Video Gamers Podcast - Sony Smackdown – Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan, and Ace are asking the unthinkable: could Sony be heading for a downfall? Hey, even Rome fell. From the slow death of physical video games and rising prices to Sony’s controversial push toward live-service gaming, we break down the decisions that have PlayStation fans worried. Is Sony losing sight of what made video games so dominant, or is the gaming giant still untouchable? Grab your pitchforks—it’s time to talk serious (we can totally be serious) on the Video Gamers Podcast!   Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius, Jigglepuf, Phelps, Bobby S, NorwegianGreaser, Dettmarp, DingusKhaaan and NightWizard63   Thanks to our Legendary Supporters: Milkman, Drewsky, Jigglepuf and BadGam3rDad   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/videogamerspod⁠ Join our Gaming Community: https://discord.gg/h2cHKAvSmu Follow us on Instagram:⁠ https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/⁠  Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@videogamerspod Follow us on X:⁠ https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod⁠  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VideoGamersPod     Visit us on the web:⁠https://videogamerspod.com/⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, fellow gamers and welcome to the video gamers podcast. The console wars are a tale as old as time, but lately the console wars have a new meaning. Them versus gamers, as more and more anti-consumer practices cause a rift between what gamers want and what companies want from us. Xbox has had its turn in the unfortunate spotlight, but now it's Sony's turn. with practices like going all digital to forcing PlayStation network accounts for PC players, ending the sharing of exclusives and more. It's time for the Sony Smackdown you've all been waiting for.

Before we get to the cage match, some introductions are in order. I am your host Josh and joining me, weighing in at 282 pounds and standing 5 feet, inches tall. He's been a defender of PlayStation for decades, but now he's finally had enough. It's Ryan. Is there like a different Ryan you're talking about or what?

Yeah, what's up? What's up, fatty? What's up, fatty? Listen, it was an accident. It was an accident. Shorty, fatty. I just want to let everyone know. I totally messed up the previous recording on accident. Luckily, I said it immediately and this is what I got.

Josh just called me fat. Yeah, and short. And short. And fat and short, Ryan. What's up? I'm taller than you. Okay. What's up, blueberry?

Whatever. Blueberry. No, that's called a raspberry. That's called a... taller than me. And joining us. His rage is fueled by chicken nuggets, cardboard pizza, and crippling debt from a collector's edition.

Addiction. It's A's. How dare you look at my finances? I'm just looking at your video ace what do you mean your finance that's fair actually yeah yeah have you been talking to my house just to show off stuff yeah just look at this wall dude just look at the wall and you can tell it all yeah that's like man that's my kids college tuition right there okay there's not that much so fortunate don't don't give anyone any ideas

ace's address can be had people no it cannot Oh, man. Well, welcome in everybody. You know, we are equal opportunity gamers around here. We're not going to give it to Nintendo and we're not going to give it to Xbox. And they'd be like, Sony, you get a pass. Don't worry. You know, just because GTA 6 is coming out on the PlayStation 5 in a couple months.

I'll give him a pass. Yeah. That's why you're 282 pounds and 5 foot 20. Yeah, exactly. You little, yeah, blueberry. So, you know, listen, Sony's been in the news. People have been asking us, hey, guys, you know, what do you think about the digital thing going on? You guys haven't really talked about it.

You know, part of that is that we like this podcast to be fun. We try not to get into hot topics for people. And the Sony digital versus, you know, being able to have physical copies of games has kind of spiraled a little bit. And we do definitely have thoughts on that. We will talk about that a little bit. but it's just one of those things where it's like, you know, everybody's entitled to their opinion. Just because you feel strongly about something doesn't mean that other people have to feel the way that you do. But the internet would have you believe that if you don't, then you're some kind of terrible person.

And that's just not a game that we get into on this podcast at all. So we will talk about it. But people have asked, hey, why don't you guys bring this up and stuff like that? Well, we haven't really had a lot of opportunity to do that. however it's sony's turn man it's like there's just been so much going on so we're going to catch everybody up on what's been going on first of all why the gaming world is upset at sony some of the stuff maybe it's a little overblown maybe some of this stuff is taken out of context so we'll help clear that some of that stuff up as well but we've got a lot to talk about and sony

we hope you're ready because it is your turn Smackdown is here, baby. Yeah, the smackdown. All right. Yeah, nobody's safe. We're going to just address the elephant in the room because I just got done touching on it. Dude, enough. You don't have to keep calling me fat, all right? I didn't say hippopotamus, Ryan, because they're much shorter and much fatter than elephants.

