Gaming's Wild Week: Doom, Sea of Thieves, and the Future of Nintendo Switch 2

Sony's controversial decision to region-block Stellar Blade across 130 countries has erupted into gaming's latest firestorm. Despite not requiring a PSN account for the PC version, players worldwide find themselves locked out of this highly anticipated title. The developer has acknowledged the issue, promising they're "closely discussing the region lock issue with the publisher" while confirming full mod support and performance optimizations.

Meanwhile, Fatal Fury: City of Wolves delivers a devastating commercial blow to SNK, with catastrophically low sales in Japan prompting their CEO to step down barely a month after release. Despite extensive marketing and positive critical reception, the fighting game community's enthusiasm hasn't translated into commercial success for this revival of the beloved franchise.

Nintendo dominates headlines with detailed Switch 2 specifications, revealing the NVIDIA T239 chip powering their next-generation console. The significant performance boost over the original Switch comes alongside news that ten first-party titles—including the notoriously frame-rate challeng

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Stellar Blade News
• 11:25 Fortnite iOS Problems and Mortal Kombat
• 18:36 Persona 5 Mobile Game and Gaming Nostalgia
• 22:11 [Ad] PodMatch
• 22:49 (Cont.) Persona 5 Mobile Game and Gaming Nostalgia
• 38:52 Doom: The Dark Ages Launch Performance
• 1:05:53 Nintendo Switch 2 Specs and Updates
• 1:19:56 Ubisoft's Financial Struggles
• 1:29:02 Kingdom Hearts 4 Update and Mario Movie Sequel
• 2:15:31 Gaming Pickups and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Mark Trobough: 0:03

hey, what is up everybody? Uh, I know brandon's okay, so I have to ask him. Oh, this guy is just weird, not, not, not wanting to talk through, no I'm good.

Brandon Hurles: 0:18

I'm good, I'm here, I'm here. What's up, everybody, welcome back, welcome back. Another week, another dollar.

Mark Trobough: 0:24

As they say, with inflation it's going to be about $1.25.

Brandon Hurles: 0:28

Probably $1.50, but you know, yeah, man oh man.

Mark Trobough: 0:35

A lot of good stuff. Episode 131. Yeah, got some Stellar Blade news coming down, obviously. Pokemon, nintendo, ubisoft, square, enix, just literally everybody. Doom just released today officially Yep. Just a lot coming out, a lot to talk about. We just mentioned beforehand as well Switch three weeks away from launching Close.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03

Yeah, we are close. It is pretty dang close to it. We've got some Mario movie news. Yeah, some more Switch 2. So we'll just dive in.

Mark Trobough: 1:16

Yeah, I mean I'm ready to go Get right in let's go Woo.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23

Mic'd Mark here with the high energy, oh yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:24

Someone's got to come with the high energy. Oh yeah, someone's gotta come with the high energy.

Brandon Hurles: 1:28

Yeah, I'm here for it, so.

Mark Trobough: 1:32

He didn't actually believe it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33

I believe it. I believe it. Stellar Blade Blocked in over 100 Countries I think it's like 130 to be exact, or something like that. On steam, because of playstation, I'm gonna take this one over a little bit so you know a little bit more trying to uh, to pull the thing up real quick because I thought I saved it.

Mark Trobough: 1:58

Apparently I didn't. Uh, there's an actual, proper graphic with the actual list. I don't know how well it's going to look on screen. Go ahead and pull it up there. This is the actual thing and, from what I understand is, even though this is published on Steam, it does not require a PSN account account. It's essentially blocked in all the countries that can't create a psn account because, uh, sony's just as soon as just being stupid and we don't. We don't know why sony's doing this is 100 not. Uh, that's not shift ups, uh, probably decision, because they're just, they make the game sony or playstation. Whoever the official publisher is is the one putting this game out, so they're the ones deciding. Nah, none of these countries can can play or play this game, for whatever reason it's crazy, it doesn't make sense, doesn't make any sense at all.

Mark Trobough: 2:56

I mean even blocked in madagascar uh, I mean in the glorious best korea, north korea. You can't play this on Steam there. I'm sorry, it's blocked.

Brandon Hurles: 3:11

It's pretty crazy, though, 130 countries, I mean that's.

Mark Trobough: 3:15

Oh my god, even the new Pope can't play it. The Holy See, vatican City State, you can't play it. The Pope can't play this game. It's a sin, the world's largest sin. Right there, I'm calling it.

