the intent of a game like that. I mean, I might, but, maybe they are saying that for a key segment of the demographic, for Pocopia that is the same segment that is still playing Animal Crossing and for whom they are still providing updates and they still serve that segment. And I think that's actually part of the sustainability model that they're just showing off to everyone without actually having to talk about

it. They're just displaying it in how they operate. And that's interesting to me because I think of them as really old school. Like they are a closed loop. They still operate on an exclusive model. They make games that you can only play on a Nintendo, and that's it. We certainly aren't talking about PC ports of Pocopia here. That would be comical, but also, like, that isn't even a company goal that I could even imagine them discussing, whereas PlayStation and Xbox have been plagued by that conversation constantly and also by the infinite growth conversation, how much is enough. And that is what we talk about all the time.

Like, what does it look like to have AAA sustainable game development? and it's literally just Nintendo in the background. That appears to be the case. Yeah. So to answer your first question, the Switch one has sold as of December 31st. It has sold 155 million units, making a Nintendo's best-selling console ever.

Second best-selling console in history. Second two, I believe, the PlayStation 2. So pretty good. They're doing all right. Yeah, pretty good. I mean, I don't think that's, I mean, I don't know. Nintendo's a publicly traded company. So they are like chasing infinite growth because their stock must go up in order to make investors happy.

So I think they are chasing infinite growth. They're just doing it in a different way. They're not, we're not seeing them pursue service games, but they're certainly trying their own kind of service thing by trying to get everybody to get one of the Nintendo online subscriptions and pay them monthly and get everybody paying them monthly until the end of time. They even put a C button on the switch too that you can only. use if you pay monthly for the service. It's like their social capture, share, whatever it's called thing, using the camera and stuff. So I do think they are pursuing growth in the scene to the same way as PlayStation and Xbox. They've just been much more successful at it. I think for a number of reasons, I mean, I think first and foremost, Nintendo, like a lot of Japanese companies, has a lot of the

same people who have just been there for 40 plus years. Shigaro Miyamoto is still actively involved in the company. I don't think he makes his own games anymore. And I think he does a lot of movie stuff, but he's also there. Like, if you have a question at Nintendo, you can go ask Shigeru Miyamoto. Like, that's crazy. And there are also lots of other people who aren't household names who just are, have been there for decades. And I think that might be the biggest factor, because if you have people who have just been working together for that long, you have that chemistry, you have that kind of expertise. And I think companies in the West don't place the same value on chemistry and longevity

and keeping their teams together and just making sure that people don't leave. Plus, in the West, to be fair, there's more of an entrepreneurial spirit where if you spend a few years at a company and found some success, you might feel the urge to go off on your own or do something else. So there is that as well. But to me, I feel like that's the biggest kind of secret behind Nintendo's success is just people who have been there forever. It's interesting how in this current paradigm, the Switch has become, you know, the console that you get if you just, if you kind of want to play most things, you play a lot of stuff on a PC, and then you have a switch so you can play the Nintendo stuff. We've mentioned this many times on the show as a kind of a certain type of, you know, setup that you would have.

And it's an interesting contrafactual to imagine counterfactual, to imagine what if Xbox and PlayStation had stayed more like Nintendo is now throughout the 2000s and the 2010s and really maintained a walled garden approach to their consoles and had a bunch of exclusives. Like, what if right now there were a bunch of exclusive Xbox games and a bunch of exclusive PlayStation games and a bunch of exclusive Switch games? And then there were some games that were, you know, whatever, third party electronic arts, the way that it kind of felt like 20 years ago that were released on PC as well. But on PC you were more getting command and conquer whatever, you know, like a Medal of Honor games. Or no, not Medal of Honor, whatever the World War II tactical game is. Like you're playing with a mouse and keyboard still. Like that's just an interesting thing to think about.

Like it's because of the decisions of Xbox and to a lesser extent Sony that we've moved into a world. where it feels a little more like, aren't these all just PCs and everything should just be on PC because you can almost kind of just play everything on PC except for Nintendo? Like the Nintendo, I guess the Nintendo exception makes me think about what it would be like if there were more exceptions than just Nintendo. Well, I mean, I think a big part of that also is that, like, in the past,

you would see PC as the more expensive inferior option, whereas the PS2 you could go to the store and get, I believe the PS2 at one point was on sale for $100, which is why it's the most successful console ever. Like you could get, I think the PS3 launched at 600, but it got discounted all the way down to something like $300. Whereas you can't really find a good, a decent PC, even a laptop for the same price you can get a console.