So, uh, we're the same height. We're both 5'10, which, by the way, is above average height for a male. Well, five-nines average heights, so yeah. Okay. Look at us, being above average. It's the only way we're above average, Ryan. That's for sure. Ask your mom. What is happening?

This is why we're allowed to make fun of Sony because we're maddening. Yeah, because we make fun of each other. Because we make fun of ourselves. This is fair. And listen, if you're a Sony fanboy, that's fine. You know, we're not, we're just talking about what's going on. Like I said, we're giving insight into this. This is not us.

And like we've done this with Nintendo and Xbox. So again, this is all around fair. We've been down this road before. Just how gamers are feeling about what's going on. All right, Ace. Yep. I'm going to toss this to you to get us started on this one. But we were just going to address it.

Sony came out and they said, hey, in 2028, there will be no more physical copies of games for the Sony PlayStation 5. We are all digital moving forward. They tried to blame this on the fact that there's a decline in interest from gamers. and all that stuff. For those that aren't somehow aware of this Sony digital thing and why it's causing such a ruckus in the gaming industry, can you give people like the kind of quick synopsis there? As to why this is a bad thing or why this is upset? No, just what is the thing? Like, why are people upset?

What did Sony do? And why is there so much backlash? Well, what Sony did by saying they're going fully digital is saying you're never going to own your games because digital games are not. games are not ownership. They are a license that you are renting that they have proven, actually, that they will take away from you. Because they did with their movie library.

They have done it. With their entire movie library, just gone. You think your own your movies? No way, Buddy Lord of the Rings? Yeah. So going fully digital means that you no longer own your games versus a physical copy, which is more times than not a full copy of the game on a disc.

But even then, now those are kind of like keys that open a digital like lock. It's a whole mess. So, Ryan, as a, the gaming world is super upset by this. We've been seeing no disc, no buy. Sony's state of play. The no disc, no buy thing has been huge. It's all over the internet. It's people rallying for this saying, hey, there was a PlayStation slash Sony blackout day that happened where people said they're not turning on their PS5s or any of that stuff.

Yep. So no disc, no buy has become the mantra for a lot of people. But Ryan, PC gamers, we've been digital for years now, like years and years and no PC gamer is upset by this. So why is this such a big thing all of a sudden? Is it overblown or is there something else that goes along with this why it's such a big deal now if the PC gaming market has been dealing with this for years now? I don't think it's so much. overblown as maybe a misunderstanding on what we've been doing all this time. Like we think, you know, we've,

PC gamers, we've had Steam forever, we have this huge library of all of these games that, you know, are, our games. But, you know, to what extent, you know, if Steam just does something crazy, then everything's gone, what are you going to do? There's nothing you can do. So it's, I think it's, with the way consoles were and then Steam came in

and everyone was so happy and excited to be able to just purchase these games and have these games on sale and you just were able to buy it and that was like a that was a Steam thing that was a PC game thing like you know we we haven't when was the last time you had a PC with a CD drive you know it was it's like been 10 15 years you know since you had a CD drive so it was kind of out of out of sight out of mind type thing

and you always, that was just digital on its own. With consoles, consoles always were physical copies. That's what it always was. Obviously, ease of access to games and ease of access to getting new stuff and updates and everything with the internet and then with the way these consoles are connected now, it made things nice. But then once you realize, man, this really isn't mine, people kind of started to freak out.

People looked and saw, oh, wait, I don't, I really don't, I just paid $70 and I don't even own this thing. I'm just, what, renting it? Just a license to use it until they just decide to pull it or what's the deal? So I think a lot of it is confusion and wanting to understand exactly what's going on, but also anger as to why, you know, if I'm buying this, why don't I own it? Why can't, why are you guys going to pull that away? Why are we just doing digital? I think there's a lot of just chaos going on more than anything. And once the dust settles, I think we'll figure kind of some stuff out.

But it's right now it's pretty crazy. Yeah, I think one of the things too is like we're going to get to it. But it's it's cutting into the secondhand market where you can. Oh, absolutely. You can get these games for way. That's the reasoning behind this. Way too. Like there's no other reason.

Like honestly, like, you know, why Sony would make. this move that is the reason ace there is no other reason yeah no you can you can compare it because Sony has a monopoly on their games you can only buy their games on their you know store site but right if you go and find that digital copy of the game maybe it's $20 40 dollars maybe 50 cheaper than what they're offering it on the digital price and they don't price match so so Ryan you said two things that i want to kind of reinforce because i feel very strongly about this um number one pc gamers have been digital for a long time. This goes back to the days of like early home computers. I'm a little bit older than you guys.