Brandon Hurles: 3:26

American Pope. Yeah, it's pretty crazy, though I mean I don't get it. I totally don't get it. I don't get Sony anymore.

Mark Trobough: 3:38

We haven't gotten any hard information. We know it doesn't require PSN, so I don't know why Sony's not allowing it to be played in this country. The the assumption is that it's just sony being sony and because there's a psn issue, even though you don't need it. But I mean, yeah, I don't, I don't, it just doesn't, it doesn't make sense yeah, this is just gonna. This is just going to essentially push for people just to pirate these games in these countries yeah, it's crazy man um, like I get it, antarctica okay, like nobody actually lives in antarctica, I don't know.

Mark Trobough: 4:10

I don't know why that's listed here, but maybe, like, maybe like maybe like four or five of these countries somewhat actually make sense, but the vast majority, no, not, not at all it's still crazy, though I mean um to be blocked in 130 countries pretty crazy um.

Brandon Hurles: 4:30

And it's epic game store too.

Mark Trobough: 4:32

I didn't mention. Oh yeah, because it's, it's not a sneen is a publisher restriction crazy.

Brandon Hurles: 4:40

yeah, it's crazy, but I I mean in other Stella Blade news because we had a couple of things. So it is getting a complete edition which is also coming to PS5. So it's not just Steam. In June, sony leaked the PC launch date for Stella Blade, their trailer on YouTube confirming a June 11th release date. Updates in the complete Edition include 25 new outfits, a new boss fight and Japanese and simplified Chinese voiceovers.

Mark Trobough: 5:11

Doesn't sound like a huge thing for a Complete Edition, but the standard game 60 on Steam comes out June 11th and then it's $80 for the Complete Edition. So what they say I've, or I believe, this is the complete edition, everything. So you've obviously got the game planet diving suit, uh, fluffy bear pack, which I'm pretty sure they're in the in the original game, uh, star gazer suit, ev half from glasses, uh, just just just primarily stuff for the costumes $2,000 for the SP, $5,000 in gold. I'm pretty sure this is all part of the content that it came out of the same edition that came out on PC Not PC but on PlayStation.

Mark Trobough: 5:59

As well as the Stellar Blade, nier Automata and the Goddess Victory, nikkei expansions as well, which are all cosmetic, yeah. Plus, from what I understand, more costumes and stuff are supposed to be coming as well. Pre-purchase offers. So obviously this is just a lot of the same stuff that you got before, I believe. Right, I don't have the PlayStation, I haven't played it in like a year to know exactly but they say pre-purchase to receive the Planet Diving Suit for Eve, the white edition which is on the left, the classic round glasses for Eve and the armor earrings for Eve, which are obviously all right here, right, as well as the complete edition stuff which is the bear for your little mech, and then the black gold, gold diving suit, whatever you, whatever you want to want to ask it.

Mark Trobough: 6:49

Uh, obviously you can link your, uh, your steam account to get you know the planet diving suit. Second, that's something kind of lame. If you link your account, you get like one little cosmic, it is what it's nothing in the world, and then I guess, as far as the Steam page, it's just more telling you about it. They say new content for this. So test your skills. Strength against the fearsome warrior man Mon or whatever they say, the leader of the Sentinels in boss challenge mode, chinese and Japanese voiceover and lip sync support, as well as 25 costumes, three pairs of glasses and six pairs of earrings. So obviously the big thing is where you get more dress up gamer I mean, that's, that's all the cosmetics.

Mark Trobough: 7:29

That's like a lot of the achievements are for the cosmetics, obviously. Yeah, uh, as well as uh. As far as the pc specific features, this will support ultra wide, including 21 by 9 and 32 by 9, which is nice because, yeah, ultra wides are becoming more, uh, more prevalent they're they're.

Mark Trobough: 7:46

They're they're becoming more affordable, like two, three $400. You can get an ultra wide monitor at 1440 P Um. So this will be using Nvidia DLSS for AI powered graphics, as well as the DLA, dla a image quality enhancements, uh, as well as it'll be using the amd fsr3. So obviously dlss could be one of the biggest, biggest things. Hopefully it's. It's actually beneficial. This is a proper port to where is this isn't just a patch. This is actually enhancing the experience in the graphics.

