Video Gamers Podcast - Respawn’s Mandalorian Game, AAA Flops and Bad Bad Blizzard - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

The Video Gamers Podcast is back with another incredible episode of This Week in Gaming. We’re breaking down the week’s biggest video game news with the announcement of the new first person Mandalorian game from Respawn, Playstation plans on releasing more first party video games to PC, Blizzard once again shows how they’ve lost their way and more in this awesome gaming packed episode! Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Gaius214, YayaArizona, Disratory, Jwaf and AceofShame Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello fellow gamers! Welcome back to the Video Gamers Podcast. If you are new to the show, welcome! We are three lifelong gamer dads and on Thursdays like today we break down recent gaming news over the last week. Come check us out on socials at Video Gamers Pod, and make sure to leave us a five-star rating and leave a review in Apple Podcasts. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he's ready to don some Mandalorian armor and hunt some bounties, bringing them back dead or alive. It's Josh.

I feel like that would be a fun job, right? Am I alone in this? Get your dog, the bounty hunter, on. Okay. I was going to say, I feel like I'd make a good bounty hunter, guys. Maybe. Maybe. I could see it. Yeah. And joining Josh and me, he's got a

shiny new mount to ride around Sanctuary in one of his favorite games from last year. Just don't ask him how much it costs. It's Ryan. Listen, I earned this. I earned it with money that I made, and then I bought it, okay? It's a good deal.

I was going to buy all the in-game currency anyway, so it's a bargain. All right. This week, we've got a few news stories here that we really wanted to talk about. And to start out, let's talk a little bit about Activision Blizzard. And I know that we talk about them a lot, but there's a reason why.

They're always in the news. Something's going on. Here recently, Overwatch posted a blog saying that they have heard feedback from the Overwatch community, and they are going to be, quote, revitalizing the Overwatch 2 experience. Oh, so they're adding 6v6, right? They're giving us Overwatch 1 back? They're giving us Overwatch 1 back that they took away? They finally heard the fans and they're listening, guys.

You know, Josh, unfortunately, I don't think that's what's going on here. Now, to be clear, before we start dogging on blizzard too much was there a time josh that you would have said overwatch one was your favorite game oh absolutely in fact thank you for the reminder i need to go back to our leaderboard and move overwatch off of there because uh it's not where it was back in the glory days. Very true. Yeah. I mean, I think for me, if it's not the most time I have spent in a game,

it's that, or it's pub G. Those are the top two. We love overwatch. Ryan played overwatch, not as much as Josh and I did, but we all thought it was an incredible game. And I think that's partially why we poke so much fun at overwatch.

It's because it hurts so bad because we know how high it once was and how much it's fallen over time. Josh, you and I had it installed since 2016, and we recently finally got rid of it, which is quite an accomplishment. I mean, we played that game for about eight years. We were finally done. It is not on my computer. I know it's not on either of your guys i'm so proud of you guys is destiny 2 off your computer right it is it has not been on my computer for a while yeah all right congratulations all right so this blog post from overwatch i mean this means that they're trying to fix the game, right? Like, when I hear that we're trying to revitalize

the game, it means they're trying to draw people like us back into the game. Alright, so what are they changing? These are going to be huge changes, right? After comp matches, you're now going to start to receive a little bit of a summary that explains why your rank went up or down as much

as it did. So it might say like, you were favored in this match, but you lost. So you didn or down as much as it did. So it might say like you were favored in this match, but you lost. So you didn't gain as much. Is that not revitalizing the game for you guys? What's going to revitalize it? If not professionals, guys,

we can do this. We can get through this new story. All right, get together, get it together. I'm sorry, but all of us started grinning and then it was so hard to keep a straight face okay okay we can't do it all right so a little bit of a little bit of sr transparency which is apparently a big deal uh on top of that i mean there's some minor changes i mean ultimately the only other really big change which has kind of thrown a lot of people in a tizzy, is that tanks and DPS will be able to passively heal themselves after not taking damage for five

seconds. And also while someone is taking damage, healing done to them is reduced by 20%. Now, if you are a healer main like me, this makes me want to get even further away from Overwatch 2, to be perfectly honest. Healing, I always found to be so much harder in Overwatch 2 than Overwatch 1. I mean, I don't like just getting on the pod and dogging companies, especially when it's our top story. I would not say we are a toxic show or toxic gamers, but we call things for what it is. I mean, like, does this make you reconsider the state of Overwatch 2 at this point? Is this the feedback we've been giving them? No, I mean, I don't mind Dog and Blizzard a little bit, to be honest,

because they've done this to themselves at this point. And we have always said we are gamers. We're not journalists. You know, we're not experts or any of that stuff. We're just dudes that like playing video games. So we're going to call it like we would call it, we're not experts or any of that stuff. We're just dudes that like playing video games. So we're going to call it like we would call it if we're just having a chat, you know, with each other. And I mean, part of that is what the heck is wrong with Blizzard, guys? You know, boy, they've fallen from grace. You know, this is like a routine thing that we've started to see lately.