That's changed. Now the consoles are so expensive that it's like not even worth it and you can get better like buck. Because back then, I mean, a lot of the third parties were really, releasing on console too, right? So you had this world where, yes, you could get all of that, all those EA games or whatever on PC, but you could also get them on your PlayStation, so it was worth getting it all on that console. And then Nintendo operated in its own ecosystem because starting with like the Wii era, the third parties weren't releasing games on

Nintendo anymore to the same degree because Nintendo's consoles weren't playing at the same power as the PlayStation and Xbox. So, you must never forget modern warfare for the Wii. the infamous modern warfare for the Wii God, or like remember the Wii U ports of like Arkham and like Mass Effect and stuff like that Is that kind of happening again with the Switch 2? It is I think. I keep seeing things getting announced

You know more like current AAA games Well yes but those those were like You had the tablet features that were just for Right, right, right that's what I was thinking of But yes, no now we're seeing other older games running on the Switch 2 some of them at least. Yeah, it's definitely happening. It's a little easier to justify getting the Switch 2 if you want to play as much as possible on it. But still, not quite the level of computers. And those lack of console discounts, I think, are really, really going to hurt the companies moving forward.

The other thing to consider is that traditionally in the console world, Nintendo has always wanted to make a profit on their consoles, whereas Sony and Xbox have been willing to take a bath on their consoles, to sell them at the loss because they make up for it in other ways by selling software and services and stuff like that. Yeah, and also, like, the Waldgarden approach kind of imagines a world where something like Fortnite never existed or a game that it became so socially powerful that anyone who made it, no offense to Tim Sweetie, I suppose, would want to have it on every single platform possible because that would maximize profits. and also just discoverability. Like, the whole concept of a blockbuster now is a game that is available on every single device you can fathom. And that is like the opposite of a walled garden.

And it is also just like a way to increase profits, in theory exponentially, as is always the goal if you've got stocks to worry about. So I guess we're, I'm sort of trying to, I love the idea of your walled garden alternative reality, Kirk, but I think it supposes a world where, like, the free game as a service doesn't exist. Because a free game as a service has to exist on everything, right? Or else it can't survive?

Well, I don't know what the two are mutually exclusive. You could have free games as a service where there are still a ton of exclusive games on each of the three consoles, right? And yeah, it's more of just a thought experiment. I think it helps me understand a little bit more about why things are the way they are. And certainly what you just said, Maddie, is true. That is one of the reasons that things are the way that they are. And, you know, can I throw out there one thought about Xbox since we're running out of time and we haven't talked that much about them? And, you know, they obviously have this Project Helix, but they haven't said too much about it and it's a little up in the air.

But I think the idea of Microsoft moving toward, you know, a PC that is like a living room PC, it just strikes me as something they've been doing for so long. I think my read on everything that they've announced, it just feels like it's, Microsoft has been doing this. since I've been covering video games. Like the Xbox app on Windows just kind of, it feels like they're trying to put Xbox in Windows in the same place. I don't know. Like, I'm a little bit,

I'm not really certain what's different about what they're doing now compared with what they've always been doing. Well, it'll run Steam. They'll have a console, an Xbox that'll run Steam. My PC runs Steam. Like, Windows run Steam. I don't really get it.

Like, how is this? What exactly? I guess is that different from, from, I suppose, What is that different from using a Windows PC now, which also has an Xbox store and has an integrated whole Xbox thing? And you can stream Xbox games and play Steam games. The difference is that this will be marketed as Xbox 400 and you'll be able to go to Target and get one at the front of the store. And ideally it'll be cost effective.