Like I remember when games came on like six floppy discs and you had to like sit there and rotate between discs one through seven. And then, you know, so it's just that's been an inconvenience. If you guys remember a lot of the PC game boxes were monstrous like the Diablo battle chest and all these things. Like it was just very inconvenient. Yeah. Like yeah, exactly to be like I don't want this giant box. I don't need all these discs. So digital. was like a convenience, like a true convenience at the time. And I think the other thing that you said was that consoles have always, always been about you have your console and you have your game. You pop that console open, you put your disc in the drive, you close it. This is going back to the days of Atari and Nintendo when you had to blow into the cartridges

so that you could play these things. You know, that has, they have always gone hand in hand. And so people that grew up with consoles, it was this is what you're used to. You're used to having your games. to your collection, you're used to swapping things out, you know, and that kind of thing, whereas PC gamers, that's just not something that we did. So when people go, well, it's been this way on one side, why is it all of a sudden not okay now? Ace, you touched on it. It's not just the loss of digital or physical media. It is the, the coinciding,

like, EULA in terms of use that Sony and Xbox and even Nintendo have come out and said that you do not own your games anymore. That coupled with the digital only is the actual problem. And I think these two things happening hand in hand is why the gaming world is really, really upset by this because it wasn't just one thing going away. It was that going away with the rise of no ownership. And those two are why there's so much pushback at this point on everything that's going on. Do you think they expected this much pushback?

No, I don't think they did at all. To be honest with you. I thought we were going to all roll over and accept the fact, oh, I guess everything's digital now. I don't own my games. You can delete my entire account if I don't get on my account in a year. Oh, well. Because look at GamePass, right? Like this rise of subscription services and these streaming services, they look at that and they go, well, look how popular these are.

Nobody cares about owning their games. So we'll just do away with it. Well, all of a sudden, everybody that was just content with doing what they were doing, all of a sudden, it's like, what the heck? Like, you can't do that. They like the option. Because people weren't vocal. Right. Exactly.

Exactly. All right. And so why are they doing this? It all comes down to money. Being able to neuter the secondhand market is paramount to these mega, mega corporations. Guys, anybody out there that doesn't think that they lose billions of dollars a year in the secondhand market, you're fooling yourself. You know, I mean, think about GameStop, right? GameStop has existed because of the secondhand market.

Like being able to go in there and trade. in a use game and buy a use game. Facebook marketplace. You know what I mean? Hey, I'm done with this game. I want to sell it to somebody else and I'll sell it for cheap and then they come pick it up and I get money. If you can put an end to that, you free up billions of dollars at that point for the people

that publish the games and then control the market. And this is 1,000 percent, my full belief that this is why this is happening. There is not the, oh, it's a dwindling market. There's not, oh, it's really a. expensive to create these discs and stuff like that. All this word vomit that they're pumping out with PR speak, I don't believe a word of it. This is simply to just end the secondhand market for games. And that's a terrible thing. The gross revenue for the secondary video game market per Google is valued at approximately $7.6 or $7.2 billion globally. That's an insane amount of money. An insane amount of money. So think about it. If you can put an end to that, right? That's $7.5. $2 billion going into the pocket of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo at that point. Yeah. Why wouldn't they want to do it?

Why wouldn't you want to do that? Why wouldn't you want that money? That's free money, basically. Yeah. So, all right. So that is the biggest thing out there, you know, as far as what the pushback is, the no disc, no buy. Sony's state of play.

We'll talk about that in a little while. But it was literally the chat was nothing but no disc, no buy spam. Now, here's the other thing. There are some bad actors in there as well, I will say. That's my, that's exactly what I was going to say. gamers, listen, we know you're passionate, we love the passion, but here's the problem. Y'all sometimes like to direct that passion towards the wrong people and trying to get indie devs like going on to their store page or their stream or something like that and then

trying to punish small indie devs or small studios that might not have the option of a digital or of a physical release is the wrong way to go about this. Please just stop that. And I know that people are They're just adamant, right? Like, this is everything in the world to them, but you do not go about it that way. You are not doing anybody favors. You are not doing the movement, any favors. You're really just kind of looking like an uneducated fool at that point.

Do not punish small studios for something that Sony is, or Nintendo is trying to control. That is absolutely not the right way to go about it. No, that's the wrong way to do this. That's not how you get attention. It's not how you deal with this. You don't throw it onto all the poor indie devs who are just trying to, get their game out there. Yeah.