And honestly, it sucks because Overwatch was, like you said, Paul, one of my favorite games ever. And then we saw the release of Overwatch 2, which we actually got really excited about. We have seen how that has gone. We have seen how Blizzard has stopped caring about making good games. And all they care about is how do we monetize the games that we make um and when i read this it literally just pushed me further away yeah i mean i think you said it perfectly because what they are doing is they are trying to make the game more approachable for everybody at that point right like the the part of this big deal is we're making projectiles bigger so that it's easier to land your shots they're talking all this I mean, I feel like they're just talking

out the side of their mouth on this going, you know, we hear you, we hear what the experience is like guys, and we're going to fix it for you because we care. And if you actually start reading the details of this, what they're doing is they're dumbing the game down. And I mean, let's be honest, Overwatch was never a super difficult game. It was not a thinker's game. The difficulty in Overwatch was relying on your teammates.

And so it's like making the projectiles bigger so that I feel like I'm hitting my shots doesn't do anything for me. But then you give heroes more health because you're like, well, we like the time to kill. So then I feel like I'm hitting my shots doesn't do anything for me. But then you give heroes more health because you're like, well, we like the time to kill. So then I'm like, what are you giving me then? Oh, we're going to make you feel like you're a better player.

And it's like, I don't need that. It's the game that's the problem. It's not me. You know what I mean? Like, it's the fact that I have to rely on four other people that aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. It the fact that you have healers i'm sorry we call them supports now but we have support characters in the game that are running around doing dps and not healing anybody you know you have a tank that dives into the enemy team solo before his team is ready and

then dies and then gets toxic at his teammates because they weren't there. It's like, dude, you had no awareness whatsoever. It has nothing to do with projectile size. It has nothing to do with competitive play. I feel like this is their weird knee-jerk reaction to the Overwatch League getting canceled where they went, well, guys, competitive was what made Overwatch. And now that the Overwatch League is gone, we have to focus on the competitive side of things. They're advertising a ranking that 1% of the population is ever going to achieve with the champion rank.

Guys, we have a new level to strive for. It's called champion. It's above grandmaster. Dude, I never made it out of platinum. Why do I care? You know what I mean? They want to keep the streammaster. Dude, I never made it out of Platinum. Why do I care? You know what I mean? They want to keep the streamers. Right, exactly.

So it's just like, these are all the wrong things, man. I'm so disappointed in Overwatch. I'm so disappointed in Blizzard. I'm sorry, I don't mean to rant, but it's just like, you guys are so disconnected from your player base at this point.

I don't know that there's any hope anymore. And I like legitimately do not feel like there's any hope for this game, which is why I have completely uninstalled it. I have very little interest in ever going back to it, but it just makes me sad that they have no clue what people want. And they, it's like, and they just keep trying to sell them other things

and then pretending like this is the solution can you tell josh has uh some opinions on overwatch i did the fact that they ruined this game for me still upsets me because it was i can tell phenomenal i can tell no that this is what happens dude 10. 10 years ago, 15 years ago, who was making games? People that played games. Now it's the suits. All the suits have gotten into the mix. It's all about numbers, black and white. And all it is is spreadsheets.

And how can we expand our profit margin? And so they lose the kind of the essence of what this is all about man we're we're all here to play these games and have fun and have enjoyment we've been going crazy on hell divers it's a 40 game not not a quadruple a title not a triple a title like it's it's just a game made by people who love video games and that's's what we're missing now. And that's what they're missing at Blizzard. They used to be something that you would look and you'd see a Blizzard title. And you would say, that's probably going to be amazing. You don't see that anymore.