Brandon Hurles: 8:15

Yeah, hopefully it's not some garbage.

Mark Trobough: 8:17

Yeah, it's been seeing too much of that yeah, which, to be fair, is kind of because this is a lot of. This is standard. But if you're new to the PC, it's the big hot thing to talk about Unlocked frame rates. It's like a standard thing you'd expect on PC not to be locked at 30 or 60 frame rate. Texture pack up to 4K so you can play this game on a controller or a keyboard. Obviously it was designed around a controller, so hopefully they're. You can still use a dual-sense. Yeah, oh, it's right below it. The problem with these games is you can tell they're everything's designed around like a controller, so the the main hope being that it's. It's sometimes they're, they're games that they struggle to adapt to keyboard mouse, because I know uh, uh, zero dawn had that issue. It was not the best ported game graphically or keyboard mouse support and uh, even even after they fixed some of the issues, going back to it, it was still definitely a um, an adjustment.

Mark Trobough: 9:17

Uh, just because you can tell everything was not designed with with keyboard mouse in mind. And then, yeah, they say they got the haptic feedback, adaptive, adaptive triggers and stuff like that. So all that will be uh supported, hopefully. And then, yeah, it's a mature game. And then obviously, the main specs so recommended, uh, intel core i5 8400 or the ryzen 5 3600x, 16 gigs of ram, at least a 2060 super or RX 57 XT, 75 gigs. It's a fairly large game. And then that's for 1440p graphic quality preset at medium, 60 FPS and stuff like that. So if you've got stuff that's significantly better than this planet at 1440p at high settings shouldn't really be a problem.

Brandon Hurles: 10:01

But yeah, you can even run it with the 1060. So most people should be able to play the game, which is good.

Mark Trobough: 10:10

Yeah, so obviously there's a lot to talk about. I mean I'm excited for this game to come out.

Brandon Hurles: 10:14

Yeah, I'm excited about it too. I don't know that I'm going to buy it right away, just because I already have it and I'm stuck on PS5, but I do want to get it.

Mark Trobough: 10:25

They did as far as the pc side to have really any bad publicity outside of the sony restrictions, but that's obviously not shifts up problem, it's a sony problem. Yeah, though, for most of us in the west this isn't going to be a problem, but it obviously sucks for those people that that do have to deal with it. But outside of like that issue, all the new content, all the support that they're saying, as long as this game is properly ported and runs just as well as it did on on the ps5 at launch, uh should be a fairly, you know, successful, uh, successful launch. I think if it's, if it's hitting 10 to 15 000 players on steam at launch, it'll be, I would, I would assume, fairly successful, because this game's already made its money, yeah, on the console. And then, considering the amount of work that has to go into, a port isn't the same as making a new game. I I don't think this game needs to be hitting like 50, 60 000 to like break even.

Brandon Hurles: 11:14

I don't think so either I think they've already all the effort they put into this they've still are, are on the plus on the money and stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 11:21

So yeah obviously love the game when on pc, because we all know what's eventually gonna be coming. Which are the uh, which are the mods.

Brandon Hurles: 11:28

It's like the big thing people are waiting on yeah, the mods see how crazy they're going to go real crazy with mods on this, yeah because this game was what leaked about two days prior.

Mark Trobough: 11:40

Uh, they're like, oh, hey, this game's coming on the 11th. And then they kind of come out and made the tweet like hey, the game's coming to PC on the 11th, though everybody already knew. Because they're like, they acknowledged it. Shiftup acknowledged it in their tweet that, yeah, this game was leaked. You already know. But here's the official, official announcement. And then, shortly after, the Steam page was properly updated with all this stuff. So, yeah, so somebody tweeted seriously, sony seriously.

Brandon Hurles: 12:06

And they put may I ask where you live with the crying face emoji.

Mark Trobough: 12:10

So I did because they, they obviously know what's going on and stuff like that. It's like, and, to be fair, it's one of those everyone understands it's not. It's not a shift up issue. This is a sony issue, because when you deal with publishing rights, it's the publisher that deals with it, not not usually the studio. So, uh, hopefully that that will get resolved. But I mean, who knows sony?

Mark Trobough: 12:31

just they like to do whatever they're gonna do, so yeah, apparently they do so hopefully, at least if you're in those countries, you still have access to, to get a playstation or play it on the console one way or another they, uh.