But I don't know. We really don't know yet. It's a big question, Mark. Maybe they should put like a screen on it and like a keyboard that you can like type into and then sell a. mouse with it if people want a mouse. Yeah, and it should open and close. It should be a clamshell. Maddie, to your point about those free-to-play, like massive games, I think that actually speaks to you a broader shift that is going to be really interesting to watch in the years to come, which is that we've kind of grown over the last 30 years from a world in which the games that everybody was talking about at the

playground have moved from the Nintendo and PlayStation games into Roblox and Fortnite and Minecraft, and those can be played anywhere so you don't need to keep buying new consoles because you can just play Minecraft on your PlayStation 4 or whatever or your iPad or your phone or your laptop and set on a lot of watching kids play Minecraft on an iPad like that is just you can play Minecraft on that. Absolutely absolutely or I mean I guess Fortnite less so

because they weren't on the Apple store for a while but regardless yeah you can play a lot of the stuff on your old systems or your your tablets and that just like I think has been a huge contributor to the lack of console growth, which is that kids these days don't actually need to get consoles. I mean, there was once when we were all growing up, it was Sony hit the scene, launched the PlayStation 1, and was successful largely because they convinced Squarespace at the time to ditch Nintendo with Final Fantasy and release Final Fantasy 7,

which was the hottest game ever for a time on the PlayStation. And that helped move systems in a way that would be impossible today. It's hard to imagine, other than maybe Grand Theft Auto 6, it's hard to imagine a single game selling consoles because so many of those kids on the playground would have been playing Final Fantasy back then or now playing Roblox and Fortnite. And that's just some more food for thought

as we kind of watch these companies try to deal with this. One more quick question for you guys before we take a break, which is what's going to happen if these companies actually try to release a PlayStation 6

and new Xbox next year? Can you imagine that? I can imagine it. I can not imagine a world in which it's November of 2027 and new consoles are coming out. Yeah, they're unlocking pre-orders for the PlayStation 6

and everyone's staying up to the day. God! And it's like this, we know that Noddy Dog hasn't released a game all generation and is just releasing Intergalactic in the summer of 2027, but buy a PS6 for the next naughty dog game. Yeah, I mean, I guess if you pin it to GTA, then maybe it works,

because that's kind of the game that people imagine, like even the normie talking point is like, that's what's going to make me buy a console. Well, that's this fall. Yeah, so then you can. That's going to come up for the PS5. You can't. It's over.

It's too late. God. Yeah, it'll be like if you're playing GTA6 online, you can play a better version of it on the game. the new console, but, like, that'll get a small number of people. I don't really know. I have a hard time even imagining myself a person who makes a video game podcast buying, I definitely won't buy an Xbox. I didn't buy one this generation. But buying a PlayStation 6, man, I don't know. Like, I don't know. I might just sit out the next week exclusive until that thing is on sale.

But what if GTA looks way better on it? Yeah, no, I'll play it on P, it'll be out on PC by now. Yeah, maybe then the PC port will be out. You can play it on your Vig. It's tough for me to imagine. It might feel different in a year, but for me right now, yeah, it feels too soon. And could you imagine, like, a big explosive announcement that's like, here's how good games look on PS6 right now. Requires an 8K monitor. Well, see, I feel like that felt weird. Even with the PS5, like, I remember even with the PS5 being like, do they look that much better and like squinting in things and being like compared to like the pro of the PS4 generation? Like how different were they really? It's kind of negligible. Like we were already at diminishing returns last time around.

Remember the loading? It was all it's going to load so fast. There'll be no loading times. I mean, that's true. Yeah. It's true. It is an improvement. But it hasn't led to the, you know, when they're like,

ratchet and clank allows you to warp between different levels so quickly. I haven't really seen. I mean, I'm sure behind the scenes that those drives can do cool things. But it's, you know, I just remember that was such a talking point. Like, you don't even know. You'll see. They're going to load so fast. Blow you know.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that could be some, I don't know, like looking at, who knows how many games have taken advantage of that. I think GTA6, from what I've heard, one of their big kind of, I don't know if it's a selling point, but one of the things that they put a lot of effort into over the years is making as many buildings like accessible, like the interiors. There are a lot of interiors in GTA6. That's always been a thing. And I imagine having an SST and faster loading times helps with that. So it could be that we're seeing some results. But yes, to your point, the majority of games, like, that has just been totally irrelevant for it.

And it comes, and if it manifests as like you can go in more buildings and grant theft auto, like, okay, that's cool. But that's not, you know, it's not the, I don't know, it's not as mind-blowing as you would hope a new five or $600 or $1,000 console, you know, would show you something truly remarkable and new feeling. I feel like these console makers just were not prepared for a world in which the market doesn't care about graphical fidelity as much anymore. and is totally fine spending, buying millions of copies of games that are 2D. I mean, Silk Song sold how many millions of copies or games that just are stylized or aren't high graphical fidelity? Again, Claire Obscure from last year, that's the game that takes a lot of shortcuts when it comes to graphical fidelity. The game runs on Steam deck.