You don't feel that anymore. And you're hesitant to even pick it up. And that's very troublesome for me. And I'm sure it's going to be troublesome for Blizzard. There's a reason why Overwatch feels pretty soulless at this point, because that's where things devolve. And when you play something like Helldivers 2, the excitement has spread like wildfire because you can feel the passion and the game has its identity. And it makes for great TikTok clips. And next thing you know, everyone you know is playing Helldivers 2. And yeah, I mean, I hate to see Overwatch in the state that it's in, but it's

just the reality. I mean, this is where it is. I was going to ask you guys, is there anything that Overwatch can do to draw you back in at this point? I think my answer is no. The only thing I might consider is, honestly, if they said this is a throwback weekend we're going back to overwatch one everything's 6v6 here's a million shields and i would be curious because then if i played it and really hated it then i would say you know what good for you overwatch you did do the right decision going 5v5 and getting rid of shields but i would be really curious to go back and play overwatch one which of course you can't because it was taken away from us, even though we paid $20 for it back in the day.

All right. Well, while we're ragging on Blizzard, let's just keep that train rolling. To add insult to injury in the court of public opinion against Blizzard, Diablo 4 added a new mount called the Crystal Clad. Really bad name, by the way. In order to get it, you have to buy a $65 bundle that includes in-game currency, the Battle Pass, and Battle Pass Skips. I get that people don't like seeing high-priced cosmetics in the shop, especially when it's like

more than what the game itself actually costs. This actually does not bother me nearly as much, but what about you guys? How do you feel about the $65 mount? It's just another one of those things. They throw it out there, and whoever buys it, buys it. I would probably never, ever buy any of these things. I don't see the reason. I don't see the purpose

i it's hard to even put into words i for for somebody who came from a a world of you buy a game and then you play the game and then that's the game you know and then now and yeah and then now it's oh oh we have this oh we have that you know give us more money give us more money give us more money so i don't know that it's kind of like they're just intentionally holding these things to release to us to just kind of generate revenue down the line i would never buy it i don't have a problem with it but you know i would give the side eye to people that would buy it that's fair yeah my thinking on this is if you love cosmetics and it's worth it to you then power to you you know we are not you got to understand we are not slamming anybody that

spends discretionary income on video games or cosmetics like i know generally we don't care about cosmetics that much in a game but i understand that there are people that do. And none of us are saying that you're wrong for that. What we take issue with is the practice of Blizzard in trying to soak as much money from people as possible. And that's, again, what we're seeing with Overwatch, what we're seeing with Diablo 4. Now, Ryan is the biggest Diablo 4 fan out of all of us. I thought Diablo 4, the campaign, and a little bit of the end game was great, but I lost all interest in it at that point. From what I am reading, people are still upset with the state of the end game in Diablo 4. And what's goofy is I have read that, hey,

season one made it better or made it worse. Season two made it even worse, but then season three was miraculously a lot better and it looked like they were on track, but then they fell off the horse again, you know, and so it's crystal clad. Yeah, exactly. And so it seems to me like they can't quite get the game itself where it needs to be for longevity. And it's like, if you can't figure out how to make your game fun at this point, something is inherently wrong. And if you were struggling to make your game fun for people that have stuck with it for this long, I mean, it's been out for almost a year now, you know? And it's like, if you still can't manage to land the end game content

in a game like this, that should be your focus. Your focus should not be trying to soak $65 out of people for another cosmetic. And I think it just, again, points to the issue that we have with Blizzard and their disconnect from gamers overall. So you spend your money how you want. None of us are saying that is the issue. It's more, this is on Blizzard. They don't know where to go, and all they care about is the money involved and how much they're making. The weird thing is,

you can actually have both sides, right? Like when we did our deep dive of Helldivers 2, we said, I'm almost tempted to buy the paid battle pass simply because I want to support such a great game. Take my money. If Diablo 4 had fantastic end game, and people said, you know what? to buy the paid battle pass simply because I want to support such a great game. My money. If, if Diablo four had fantastic end game and people said, you know what?

I've gotten a thousand hours out of Diablo. I'll buy a $65 mount simply to help show my support. And I get a cool amount out of it. You can have your cake and eat it too. The problem is the perception. It definitely seems like it's just ringing an empty sponge trying to get that last drip while there are issues like end game content now if we take the one dude off of mount duty is he gonna fix all the end game content in diablo because some people make that argument

right like get your devs off of these cosmetics that's not gonna fix the game that's not the issue but public perception is certainly an issue with Blizzard all around. I don't know anyone who's like they're the flagship company still at this point that everyone else wants to be like. All right. Went a little long on Blizzard there. So hopefully we still have. I apologize for nothing. Normally we don't start out by complaining for 15 minutes.