Because it was a lot of work for them to do that. It was a lot of work for them to not just do a PC only release, but to also put it on a Sony platform. And it discredits all the people who are really trying to make this thing a movement and make this thing like credible. Yeah. And you hurt your overall movement and goal. All right.

So let's talk about one of the other things that, and you know, we talked about it during the intro. We said, listen, some things are overblown, some things are not. This next one, I don't know that anybody actually has a lot of,

control over this one because we've seen this across the board too okay but rising console prices now here's something that people got really upset about and so they keep shooting themselves in the foot here guys because when you keep doing these little things they tend to add up over time and then people get really frustrated over the last two years okay so PlayStation 5 I don't know the data came out it's what we're six years into the cycle at this point yeah five or six years yeah five six years in over the last two years, instead of the console going down in price, which is usually what happens when you're five to six years in. November 2020.

Yeah, it'll be six years in November. Six years. So instead of, you know, hey, this thing's available for $300 now, the price went up. $150 for the standard disc model. So it went up to $649. And then the digital edition, which remember, guys, we discounted the digital edition.

So more people would buy that edition. and then not be upset when we took physical copies away because they can't play physical copies anyway. You think that was a decision they made on purpose? I can't believe they raised the price for one that is completely useless. You're not going to be able to use the disc price. Yeah. I mean, so, and then that one went up $200 to $5.99. Now, you know, this is just poor timing on their part,

but coupling the loss of digital, the drastic price increase on an old console, a lot of people didn't take this very favorably either. No. This is, if I'm going to give people a pass on something, like if we're trying to be fully reasonable here, this is one where I go, look, I'm not sure that they have a lot of say in this. You know what I mean? Just because of the price of RAM, the price of graphics cards, the price of technology and electronics.

Like, I get that there's people that are like, well, they can just eat it. They're not supposed to make money on the consoles anyway. But this is one where it's just, this is a changing global market. And I think that affects everybody. I'm not holding this against Sony particularly in this case because we've seen it with Nintendo and Microsoft and Sony at this point. I think the weird sort of contradictory thing here is, though, like, they raise the prices in like April, or whatever.

And then in September they said, oh, we're not even really marketing to people to buy the console anymore. We're just marketing the people that already own it because it's on its way out. Why bother raising the prices then if no one's buying it? Yeah. I mean, I don't know how many they have made. If nobody is buying your console, making it more expensive is not going to get you more players. I don't understand this either, dude, because wouldn't you want more people in the PlayStation ecosystem? If that's what they're targeting.

You're right. Yeah, I say that. Then I think like every PS5 pro within my area sold out as soon as the GTA 6 trailer dropped. Oh, it's true. My brother-in-law is trying to get one. He can't find one. Yeah. He's like legitimately like I can't find a PS-Pro.

That's like $899, by the way. That's almost a PC. Yeah. Just save up a little more. To run at 30 FPS. Yeah. All right. Ryan, I'm going to toss this one to you because here's where a lot of other people are

upset with Sony is that Sony has been very, very gung-ho on the loss. service focus. Like, do you guys remember the days when Sony was all about their exclusive titles and they put every ounce of effort into making these really, really incredible exclusives for the console so that you would buy whatever exclusive they wanted so they would sell consoles plus they would sell the game and that made them popular because everybody wanted to play the exclusives. And then they started changing their focus away from these incredible exclusive titles to trying to capitalize on the live service industry, which can make you an awful lot of money.

But Ryan, what's the problem when it comes to focusing on the live service industry? It has to, one, be good. Yeah. And two, people have to want to play it. Which is why Sony, unfortunately, has had to cancel eight out of the 12 live service games from last year. Good grief, Sony. out of 12. What is that? 66%. Wasn't one of those like a Last of Us multiplayer

game? 75%. Oh my gosh. 4, 812? That's 66.66.66%. No, that would be 30. That would be out of, no. Pretty sure it's 75%. Is it? Really? 8 of 12? Yeah. Well, 4 812. 4. 812. Like 3 goes

4 times 3. 4 times. Right. Which means that's a quarter apiece, which means it's No, that's not a quarter apiece. Ain't no way. That's a third right here right now. No. No. Yeah, 4, 812.

That's three, not four. Uh-oh. That broke his brain. Yeah. Anyway, out of 12 is 75%. Two thirds is not. Two thirds of them. This is our fearless leader.

Josh is just like losing his brain or no. But listen, here's the deal is, uh, they've canceled a lot of life service games. what? It's 66%. Yeah. I wonder who said that. Isn't that what I said? Is that not what I said? No, it wasn't, bud. Anyway, this is why we're gamers and not math. He can't pronounce anything and he can't do math.