Beautiful though. Yeah, it runs and seems. It looks great. It still looks beautiful, but it cuts a lot of corners. So that maybe, maybe they just have to totally rethink the console model and maybe Maybe the move, God, could you imagine this? Maybe the move is for Sony to make a PlayStation 6 that is much, much cheaper and much less powerful. And the move is to be like, hey, like, how about a $200 PlayStation 6?

Because no times are tough. And maybe it doesn't have the... Like flip the table on the technological arms wrist. That's what Xbox should have done really. That's crazy. Xbox did do that. I have an Xbox series. No, but they didn't. They marketed that.

They didn't fully do it. They hedged. It had to run all the same games, and so it was just hampering everybody else. What a company needs to do is release a console that is like, this is meant for playing low fidelity games, 2D games, indie games. They need to create a console that can play fewer games. Yes. The Oia. It's the PlayDade.

We need a little tiny, like, Game Boy with a crank on it that can only play Game Boy games. I mean, actually, the PlayDade is pretty cool. it would be incredible to see Sony go the play date route I would love to see that man it's funny you bring up the play date because my one more thing is very related to that so let's get segue let's take a break imagine a future where the PlayStation 6 comes out next year and we'll be back for one more thing like 16 gigabytes RAM nobody

has that much RAM man there was a moment 256 megabyte hard drive there was a moment at GDC I was a moment at GDC I was a of this talk, but it was posted on social media later where Valve got up and they were like, so if anyone out here knows where to get a line on some RAM, we're in the mic. Because the steam machine is like, who knows, it's going to happen with that. Anyway, all right, let's take a break for real and we'll be back with one more thing. Hey, what's up, everybody? My name is Mark Gagliardi and I host. We Got This with Mark and Howl on the

Maximum Fun Network. Would you like to introduce yourself as, as well. My name is Jesse and I am from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Hi, Jesse from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Jesse, you are our maximum fun member of the month. I'm so delighted to hear that I'm the member of the month. Thank you. Is there a first episode that you remember? The pretzel shape episode. Yeah. That's pretty classic. Both of us just killed off each other's answers and went with pretzel rod, which is clearly not the best. No, that is a terrible pretzel. As our member of the month, you have a parking spot at Maximum Fun headquarters, as well as a $25 gift card to the Maximum Fun store. We say it at the end of the episode, we wouldn't do without you and we couldn't do without you.

So thank you for that. You're welcome. Become a MaxFund member now at maximumfund.org slash join. Hello. Hello, I'm calling on behalf of the Beef and Dairy Network podcast. No, I'm sorry. No sales calls. Goodbye.

It's a multi-award-winning podcast featuring guests at... as Ted Danson, Nick Offerman, Josie Long. I don't know what a Josie Long is, and anyway, I'm about to take my mother into town to see Phantom of the Opera at last. You are wasting my time, and even worse, my mother's time. She only has so much time left. She's 98 years old.

She's only expected to live for another 20 or 30 years. Mother, get her shoes on. Yes, the orthopedic ones. I don't want to have to carry you home again, do I? Right, well, if you were looking for a podcast. Mother, you're not wearing that, are you? It's very revealing, Mother. This is a musical theatre, not a Parisian Bordello.

Simply go to maximum fun.org. I'm reaching for my Samsung Galaxy 4 as we speak. Mother! Mother, not that hat! Kirk, Maddie, we are back. I'll go first because I'm talking about a playday game that was recently released on PC. It's called Ratcheteer DX. Have I ever heard of this game? No.

Okay, it's really cool. It's like a top-down, Link's Awakening, like, Zelda, like. Not too long. It took me like two, three, four hours to beat something like that. so it's kind of a easily digestible Zelda-like. And it's really cool.

It plays with light in some really interesting ways. It looks like a Game Boy game, but does some cool graphical tricks that wouldn't have been possible on the Game Boy. And it's just got some solid dungeons and combat and puzzles.

It's set in this world where the planet has been destroyed and it's just covered in snow. And so a lot of people live underground, and you start off underground, and so you have to get a lantern, and you have to kind of use it to navigate these underground areas. And then you get a wrench, and that's your sword, and you get some other items that let you traverse in self puzzles and true Zelda fashion. And then you wind up on the surface that's covered in snow, and you meet some people who are there, and do you get other items and help you navigate the snow and stuff like that?