So let's talk a little bit about PlayStation. Let's move on and talk about something else. Sony's president spoke out and said that PlayStation is proactively working on bringing more titles to other platforms. It's part of an aggressive profit margin growth plan. All right. We're kind of already talking about, about the business of gaming,

right? This makes a lot more sense to me than what Blizzard has been doing. So Sony has basically said, and I quote, in the past, as you all know, we wanted to popularize our console, and the first party title's main purpose was to make the console popular. But there's a synergy to it. If you have strong first party content, not only with the console, but with other platforms like computers, a first-party can be grown with multi-platform and that can help

operating profit to improve. All right, so we've already seen a lot of this, right? Sony has brought a lot of content to PC, the Horizon games, God of War, The Last of Us, Spider-Man, Uncharted, Returnal, you know, even others, even Helldivers 2, of Us, Spider-Man, Uncharted, Returnal, even others. Even Helldivers 2 is a Sony-published game. Sounds like they're only going to continue this moving forward, which I think is an absolutely great thing. When I read this story, I was trying to read in between the lines. The PS4 outdid the Xbox One, and the PS5 is currently selling three consoles for every one

Xbox Series X or S. They're basically saying, you know what? We're good. People like the PlayStation. The console's in a good spot. We don't just have one strategy to get people to buy the console now. Let's start branching out. We'll put some of these games on other platforms like PC, and it's only going to help us make more and more money and make the games more accessible. This is the kind of business profit growth that I can get behind. Yeah, I mean, dude,

I never understood the console wars thing. I mean, we have never gotten into that. I mean, play on what you want to play. My thinking is the more games that people have access to, the better. And I understand the thinking behind console exclusivity, where am I going to buy a PS5 because I want to play a particular game on it? And it used to be that the answer was yes. Nowadays, for me personally, the answer is no. I'll just wait until it comes to PC because there is the very likely fact that that will happen. I played God of War, one of my all-time favorite games ever on the PS4, and then it ported to PC

and I played it on PC. I loved the experience on PC more, but maybe it's just because I generally tend to default to PC games. I think that a lot of these companies are in it to make money, obviously. And the more that you give people access to your game, the more copies you're going to sell. And I mean, we just had the conference with Xbox, right? Where everybody in the world lost their minds because they were worried that Xbox exclusives were going to go to the PlayStation five and, you know, Phil Spencer and Xbox came out and they said, Hey, we're going to have a podcast about this. We're going to address this.

And then it was like, it's like four games. It's like hi-fi rush, see a thieves and, you know, a couple of other things that are going to be available for playstation xbox people lost their minds dude people were throwing their xboxes away because they were like i'll never support you know xbox games going to playstation and it's like why like yeah what do you care you're not yeah what unless you're a stockholder i mean you know what i mean but it's's like, oh no, not my Xbox kind of thing. And it's like, these are my games. And it's like, don't you want gamers to be able to play games like that?

I just don't, I don't understand that thinking. But again, we've never gotten into the console war stuff either. It makes a lot of sense for a business to say, hey, listen, if we make this available on another platform, we're probably gonna sell, you know, 3 million more copies at that point. And these are people that now can appreciate this IP or this franchise that now might be even more invested in this IP or franchise that will continue to want to play it at that point. It just makes sense. Other than the weird people

that get super butthurt about a game being available to other people. I don't understand that. I don't agree with that thinking. So I mean, good on you, Sony. I mean, I look recently I played Returnal on PC because it's available on PC. Super fun game. God of War. Another example. I mean, we're starting to see this and I love it because I don't have a PS5. I can borrow one of yours, but that's a hassle. I can go out and buy one, but that's expensive, you know, or I can just wait a little bit and then pick it up. Then hell divers to absolutely flawless example of a very recent one where it released simultaneously for PS5 and PC. The game is breaking every record that Arrowhead Studios could even imagine. I mean, the server issues are kind of out of control, but that's simply due to popularity. They never

anticipated this kind of response to their game. So now they're scrambling, but guess what? That means the game's successful. They're making money. And if you look on steam right now concurrent player count on steam is 350 000 people that's a lot of copies at 40 bucks a piece man like it just it makes perfect business sense and everybody knows if it makes dollars it makes sense yeah exactly as the great 50 cent one said no it's it's one of those things man it's just it's uh i don't understand like the the gatekeeping and the like it's my this is my system this is my game you can't play it on your other system but we're all trying to game together so what if you're out there and then you have your game on your system nobody's playing it anymore you know what what are you gonna do like if it's multiplayer so like you want to play with people you we're all community