We're in trouble. It's Nio. At least I'm going to be good at Nio. At least I'm going to be good at Galactic racer guys. Oh, man. That remains to be seen. But here's the deal. Life service games, this is kind of what a lot of people, you know, a lot of companies ran

to. It's just you get games like Fortnite. You get these super, super, you know, even in the movie industry with MCU. Like in the Avengers, everybody wants to create this mega, longstanding drawn out thing that's going to make them a bazillion gazillion dollars. And instead of making quality specific games that serve their purpose. And so, you know, doing this stuff with the live service and everything else. It's, they're just, they're missing their mark.

They're out of their depth. They're out of their aspect of what they normally would do and they should do. And it's, it's shown. Like we said, they've, they've gotten rid of 70 something percent of their games, right,

Josh? 66. Oh, that's what it is. 66.6. Wait, what did he say 80 something? I don't forget what it was.

Duh. Anyway, anyways, life service. It's, it's a, it's a sticky point. Um,

yeah. Right. Are you telling me people don't want to pay $40 to play a hero shooter with mid characters and terrible gunplay? Yeah, Concord, looking at you. Here's the problem. Hell divers too, right? Bingo, jackpot made them so much money. It's unbelievable.

And then you want to chase that ever since. But the problem is when you are chasing live service games, I mean, look at Avengers. Look at, what is it? Suicide Squad, right? Avengers, Suicide Squad. Like we had all these live service flops that happened. And when you are putting your effort into making these live service games and they flop, you are not putting your effort into making absolutely incredible first party exclusive titles

that will literally sell consoles to people at that point. You know, the days of buying a PlayStation 5 so that you can play God of War or Red Dead 2 or, you know, any of these things, those days are over. because they have focused so much of their attention on the live service model that they've fallen behind at this point. You know, to go along with this, we've seen more and more failures from this, Destiny 2. One of PlayStation's biggest titles for a long time, right? Destiny, Destiny 2 being phased out. Marathon. I mean, nobody hears about it. I can't, dude, it's going to be a couple weeks before we start to hear about Bungee being shut down or shuttered or furloughed or whatever. It's on the horizon.

I definitely see it in the stars. Here's the part that kills me before we take a break, okay? Is the PlayStation Studio boss, the head honcho at PlayStation Studios, came out in response to live service games and says that the number doesn't really matter. What is important to me is having a diverse set of player experiences. How about having any player experiences?

But when all you're focusing on is live service games, you don't have a diverse set of experiences at that point. You literally are saying the opposite of what you're doing. When you cancel eight out of 12 of them, who could say what kind of experiences they were? Right. Yeah. They're so lost in their own, like, just stupidity at this point

that they don't know what to do. And it's like they can't just because they've been focusing on this live service thing so much for so many years now and trying to hit that jackpot over and over again, they've completely forgotten what made people love PlayStation in the first place, and that's your first party exclusives. It's not that hard, people. Yeah.

You know, but, you know, diverse. They need diverse player experiences. So everything we chase is going to be a live service experience so that we can diversify. That makes a lot of sense. It reminds me of the like Ready Player 1, like Sorrento, like the main guy of like the I-O-I. that's like the main bad guy. He's like, I'm like you. I like video games.

That's how I picture all these CEOs. They're like, yeah, I like video games. Yeah, man. And then they're like, how do we get every single dollar out of everybody, you know, in the back doors? We need to squeeze every penny we can. Sony executive just that guy. He's like way too out of touch and he tries to relate to the younger generation.

How do you do, fellow kids? Yeah, how do you do, fellow kids? All right, we got to take a quick break. that we're going to come back. We're going to talk about one of the things that upsets me more than anything. And that is ending the, uh, the agreement to release games on PC as well. Yeah. Which I am not happy about. We'll talk about that in just a second. This was the biggest rug pool. I think I have ever seen guys. What a tease. You know, do you were I? It wasn't, it was what, a year ago when PlayStation announced, hey, simultaneous first party exclusives on PlayStation and

PC boys and the world rejoiced. I rejoiced because it was like, I'm going to get to be able to play these games in full PC glory. Xbox was going, PlayStation, what an awesome gesture. Why don't you have Halo? Hey, we'll let you release Halo on PlayStation. And Halo was like, yeah, give me that,

give me that Halo. And then they got Halo and then they went, ha, suckers, we're taking it all back. We're not doing idiots. exclusives on PC ever again. Just slam the gate in our faces. Oh, it's so rotten. I hate this more than anything, guys.