It's really cool, and it's really well designed, and I really enjoyed playing it, and it's nice and short. And I beat it on a flight on my flight from New York to San Francisco last week. on my Steam deck. So I recommend it. It's really cool. Once again, it's called Ratcheteer DX. And yeah, this used to be a playday game. I did not play it there and was brought to PC where I played it. And yeah, it's super cool, super cool game. Have I there if you played a play date? I have it. They look so cute though. I have. It's not for me, I would say. Just because like, well, the, the, um, the like, I'm all for low fidelity graphics, but this is a little too much. It's too low fidelity.

Yeah, when I was at that career day for my friend's kids' school that I mentioned on the show a few episodes back, one of the kind of a longtime employee of Panic, I think his kids go to the school, but he gave a talk as well. And I went to his talk and just reminded me that Panic is a cool company. They make the play date enter out here in Portland. And it just made me remember the play date and how many neat little games there are on it and kind of want to get one. It's always a little more expensive than I want to pay for it. but I still might get one one day.

There is a lot of cool games, and I've never played the Lucas Pope game that's on the PlayDade. And I bet it's pretty good. I've heard it's pretty good. Anyway, that's cool that that's on Steam. I'll check it out for sure. Yeah, I mean, I like this habit of people making Play-Dade games and then potentially porting them to Steam in a new form because I think that's a good way to go because, yeah, the Play-Date I think is done well considering what it is. But, I mean, most people do not have more.

An incredibly niche product, yes. Yeah. Maddie, a repeat from last week. What's your one more thing? I am also playing Pocopia. I jumped on the train. So not a Dragon Quest Builders person like Jason. So I can't compare it to that as he did last week.

I have my own refracted take on it, which is that I think this is a really fun cleanup game. I have been playing this game. And Dina looked over my shoulder and was like, oh, you're playing Animal Crossing in shock? Because why would I be? It's not really my style. And I was like, this is kind of. like Pokemon Animal Crossing, but it's also kind of like Pokemon House Flipper, which is a game I've talked about on this show a bit where you just clean houses, despite the title of the game,

which suggests you're selling houses. You almost never do that in Houseflipper. You pretty much just clean houses in that game. Maybe they could have called it something else, whatever. So Pocopia takes place in a ruined world. Everyone is dead and you're playing as a ditto who makes friends with other Pokemon who emerge from the ether with amnesia. they have no idea what happened to the world and why there's this apocalypse.

I don't know either. I'm not far enough in the game to know. The map is huge, feels huge. There are these huge areas for you to restore and build little Pokemon houses in and just make into a lovely living space for all of your new friends. And that parts the kind of social animal crossing bit. But I got to the second area of the game. And this area is like adjacent to a beach.

And so it's been completely overblown with sand. And also the original version of the town had all these aqueducts everywhere. And those have all broken down as well. So a bunch of the houses are flooded. And this is like where the game really unlocked for me mentally. Because I was like, I don't know if I'm going to stick with this game. Like I like Animal Crossing. I can play those games for, you know, 10, 15 hours and have a great time and then be like,

I'm kind of good on this. This, though, cleaning up this area of sand and water. And then after you do that, you have to hook up all of the electricity in the town. And that has been so fun. It's so satisfying. Jason knows what I'm talking about because he's probably already played this part. It's so fun to like find each of the utility poles. Eventually you get a recipe.

You can build the utility poles. And you're like watching the town go from being this completely post-apocalyptic, sad, gray, literally dark because there is no light there to lighting it up and restoring it. It's like dopamine hit after dopamine hit for me. It's, I don't know if the rest of the game is going. going to work this well, but this second area is really hitting. So if you like cleanup games, I think you'd actually also like Pocopia. It's one of the mechanics in the game that I've really, really enjoyed. Yeah, I mean, one of the big advantages that Pocopia has over Animal Crossing is that

you can interact with any block in the world to just move things around anywhere you want. I mean, it's Minecraft inspired and then obviously Dragon Quest Builders came after that. And I think, I guess one of the charms of Animal Crossing, if you're like kind of a younger person or like, you like simpler games is that you can't interact with everything in the world. But that's something I've always found frustrating about Animal Crossing and that I really enjoy about tracking course of elders and Bocopia. Yeah, I love that you can truly interact with the entire world and change it. You can destroy a house and rebuild it. That's really satisfying. Or in the case of what I'm talking about, you can feel like you're truly cleaning something up because