we're all here together we're all here to play these games so i never understood the the system where i've i've mostly always been a playstation guy um playstation and pc are my go-tos because you can get all the microsoft games on pc as well as PC games and then PlayStation exclusives but yeah I just don't I don't get the the craziness I think it's great for Sony what they're doing um I think it's gonna just keep chugging along and I think it's gonna help everybody out so I don't understand why anyone have outrage over this so yeah let's just let's just keep going and just keep keep playing these games i like that they have the confidence to know the console is going to sell let's just sell the game because look at josh josh paid money for god of war and returnal

sony's making more than they would have without the ports so it's not like they're losing out it's only gonna you know increase accessibility it's gonna make they're losing out. It's only going to increase accessibility. It's going to make them more profit. Gamers get to experience all this. It just makes a lot of sense. All right, well, let's go ahead and take a short break and we'll come back and talk about Star Wars. This episode is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Ever captured a great night video

only for it to be ruined by that one noisy talker? With Audio Er erase on the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, you can reduce or remove unwanted noise and relive your favorite moments without the distractions. And that's not all. New Galaxy AI features like NowBrief will give you personalized insights based on your day schedule so that you're prepared no matter what. Buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 ultra now at samsung.com all right we are back it seems like lately we've had so much star wars content to talk about i'm okay with that i don't mind that a bit i'm a star i'm okay with it too yeah the games are always a

little hit or miss right kind of depends but you know we we we have talked a lot lately about star wars outlaws we've also talked about the star wars jedi series we recently did a deep dive on survivor i am personally very interested in quantic dreams work on star wars eclipse even though there hasn't been any news about that lately well now we have had some teases and some leaks and respawn. The people who are responsible for Titanfall, apex legends, the star Wars, Jedi games. They are now working on a first person Mandalorian game,

which is in the early stages of development. Is this up your guys alley? Oh, I can't tell you how much the way this is, this, I can bring you in warm or I can bring you in cold. No, I am someone who every game I play, if there's a bounty, I'm all in. Red Dead, I would search for every single bounty I could get because I love bounty games.

Paul, you know, we tell a lot of stories on here. In 2002, Star Wars Bounty Hunter came out. Uh, yep. I used to play when I, when I played security at my dad's showroom, I would sit, I brought my PlayStation and I would sit and I'd play Star Wars Bounty Hunter. One of my favorite games. I loved it. I love Bounty Hunter games. I'm so beyond excited for this.

I hope they can create a world that is challenging that's um something that's just you can go you can grind out to you start out with the basic uh your bounty hunter armor and you can grind out to get best car and you just kind of get little chunks of best car and then you can like melt it down and get like a uh you know a new gauntlet or something crazy. You mentioned Bounty Hunter. I'm all in 100%. You add Star Wars to the mix, it's even tenfold. I'm beyond stoked. Bounty hunting, Ryan's in 100%. Bank heists, I'm in 100%. We're kind of figuring out our genres here.

I don't know how to chill about this, guys. Josh, I know you loved the Mandalorian TV series, right? So I imagine you're pretty excited about this. Yeah, I am very excited. I love Star Wars. I've always loved Star Wars. Star Wars games have been very good for the most part. I think some of them have been a little missed, but Jedi Fallen Order, I think, is absolutely one of the peak Star Wars games out there. Jedi Survivor, still really, really good. I felt like it didn't quite live up to Fallen Order in my mind, but still an amazing video game. Respawn knows what they're doing. I mean, this is the part that gets me excited here because we have seen them succeed on games over and over and over again, especially in the Star Wars universe.