Do you know why? Because number one, when you have a bad series of decisions that is hurting your company and your image and your reputation with gamers, and then you go, you know what we're going to do? We're going to tap into the PC gaming market, guys. We're going to tap into that market. And we're going to do it right away so that people don't have to wait a year to be able to play these games, looking at you, Red Dead and God of War and where we had to wait for it to come to PC. Here's where it really bothers me. Market data shows that PC gaming revenue is projected to fully overtake consoles.

And that means all consoles globally by 2028. So we are a year and a half away from PC gaming becoming larger than console gaming. And this has been slowly happening for a while now. This is not anything new. But to tell me that you are so up your own butt that you don't want to tap into the PC market and release your games to PC gamers, after you already said you were going to do it, is the biggest kick in the nards that I have seen from a company in a long time. and I am personally very upset.

And part of that reason is I really want to play some of these games. I'm pretty sore about the fact they put Ghost of Sushima on here, but they're like, oh, Ghost of Yote, no, we're keeping that one. They're like, nah. Nah, no, you don't get to play that, guys. Here, have this old game, but you don't get the new game. Let me just jiggle Lalfe in front of you. You can't have it.

You can't have this. That's what they're doing. They went, we're going to let you have it, and then they went, nah, we don't want you to have it. Maybe a year later. That's where my issue is with it. I know, Josh, you obviously are a staunch advocate against buying a PlayStation for whatever reason over the last many years because it's been at the end of its life cycle for like 18 years.

The CEO came out and said that. He said that they are not expecting. Yeah, whatever. Unfortunately, Ryan, the CEO has been out and said that. It wasn't three years ago when I said Josh, buy this before, you know, you can have options to a lot of games. But I get it. My big thing is to say that. you're going to do that and then draw it back.

Yeah. That's the issue. Like, I don't, I don't mind exclusivity with different consoles as an incentive to purchase that or, or that's kind of like the drawing factor to, like, be part of that network or that world or community. But to say that you're going to open it up to everybody and then draw that back is, is, that's, that's kind of the issue that I have. That's a bummer, man, because there's a lot of people that, you know, spent a lot of money

and they have these PCs and they want to play these games and they want to experience that world and then they thought they were going to be able to and now they can't. Especially when you set that expectation. You've set the expectation that you will have simultaneous release day one, they'll drop together. And then you just yank it away from you.

Well, it's not even yanking it away at this point because we know that GTA6 has, they've shown it on PC. Like the leaks that we got, you know what I mean? From the leaker, like word came out that There's a PC build of this game. They've been showcasing it on PC. Now, it doesn't mean it's fully ready or anything like that. So there's a little bit of rumor there.

But we absolutely know that if they wanted to, they could release GTA6 simultaneously for PlayStation and PC. But they are intentionally not doing that because what they want is they want the initial hype and the initial wave and people to buy it for PlayStation 5. And then, like a lot of people will do, even if you've played it on PlayStation 5, when it releases on PC, you will go back and you will buy a second copy

so that you can play it on PC at that point. This is artificial, and there's no reason for it other than we think we can sell second copies to a lot of people if we do it like this. Instead of just letting everybody enjoy the game when it releases, you're still getting sales.

Do you know how many millions of people would buy GTA6 on PC? Like, do you know how many millions that people would literally build a PC so that they could play GTA 6 on PC, but PlayStation don't want that. They want people buying their PlayStation 5s. Okay, but Josh,

now that they see that we'll spend $80 for GTA 6 for PlayStation, now they can release the PC edition later at $100 and we'll still buy it. Yeah. But this is all, my whole point is that all of this is simply, it's just greed. And you can call it, hey, chasing profits. You can say, hey, we want to, you know, They're a company.

They're entitled to make their money, but they're making decisions that are not conducive to a good reputation with gamers. They are intentionally withholding things. They are chasing the wrong things in all of this. They're taking away game ownership. They're leading the forefront on this. And this is why they're taking heat is because they are literally leading the charge in taking away or game ownership, moving everything to digital,

saying that you don't own a thing. Oh, and by the way, enjoy our live service slop. because we don't know how to make anything else. Oh, and by the way, we're going to try to get anybody and everybody to sign up for a PlayStation network account, even if you don't have a PlayStation, because then we get to sell your information, right?

Because that's what the whole point of that is, is we get to sell your information to third parties that will pay a fortune for that. So it's another way for us to make money at that point as well. Oh, and by the way, we don't know how to make any good games anymore or even present games. because this latest state of play,

what did you guys think of that? Mid doesn't even meet the qualifications. It was not even mid. It was bad. It was a bad state of it. How did you feel about it? I love the one you said in our chat, the Sony mid station.