you're actually taking pieces away from the world. And that, is just, I don't know, what's more satisfying than that? Cleaning in real life, supposedly, it's not as good. We all know that. It's just not as good. I've played a little bit. Maybe I'll make Pocopia my one more thing next week so we can get the hat. You should. We should complete the trifect. Yeah. I like why I played. Yeah, it definitely, I mean, from the beginning, you're just, there's dead grass in a big area and you're just barfing water under the grass to make the grass turn green. And it's just like, can you turn all these squares from brown to green? And it has that kind of pleasing thing. It sounds like, so it follows

the structure of Dragon Quest Builders, Maddie, you're saying like you finish one area kind of and then you move on to another and you start over and you have a new set of objectives. That's sort of the structure. No, it's different because it's one contained worlds. Oh, okay, so you just kind of unlock a new area you can walk over to.

Right, and Dragon Quest Builder is like, you're starting from scratch essentially. You're in a brand new world, starting from the beginning. And this is a little... Right. I asked because I actually didn't love that about Dragon Quest Builders. I didn't like the feeling of having to start over. and I had kind of gotten attached to my first area. So that's cool to hear that you can, that it's all one contiguous world.

And your previous accomplishments are right nearby if you want to just go hang out there. That's nice. Yeah, that's what I mean when I say the map feels really big. Because once I got to the second area and it was connected to the first one, I was like, oh, my God. This is going to be huge because I'm sure there's going to be more areas. And I already felt like the first area was really big because I had to barf water over all of it. And then I got to the second one, I was like, wow, there's so many more little brown patches that I need to turn green.

You really know how big a field is until you've had to barf water all over the entire field. It's so true. I'm always saying this. Yeah. But yeah, Kirk, I mean, the nice thing about that set up

in Dragon Quest Builders is that each area it feels like you're setting up to this big goal and then the monsters attack you. You have to defend your base. It has its own fun rhythm. Yeah, yeah.

All right, what's your one more thing, Kirk? My one more thing is Resident Evil 4 remake, which I finished Resident Evil Requiem before our triple play even. And there's stuff you can do in a new game for that game that is pretty fun and you can start trying to get all those challenges. But I actually realized I was hungry to go back to Resident Evil 4 remake

because I didn't finish the remake of that game. And it actually never finished Resident Evil 4 originally. I'd played one port of it or another, but I'd never finished the game. It's so long. I've always known that it's a very long game. But I started the remake and I played a pretty big chunk of it for when we talked about it on the show. show two years ago when it came out, or now three years ago, I guess, in 2023. But I didn't finish.

I got up to where you kind of first rescue Ashley and have to get her out of the church. And it's kind of when the next phase of that game begins where you're escorting Ashley. It's like still in the village, not quite to the castle. I'd done all the island and the boat stuff, though. So, you know, a pretty big chunk of it. But man, returning to it, I went and finished it. I just totally got swept up in the game and played it for an hour or two every night up until I finish the game. And now I'm actually in New Game Plus and I'm playing the Separate Way's DLC, which stars Ada Wong. And I think they released it later as a standalone thing. They did, yeah.

And man, I am just so into that game. I mean, I'm really just into Resident Evil in general right now. Yeah, you're Resident Evil pills. Yeah, I felt this way after finishing RE2 remake as well. And then I just wasn't really feeling the remake of three, which came out really shortly after that. But I had that same feeling of all I want to do is just like suplex zombies and like shoot big goopie eyeballs with a shotgun and have them explode in slime, which is just they're so good at that gross, wet, visceral, sloppy you like exploding monster stuff. You can always tell where you got to aim the shotgun because there's going to be a big gloopy blob. A big bulbous eyeball or something that you're just going to shoot a bunch of times.

Yeah, so I had a really great time going back to this and just mostly just wanted to kind of say that to kind of mention that I was really happy to have gone back and finished it. I think I'll be talking about it more in our Beanscast as well because the Leon sections of Requiem call back to Resident Evil 4. And I now have an even better appreciation for how many things in Requiem are our greatest hits remixes of things that happened in 4. There's one boss fight, a later on boss fight in four, that really notably echoes in Requiem that I actually had no context for when it happened in Requiem. This is something that happens for at the end of the game that I won't spoil since Requiem is pretty new. But I was just, I really loved it. I actually like how Leon handles and plays better in Four remake than in Requiem. It's a little bit different.