Brandon Hurles: 12:42

the pre-orders are ranked number two in the top sellers on Steam right now for Stellar Blade. Yeah, that's cool.

Mark Trobough: 12:49

And the number's going to probably go down because people are going to pre-order it and then it's got like another month before the game actually comes out. Yeah, for sure. But, like I said, I think if the game's hitting anywhere from 10 to 15, I think if it hits 20,000, it'll be fairly successful because obviously the game's a year old, a lot of people have already played it and moved on to other games. I don't expect it to be like you know, doing these fantastic numbers and stuff like that. I agree, I think if it hits those numbers, it'll be. I would consider it a success, considering it's already been out and stuff like that. Yeah, I agree, a lot of people are like me. Like I beat it on PlayStation Now, I'm going to get it again and play it again on PC.

Brandon Hurles: 13:31

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Mark Trobough: 13:33

Well, a little bit of a of give and take, but I mean, I guess it's decent. You talk about one block going to the other other.

Brandon Hurles: 13:46

yeah, for sure is apple's being weird with the fortnight right now. Is that right on the app store? Yeah, I, I saw this earlier today. Um, that's uh crazy with this uh block stuff that's going on, but I think this has happened once before right with fortnight and apple.

Mark Trobough: 13:59

I think this is like I don't play, so I don't really pay attention to it. That's the problem.

Brandon Hurles: 14:04

Fortnite announced that Apple blocked its submission, which has resulted in it being unable to release on the US App Store or the Epic Games Store for iOS in the European Union. Epic Games was recently forced to delay its major May 15th update to May 16th, which many fans believe will result in the return of Fortnite's iOS platforms.

Mark Trobough: 14:25

Yeah, and it's also been blocked in the eu as well. I assume that there's probably some issue as far as regulations or something with the app stores that they're not compliant with.

Mark Trobough: 14:33

I assume, yeah it says that, like their official tweet says now, sadly, fortnight on ios will be offline worldwide until apple unblocks it so I mean to be fair, like apple makes money on the app store, because when you're doing microtransactions, more than likely this goes through the app store and apple makes money. So they're not blocking is probably because they want to. There's probably some some regulatory issue. I assume that they're just not coming out and telling us right now yeah, there's pretty much no more details on it.

Brandon Hurles: 15:02

I I mean, that's basically it. Fortnite came out and said that and that's kind of like all we know. So interesting Big game. Don't play it myself, but you know Sucks.

Mark Trobough: 15:15

I guess. Yeah, I can't imagine. I mean assuming if you, if you already have it downloaded, playing on the servers shouldn't be an issue, but obviously downloading it would be a Might. Be it downloaded, playing on the servers shouldn't be an issue, but obviously downloading it would be a might be an issue. Obviously this is not the only. You can play it on other platforms, but I I assume there's some some issue going on behind the scenes. Uh, these companies are getting along, or there's some regulatory issues. They're just not telling us what's going on.

Brandon Hurles: 15:38

It's, I mean, it's obviously one of those two things I have a feeling the numbers for uh fortnite players on on apple are probably like way higher than we think they are too I mean, because I mean, everyone has a phone.

Mark Trobough: 15:53

It's a free tablet download and stuff like that. So, kids, I assume it's massive a lot of people that probably play this on their phone will play it on pc or on a, on a console or something like that. So yeah, it's just. It's a really popular game that I don't play. I played it at launch for like two weeks and then I just never played it again.

Brandon Hurles: 16:12

Yeah, I played it a couple times. I never cared for it. To be honest with you, it was better in the beginning, right? People liked it better in the beginning.

Mark Trobough: 16:21

I mean, it was a different game. It didn't have a hard meta, but it was also just like the new thing. Yeah, this kind of became new minecraft and stuff like that. To be fair, it's kind of like that it's a hyper popular game. That was kind of like popular to to hate on.

Brandon Hurles: 16:37

I mean I played, uh, quite a bit of pub g which was like kind of the competitor when it came out like doing the same sort of thing, sort of. But that was like early on. That was like kind of the competitor when it came out like doing the same sort of thing, sort of.

Mark Trobough: 16:46

But that was like early on. That was like because, yeah, when fortnite came out like this, the, the battle royale wasn't even like the main thing they were, it was like the, the side mode to like the single player over there, save the world or whatever the heck yeah until they like, scrapped it because like, oh, this is really profitable, let's just do this instead it's like it's such a weird thing.