Yeah, the main station. The mid station. Like that's, it's blown away. Like, how can you come out with all of these controversial decisions and then not back it up with like the most amazing state of play and the most amazing games or some cool drop or or anything anything at all like it's it's it's it's crazy to me to if you don't have enough to show in a state of play just drop the trailers throughout the week yeah yeah yeah why you have this big thing to do and then to give us all the stuff we

really already know like we've already seen most of this stuff like we saw final fantasy revelations. We knew there was going to be Monster or DLC. Oh, Ghost of Yote's getting a rogue like mode? Great. The first game had that. Yeah, that's been done before. Yeah, the first game had that. All right. Right. The only cool thing was Man Eater 2. Yeah, which most people don't

even know about. You know what I mean? Like, so the one cool thing is the thing that was like a niche game that only, you know, like not everybody knows about at the same time. It's just a bad look. They are floundering and it seems like they do not care. And I will say this, not that Xbox

has been any better lately. Let's be honest, this is the industry as a whole. But like, at least Xbox has been transparent about their floundering to a degree and saying, hey, like, we know we screwed up where we've got a hole to dig ourselves out of. We're trying.

And then they did the whole weird cloud gaming hourly limit thing, which is like maybe not trying. So it was like, yes, but it was like, you were at least garnering some goodwill for trying to be transparent with people. And then you just drop the ball. But Sony, it's like, dude, they are, they're in trouble man and by trouble i don't mean financially they're making billions of dollars

they're going to keep making billions of dollars but they're in trouble in their appearance they're in trouble with their reputation and where do they go from here and then how do you salvage that because this is not the first time sony has done this either you know um i think it was it was it the ps3 where it was like super overpriced and it didn't have any launch titles and they really really dropped the ball on yeah they had like nothing a show at the PS3 and that's why the PS4 came out so strong. Right, because it was like, oh,

crud, we better fix this giant mistake. And it's like, now they've got five or six different big mistakes that they've made. And I don't know how they're going to dig themselves out of this. Man, PS6 is awesome. But you know what? Here's the problem, Mace, if recent trends are to be believed,

the PlayStation 6 is going to get announced and they're, it's not going to have any must-play games. It's, you know what I mean? Like, the days of like, Xbox launching with Halo or PlayStation launching with God of War or something like that, we have not seen in a while. And so it's like, what are you going to do to correct the course that you're on and reestablish the goodwill with gamers that you have absolutely ruined in the last like two years?

It's really, it's happened kind of fast, man. Which, which is hard to get back like that goodwill. But it's, you know, I think it's all just goes back to like them going, Bob, we need to, uh, Let's just relaunch and remaster all these old games, and we'll launch it with the PS6. PS6 exclusive remastered version of blah, blah, blah, and then greatest hits. And they'll do that to try to sell the system.

But it's crazy, man. Once they started trying to appease investors and corporate entities over the consumer, that's where we've really seen this decline. and it's evident across the board. If it still makes money, they don't care. They don't care about public opinion as long as they're making money. So what needs to happen is the public needs to let them know with their wallets.

Like this isn't going to fly. Will that happen? I have my doubts. I think people are too ingrained in this and they're going to buy it no matter what. Capitalism is too strong. Unfortunately, they're just going to do what they want to do. and people got to eat it up, but hopefully,

hopefully we can come up with something. What do you think it would take? If you're in the ecosystem? What do you think it would take for people to finally break? Like, would it be AI integration? Would it be something like? No,

because that's coming. You know, you can, the anti-AI crowd, like I get it, but AI is coming. It's a bunch of cry babies, dude. Nothing you do is going to stop it.

And there can be some pushback, but it is coming, whether people like it or not, and it will be adopted at some point. Now, that's a whole different. topic, but you're not, you're not stopping what AI is going to become, you know, as far as in the gaming world.

I, you know, this one's tough because I think it's, I think we're seeing a glimpse of this. We're seeing that like some of their like profits are down a little bit, sales are down a little bit, you know, that kind of thing. But you got to understand that these, these companies like Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo are so stinking massive. Yep. That like, it's going to take years. It's going to take a decade of negative sentiment and things like that for it to actually affect this company.