The controls are a little different, and it took a little adjusting. But then once I adjusted, now when I go back to Requiem, I'm a little, I find myself a little bit longing for Leon and four. Aren't we all longing for Leon? Yeah. Man, also, it's so funny because he and Ashley, what happened to Ashley after Resident Evil Four, Ashley Graham, the president's daughter? Nothing.

She doesn't come back, if that's what you're asking. She doesn't come. Yeah, I guess I should say she has yet to come back because any Resident Evil character could come back. And, like, President Graham, doesn't he, like, die at the beginning of six? Isn't there like an insane scene where Leon has to like shoot the president because he becomes a zombie or something? Yeah, he becomes a zombie, I think, as part of an assassination plot. Somebody makes him a zombie.

Jason's face. The face that Jason is making is an appropriate face for reaction to anything that happens in Resident Evil. Yeah, as we all know, the president was forcibly turned into a zombie as part of an assassination plot. We all know that happened. And then Leon had to kill him. I'm not even right about this, that like the plan of this sort of, of Sackler, Sadler. I keep wanting to call him Sackler, like the opiaries. family, but it's Sadler. It's almost like they're trying to evoke something there. Right.

Equally megalomaniacal, evil person, maybe. That his goal was maybe to infect the president's daughter so that the president's daughter would infect the president? Is that? Why did they connect? I don't remember either. I'm sure it's explained in some document that I skimmed through because I was looking for magnum bullets and wasn't paying attention. Anyways, I'm kind of enjoying the schlocky lore and story. It's so great. It's so stupid. It is. And like, and really the The just, it's mostly the narrative, as I've said many times, the narrative of a Resident Evil game is the situations that they come up with. These games are so built around this idea of just a series of exciting and engaging situations. And then the more of them you play, the more you start to see, yes, there is lore, there's world building lore, but there's also situation design lore.

There's a feeling of, oh, okay, this is a little riff on that thing they did in the previous game. And that is really fun to kind of, it's fun to expand my knowledge of that. And Resident Evil 4 definitely expanded my knowledge of that. I just, I can't believe the variety of this game. The Mine Cart sequence, have, do you remember this from the original maybe? I do, yeah. Did you get this far in the remake?

It's basically, it's the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, mine cart chase, one of the most incredible set pieces Steven Spielberg ever directed. But they made it into a video game, and it's so amazing and hilarious that it just, They drop you into this on-rail sequence. There's like chainsaw guys riding next to you in mine cars trying to hit you with their chainsaws. And it's just, I mean, and that's just one thing that happens at one point when you're with Luis.

And that's one of maybe 45 different scenarios that are in this game. And it just keeps going and going and going. And now there's DLC and there's all these wild, weird challenges, speed-running challenges, beat the game without healing, things I'll never do. But I'm really just liking playing at New Game Plus with all my cool guns unlocked on a slightly harder difficulty level and just really appreciating the atmosphere, the level design, and the whole thing. So I'm so glad I went back to it. It's really funny because it's not really relevant for our show. It's not something we're covering exactly. We're not doing a

triple play on it. But I just loved it. I just wound up playing it because it was so fun. And it just reminded me how much I love Resident Evil games. So, hey, man. Sometimes you can play a video game not for content, Kirk. Yeah, you can play it because it's fun. You're allowed to do that. That's actually fairly uncommon, but it's been really nice to play this one and to just keep going back to it. Though I do have to play more esoteric ab for next week. It's a good thing that game is amazing and very different from Resident Evil because...

I mean, about as different as you can get, yeah. Although there are zombies. Yeah, I suppose that's true. There are zombies, but otherwise quite different. Anyways, yeah, man, anyone who didn't play that game, if you want to just have a really long and generous and fun roller coaster ride of an experience, It's mad. Go play Resident Evil for a remake. It rocks.

It's very fun. Good recommendation. All right. That is it for this week's episode. We'll be back next week to talk about Esoteric Ebb. And then pretty soon after that to talk about Resident Evil Requiem on the bonus feed. So check that out and become a member. And yeah, Kirk Maddie, you'll see you both next week.

Yeah. See you both next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreyer, Maddie Meyer. and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode

may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Email us at triple click at maximumfund.org and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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