Mark Trobough: 17:02

Yeah, yeah, it's crazy uh, I guess you'll know more about this because I'm not the biggest uh fighting game fan. But uh, an issue with mortal combat 1 going on um, yeah, I don't.

Brandon Hurles: 17:17

I don't entirely know what the the actual issue is. So this week, uh, they came out and announced a definitive edition, but here's all I know. As far as people worried about the thing, they think this means the end of support for the game. This game. People don't love it, so I'm confused why people are worried about it so much, so I haven't even bought the game yet.

Mark Trobough: 17:47

I'm sure there's some people that like it.

Brandon Hurles: 17:49

I mean this is, I'll get this Definitive Edition. So I'll get it finally, like you know, a year and a half later or something. But, um, I'm not like even excited to play it or anything, because the game just doesn't look great. Um, from people I've talked to that are big fighting game fans and stuff like that, it's just not being played on a grand scale competitively, which is not good. A lot of people aren't playing competitively.

Mark Trobough: 18:16

That's what these games live and die off is their competitive scene Exactly yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 18:20

So if the game's being played competitively then it's a big deal game for fighting game fans pretty much. So the game's being played competitively, then you know it's a big deal game for fighting game fans pretty much. So this game's just like it's not I don't know, it's kind of a mess from my understanding, so not crazy excited about. Basically, people are just worried this means the end of support for the game, so that no more that means no more content is coming, because it's already a definitive edition like a year and a half later. I forget what the launch date for this game was.

Mark Trobough: 18:48

I simply get another game next year.

Brandon Hurles: 18:50

September 19th 2023, so yeah, I mean Year, and how many months of that? Seven months, something like that.

Mark Trobough: 18:59

Yeah, it's coming on. This games coming on two years old, so I know what's the normal gap between Mortal Kombat games.

Brandon Hurles: 19:04

I this game's coming on two years old, so I don't know what's the normal gap between mortal kombat games, I assume like three, four years, four years, something like that, I think.

Mark Trobough: 19:09

Let's see what more will come out although they kind of the way they started, like labeling their games it's like more about one, like that's a weird naming convention to start going down. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like the xbox, xbox is doing.

Brandon Hurles: 19:23

I'm like this, this naming convention, to start going down.

Mark Trobough: 19:24

Yeah, I mean it sounds like the Xbox is doing. I'm like this naming convention is terrible.

Brandon Hurles: 19:28

Yeah, it's not a good idea. So yeah, Mortal Kombat 11 came out in 2019, so, yeah, four years exactly. Yeah, I would think probably around the four-year mark, so coming up on close to two years, but not quite two years. It is a little weird to see that. I think that's the biggest thing. People are worried like, oh, this means no more content's coming.

Mark Trobough: 19:57

Unless Warner Brothers Games is really having that much problem right now, that's affecting this game's support.

Brandon Hurles: 20:03

They definitely have problems. We know that it's not going to be their one successful game right now. That's affecting this game support.

Mark Trobough: 20:05

They definitely have problems, we know that it's not gonna be their one successful game right now oh god, yeah, they definitely have problems, that's for sure, uh.

Brandon Hurles: 20:15

but in other news, we got a new persona game announced, uh, which is Persona 5, the Phantom X, which finally confirms Western release date, looks like released in the West, in Japan, on June 26th for PC and mobile devices. Get wrecked consoles. I'm not excited about this at all.

Mark Trobough: 20:41

Do you know what this is supposed to be about? Is it a definitive edition or a spin-off game for Five?

Brandon Hurles: 20:45

this is a yes. To spin off gotcha game straight off the game, yeah, so that's what I said.

Mark Trobough: 20:52

I'm not.

Brandon Hurles: 20:52

I'm not excited about this game at all. Um, which is unfortunate because I I do love persona, but uh, I, I just I can't care about gotcha games at all, I just can't, I ain't got the time. Um, I tried a couple of them and it's just not for me. I get the appeal, but uh, you know it's, it's one of those things where, yeah, I mean, yeah, I want to like it, but it's like, uh, let's move on from persona five for one one I mean there's probably just a way to make money while they're working on their next game.

Mark Trobough: 21:24

But I mean to be fair, like gotcha is just a really popular thing, especially like in japan.