Say what you want about the games themselves, but they know how to make it feel like Star Wars. And so if you're telling me that they're giving me their knowledge of the Star Wars universe, their ability to make a top tier video game, and now they're going the angle of the bounty hunter route on this, I get really excited. I'm very curious about the first person view, because we see, especially with Jedi Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor, that third person view. And I'm very curious to see how the first person view translates to the game that they're making. What are they going to do? Is this going to be combat centric? Obviously, if you're bounty hunting something, yeah, you're probably going to wind up getting into a little scrap with it. Sometimes you have to track down your bounty,

though. So is there going to be aspects of like actually tracking it down and talking to people and going to different systems and things like that? I mean, my brain just instantly starts going like, what do I want to see? What could make this good? Like Ryan said, progression, you know, like can I upgrade my bounty hunter

and get better and better and better and then become one of these like feared bounty hunters in the Star Wars galaxy and things like that as well. I have a lot of faith that Respawn will do this the right way. And so that gets me really excited. I mean, it is very early. Let's be honest. They're talking early development. They've got an idea and they're running with it. So I would like to see some gameplay and kind of what this game is going to look like. But it definitely gets me excited when I hear Respawn is making a Star Wars game. Oh yeah, absolutely. It definitely gets me very excited. They did say that the game will be more action-based because they said that the healing mechanic will be based on successive kills. So this is really like the only thing that we know

about the game. When I hear stuff like that i i i love it because i would way rather heal myself through fighting instead of hiding waiting for a cool down and popping a potion yeah or something like in other games so i do like hearing that i i honestly love the fact that they said it's going to be a little more linear you're going to play a singular stage to get your target it's not going to be open world. And we've said a lot of times, these games sometimes try to reach too high. They kind of forget how to have fun and they do too much. So, you know, rein it in a little bit more. Free Spawn has great pedigree. I mean, Survivor did not run well on my PC, but their games are

still fantastic. So yeah, can't wait to see more. Let's move on to a shorter story here, but a little bit more console news this time about Nintendo. The Switch 2 has long been believed to be releasing this year. It has now been officially confirmed it is delayed beyond 2024. They now are set to launch in quarter one of 2025. They have also told third-party developers to aim to have their games ready. That way they can have several titles released at the same time as the console. Kind of famously, you guys aren't big Switch people.

Do you guys care about this at all? I care. I mean, my wife loves the Switch. You know, it's not a main console to be honest. Um, actually just had a conversation on social media with a guy that said, do you guys cover a lot of switch games? And we kind of went, I mean, not, we've covered a few when they warrant it. Um, for sure. I mean, there's definitely some big releases that happen on the switch, but, um, it's not my favorite console. It just doesn't really fit what I look for in gaming a whole lot. I mean,

they're definitely tend to be more relaxing, kind of just chill games, that kind of thing. So my big question with the Switch 2 or whatever they wind up calling it is, like, why? Like, what's the reasoning? Do you know? Well, the Switch 1 can only go up to 1080p. I imagine it's mostly technical. I mean, I get that. But I mean, any recent game that's been played on the Switch 1 can only go up to 1080p. I imagine it's mostly technical. I mean, I get that. But I mean, any recent game that's been played on the Switch, is it pushing the boundaries? I mean, Nintendo's never been known for their hardware. You know what I mean at that point?

So it's really just the games that they make. So why do you need better hardware if you're going to just keep making the same type of games at that point? We talk about PlayStation and Xbox, and it's like, okay, the games are outgrowing the hardware at this point, and we want that next level of realism or something like that. Nintendo's never focused on that. I think your average game isn't pushing up against it. We know Zelda was, for sure. Zelda is like the one where they definitely went to the max of what they can do. I would imagine, I wouldn't mind higher resolution and better frame rates. I mean, are they going to come out with like your first 8K console? No,

of course not. I mean, you know, they're always going to be playing catch up. What kind of shocked me, I looked up some numbers and I know that we've kind of said this in the past but the switch is the third highest selling console of all time it's only behind the nintendo ds and the ps2 so you're talking about an enormously successful console a lot of people are highly anticipating its follow-up do you guys feel like a lot of people had nintendo 64s when you were a teen oh didn't feel like everyone had really everybody has a 64 do you know how many copies the 64 sold what was it 33 million i mean the switch has sold almost 140 million they have sold a hundred million more units than the 64, which is insane. I also looked it up to compare it.

The PS5 plus Xbox Series S and X and double it. And now you finally reach the Switch. That's how many copies of the Switch have sold compared to the other current gen systems. That's bananas, dude. I mean, but then again, I mean, look at Nintendo, right?

Like, I mean, I don't know what the current price of a Nintendo switch is, but it's way cheaper than a PS five, you know, but then Nintendo games never, ever go on sale. You're not picking up a Nintendo game for $25,

you know, on some clearance sale or something like that. So, I mean, maybe there's something there. They don't have to have the latest and greatest technology to be able to sell video games. They just work within what they got. And the games, I mean, they are what they are. People love them. And I mean, my wife just picked up the Donkey Kong, Mario versus Donkey Kong, and she's been playing it

and she loves it. I mean, there definitely is. Nintendo knows who they're making games for and they cater that perfectly. And they make the most money. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's the thing is that they have a system. They have it set up. They have their template out and they're like, this is what we do. This is how we make it.