And then the problem is that they'll just have a GTA 6 that makes them billions and billions and billions of dollars. And then it's all like, okay, well, whatever, we don't care anyway. As I just wait for Sony to drop their next Spider-Man movie and they're set for the next like 10 years. Yeah. Like, honestly, that's it. Yeah. You know, we can complain about it. We can scream about it, which is what people do, which is kind of what this episode is as well.

a degree, but unless you just truly vote with your wallet and say, hey, look, I'm not going to support Sony. I'm not going to play their games. The problem is, is that you kind of need to do that with Xbox and you kind of need to do that with Nintendo if you're taking that stance. And then you're left with nothing to play. Gamers just want to play games and have fun at the same time. When did you like, I mean, years ago, like, with Ace, when you, you know, were younger and

then Josh me and you, like, as kids, when did you ever think of, like, a gaming company, like, or a or you know, PlayStation or Microsoft or any of those as like evil entities and these horrible things, you know, you're like, you're like,

yeah, it's, it was always the best and you're like, man, they're making this, they're making that. It was always gamers, four gamers,

it felt cool, it felt like a community, it felt like you were a part of something. And now with, with the money that's in it, like we've said a million times, like the gaming industry, is larger than the movie and film or the film and music industry combined.

Yeah, yeah. Combined. So there's so much money in it and that's kind of taken over everything. And it's kind of sucky to see it. Like we're experiencing like almost like the fall of all of this, like the downfall of what it used to be to what we're dealing with now. I don't know, man. It's a bummer.

I don't know where we're going to go. from here, but... We'll find out. I mean, honestly, we're going to find out, you know. It's not good. And like I said, as a reminder to people, if you, if you are on one side of a cause, if you were on the no disc, no buy, you know, cause for this and you think, hey, this is how I'm going to enact change because something needs to change.

That's awesome. Like, like, good, good on you. But do not turn against people that don't actively buy in or support your cause. It doesn't mean they're against you. You know what I mean? But this is something that unfortunately we see a lot in the gaming world and a lot, especially on social media when it comes to gaming talk

is where it's like, hey, that's really cool. I love the fact that you support this, like good on you. That's awesome. And then they go like, what are you going to buy GTA6? And you're like, yeah, I really want to play the game. And then they're like, you're the problem. Like, ah! And then they turn against you. And it's like, dude, like, I just said, like,

I think this is a good cause and I'm glad that you support it. But like, don't turn against each other. This is your reminder that we're all gamers. We're all in the same boat. We all want the same things. We're going to go about it differently. Just because you choose to go about it one way does not mean that everybody else has to follow suit or how you do things. And that's not something that, you know, they deserve your scorn for or something like that either. Just we're all gamers. Let's be cool with each other. We all want to play video games and have fun. It's cool that you support something. The person that does not support it the way you do does not make them your

enemy at the same time. We're all trying to get to that news camp. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. All right. Well, listen, there you go, everybody. You were caught up on all things. Sony. A little bit of the Sony smackdown for you. Uh, nobody is, is free from our wrath when it comes to this stuff. So we call it like we see it. We're honest on this podcast. And, uh, yeah, it does hurt sometimes. But hey, this is, you know, we're men of the people. Yep. And, uh, this is what we got to do occasionally. So listen, if you love what we do, we're not Sony, we don't make billions of dollars so we can use your support to keep this podcast going. And the only way we can do that is through the support of the listeners.

So if you like this podcast, if you've been listening for a while and you want to support us, you can do that over on Patreon at VideoGamer's Pod or there's a link in the episode description. You can sign up for as little as five bucks a month. You get access to the pre-show, which is almost as long as an episode lately. know what's going on there. We're too, we're too chatty. We get a shout out on the show and Discord perks as well. So think about supporting us there. And if you can't do that, you can still leave us a review, rate us five stars, or just share the news that this podcast exists with your gaming friends, let people know about us and tell them to check us out. All right, boys. Kind of sad now. Yeah. Stupid Sony. Stupid, stupid, stupid Xbox and Nintendo and Nintendo and

And you know what? You know who we do love, though? Steve. I was like Gabe Newell. Steve. Yeah. I don't know. The easy answer.

Hold on. This theme box is like a bazillion dollars. It's like $11. That's not their fault, Ryan. They planned on pricing it at $700. They even said that. Yeah. Uh-huh. Here's the real answer.

Join the PC Master Race people. Then you don't have to buy in any of this console nonsense. You get access to all the amazing stuff through PC. You just not play games. Yeah. You just miss out on some of the greatest games ever. out a year later. They'll come out of year later. Sony's, they still want your money.

They just won it after a year. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Josh is trying to make himself feel better as all. I'm just to say now. I'm sad. I'm sad. It's like, I don't want to have to not play Lalfay and GTA6 and Wolverine and some of these other games. So, all right, whatever. All right, listen, that's going to do it for this episode.

Everybody, thanks for hanging out with us. Until next time. Happy gaming. See ya. Peace out.