And then this is who we're targeting. And it's as simple as that. And the biggest factor in that is to make a good game for people that's fun and enjoyable for the people that like that so that's what they do the best they they know their market they know who they're making them for and they do that brilliantly and they do it every year, year over year, quarter over quarter, and they continue to do it. So I don't know. Hopefully, I mean, I got the Switch during COVID and all that craziness because I wanted to play Animal Crossing and all that stuff

because I had nothing else to do. But, yeah, I don't see how far technologically advanced the next Switch would be, but I mean, I'm sure a lot of people are going to buy it. Yeah, for sure. Well, do we want to talk about Immortals of Avium, or do we want to stop things there? Oh, sorry, I just fell asleep. I just fell asleep.

Let's do it. You want to do it? Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting story. It kind of gives some insight into the industry and like when things go wrong how people try to justify it a little bit yeah so as i'm sure our long-term listeners know we talked a lot about immortals of avium we brought it up on multiple episodes we talked about it in its lead up we talked about its release they they had some some neat ideas in the game you know it was fast paced we kind of complained sometimes it was almost too much going on on the

screen it was kind of just like flashing lights and what are we really doing here the game released six months ago and it's now considered to be a flop the total cost to develop, market, and distribute the game is $125 million. That's a lot of cash. And pretty much no one bought it. I looked on Steam to see how many people have rated Immortals of Avium, and it's 1,180. Oh, no. That's really low.

By comparison, Dave the D diver has 86,000 reviews. So you're talking 86 reviews for Dave, the diver for every one immortals of avium. I mean, that's kind of wild. I mean, the game didn't do itself any favors releasing in between Diablo four Starfield and Baldur's Gate three poor timing.

I still think it's probably the worst named game of last year. You hear Immortals of Avium. That doesn't tell you anything. You don't know the genre. You don't know what they're trying to do. And so GamesRadar wrote an article about this, and they had a quote that I'll just read for you guys. They said, it sucks that its failure will only further discourage major studios from investing in big budget single player no-nonsense action games. I don't agree with that. I think we've had a lot of fantastic action-paced games that have done incredibly well, whether you're thinking like Resident Evil 4 remake or Hi-Fi Rush or Remnant 2 or Spider-Man. Those are all action games that perform incredibly well that are big,

Hi-Fi Rush wasn't big budget, but the other ones are. Like the problem, I don't think is the fact that this was a large action-based game. I think the fact is that they gave us a game that had no real identity and no one was really interested in buying it.

Yeah, I think a lot went wrong with this game and we did cover its development a few times. And now that it has been deemed a flop, of course, there are people that are trying to justify that because let's be honest, there's a lot of money on the line. There's probably people's part of the problem is that this game was marketed as a very high-end game like i'm looking at the recommended specs for this game and paul if you remember this when we covered it we went who can play this preposterous dude the recommended graphics card for this is a 3080 ti the the cpu is an i7 12 700 that's better than the cpu i have in and i have a beefy pc man that's better than mine you know what i mean and so when you come out with a game that is catering to probably the upper five percent of pc enthusiasts you are going to alienate

a large portion of gamers. Now, the minimum requirements are an i7-8700 and a GTX 1070. Ain't nobody want to play a game on minimum recommendations. It's going to run like garbage. That's with like 30 frames per second, probably, too. And you're probably lucky at that point. So number one, you marketed this game to a very niche audience. The game looks fine. I've seen people playing it and the reception seems to be pretty okay. Nobody's hating it, but nobody is saying like, guys, this is the greatest game that nobody's talking about either. And the other part is you spent $125 million to make a game. At that point, why wasn't there an open beta or some kind of feedback or something like that? If there was a beta,

I wasn't invited to it. You know what I mean at that point? But you can blame gamers for this and say, well, nobody bought the game. We made a great game, but nobody bought it. But you have to kind of accept responsibility at a certain point. Number one, you determine the release date. If you're releasing your game around three juggernauts in the gaming industry, maybe you should have waited a little bit longer. If you're making it where people can't play your game because it's too technically advanced, maybe you should have thought of ways that you can make it more accessible to more people um i don't buy the narrative that you know oh this flopped because it's a it's a single person first person shooter um you know i mean we were talking before we started recording that this game to me looked like Doom Eternal, which is a phenomenal game, but it's like, what sets it apart?

Like more explosions on the screen? Like that doesn't drive people's enjoyment. There's no hook. Right, exactly. Like this game doesn't have a hook. I'm with you. I think the name is terrible. Like what is my reason to buy this

game and to play it? Because it seems to me like that just doesn't have anything that sets it apart other than big, fancy graphics. And as much of a graphic snob as I am, that's not enough to draw me to a game. And so I guess the takeaway is don't blame gamers because your game flopped. You obviously made some mistakes in this, and then you're trying to blame it on people saying well you didn't buy it and it's like yeah there's reasons for that there's no excuse nowadays for if it's good the word will get out there's not it's not it's not paper mail it's not snail mail it's not anything like that it's gonna blow up online it's gonna blow up on uh twitter slash x it's not snail mail, it's not anything like that. It's going to blow up online. It's going to blow up on Twitter slash X. It's going to blow up on Instagram.

It's going to blow up on all these different social medias. If it's good, people will know about it. So you make a good game, people will know. I mean, we have Bopple Battle. That's a little indie developer that blew up. Palworld went insane. Absolutely crazy. Lethal Company. Let went insane. Absolutely crazy. Lethal Company.

Lethal Company. Small one. Horrible graphics, but it was so amazingly fun. Worst looking game of last year and one of the more fun ones. Absolutely. And that's what shows

is that if you create something that's fun and enjoyable and that people want other people to play with and it creates like creates a community it will happen naturally and organically and and everyone thinks they just dump money at stuff and it's going to be okay they just put 80 100 150 whatever millions of dollars oh yeah we'll turn this over and we'll make a bunch of money back. No. Gamers are one of the few breed that we will call you out.

We'll know if you put in your effort and you put in heart to this. And if not, we're going to say it. So I just, yeah, if it was a good game, it would naturally trend. It would go. So if you make a good game and it's not it's not going on you know it's people aren't playing it it's no other fault than your own because it's sorry to say not a good game yeah and i don't have the quote pulled up anymore but they even said something like and the game is fun it's sitting at a respectable 74 on metacritic and it's like if you're a 74 on metacritic that that's not that great. That's an average game.

Yeah. It's an average game. That's not very accessible. That had mediocre trailers and it didn't sell. That's this isn't exactly rocket science. I mean, I can understand why the game flopped. Maybe the game is better than the number of copies sold, but there was nothing to hold on to.

There was no reason to get excited about Immortals. So, I mean, there's really no one to blame other than them for how they made the game. This is true. And Ryan, you kind of hit the nail on the head. There's nothing the gamers love doing more than talking about games they're excited about. You know what I mean? Absolutely. And again, I hate to keep referencing Helldivers, but we're seeing it right now.

That's why I'm not. I can't tell you how many hundreds of people I have seen it right now where it's like, I can't tell you how many, like hundreds of people I have seen on social media where they're like, I feel like I'm missing out on this hell divers. Like what's going on. Everybody in the world, it's all over my timeline. And then people are going like, dude, you're missing out. You need to pick this game up. And then I can't tell you how many people have picked it up. And then two days later, I see that person going, this is the greatest game I've ever played. And then other people are going, I feel like I should pick it up. Like we will take care of you. Like gamers will tell their friends about fun games.

A hundred and twenty five million dollars does not guarantee you success, you know, and this is not a slight against the game itself. I mean, I get that there's people out there that are enjoying Immortals of Avium and they're saying, hey, this is a really good game. I'm enjoying it. It is more that there is nothing that sets it apart from every other mid-tier game that is out there. And when you spend $125 million to make a mid-tier game, that's not on the gamers for their response to it.

That's on you because you spend an exorbitant amount of money to make a mid-tier game, that's not on the gamers for their response to it. That's on you because you spend an exorbitant amount of money to make a mid-tier game. Yeah. I mean, overall, it's just really disappointing to see, but at least 2024 is shaping up to be really good. I don't think we have a whole lot of games like Immortals of Avium coming up that have these preposterous requirements yeah i mean ultimately this is just one that failed i think all around it's hard to look at any one part of it and say they handled that really well you know just make a fun game make it accessible it can look like absolute dog poop like lethal company gamers will still pick it up yeah all right well i think that wraps up everything for this week in gaming.

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