Brandon Hurles: 21:29

Yeah I wonder how well this will do because of that fact I mean technically, pokemon cards are are gotcha.

Mark Trobough: 21:35

That's exactly what they are. Pretty much, yeah, it's like the only form of gotcha that's popular. I mean all these games like I'm spending money I need that. I need my waifu png with the right outfit on see, that's why I don't like gacha games because they're just money yeah, I mean it's you hear about.

Brandon Hurles: 21:55

Uh, like asmongold talked about it, they talked about on that podcast that they have too, about the amount of money that they spend on like gacha games.

Mark Trobough: 22:02

It's like unreal gacha games are like mad. They make a lot of mad money. Yeah, they're really.

Brandon Hurles: 22:09

They just rake in money but I just can't care about. I've tried it. Like I said, I've tried a couple gacha games, so it's not like I haven't tried to play them. I just it's just not for me.

Mark Trobough: 22:53

I mean you can, you can tell it's kind of more like it's got the uh, so yeah it looks like a spinoff yeah, I mean, it's good if it's got. If it has to work on a mobile device, you can't. You can't have these, like you know, massive graphics that would work on a pc or a console right.

Brandon Hurles: 23:06

You can tell it's got a cheaper aesthetic to it than persona 5. Yeah, because a phone.

Mark Trobough: 23:11

A phone has to be able to to run this and well, phones have a lot of power, and then the power is not always designed for gaming graphics.

Brandon Hurles: 23:18

First, I don't know. I'll be honest with you. I think the iphone could probably run persona, persona 5, royal. I mean, it could just come to agree pretty beefy.

Mark Trobough: 23:27

If the switch could run it, a phone could run it. You would just need to to probably modify a few things here or there on top of the the control scheme but yeah, there, you, there, you have it for our uh video, uh watchers for the podcast.

Brandon Hurles: 23:40

Shut off trailer there, but yeah, available june 26. So if you like gacha games, you like persona, it's right up your alley yeah, I don't know if the.

Mark Trobough: 23:49

I don't know if it's for me. Then again, I never really I got more than I think I got like four hours into Persona 5. I didn't like it as much as 4, to be honest, I mean.

Brandon Hurles: 23:58

I didn't either, but I still like 5. 4 is just like. I think it's peak Persona for me personally. But I don't know, I just got really attached to that game on the Vita. I really did. I didn't even rebuy it like. I know it's on pc now it's on all the other consoles and stuff like that, but um, it's also like, uh, you know, I think I sunk like 150 hours in that game, so it's a pretty beefy game.

Mark Trobough: 24:24

You know it's 100 hours for the main story I mean, they all know that's like the standard jrpg. You're gonna put 50 to 100 hours in this game yeah, it's a.

Brandon Hurles: 24:32

It's a hundred hours for the main story all day, um. But yeah, I mean so in five. Same way.

Mark Trobough: 24:39

All those games are just incredibly long, but you expect to have to put a lot of hours into any jrpg.

Brandon Hurles: 24:44

It's just the nature of what those games are yeah, and then I really do hope that we get to uh see a sequel. I think we will. I think it's going to be, you know, smt, persona and Metaphor now, because Metaphor just did so incredibly well. It's such a fantastic, freaking game. I mean, you think of some of the RPGs that we've gotten that are just like these super heavy hitters, like Expedition 33. You kind of wrote it off a little bit before you're like I don't, you know what I mean. It's like, it's like crazy successful, to be fair that's like you.

Mark Trobough: 25:20

You, you approach every new game with weariness of like this is even gonna be worth my time we do yeah I just naturally have to become wary of a game which just you know like. Let me. Let me dip my toes to see if it's even worth my time yeah, I just said I was gonna try it.

Brandon Hurles: 25:35

You know, I said it looked good, but I was also skeptical because, uh, it showcases microsoft and you know, yeah, you know how the stuff is, yeah, but uh, we also got uh killer instinct. Gold is now available on Nintendo Switch Online plus expansion packs.

Mark Trobough: 25:57

Or fighting game love.

Brandon Hurles: 25:59

Pretty cool addition there.

Mark Trobough: 26:01

Fun game I like it Going old school in here. Look at those polygon graphics. That brings back memories.

Brandon Hurles: 26:08

I have to try, but I think it holds up pretty well. I played it maybe like 2018. It still holds up pretty well, it's been.

Mark Trobough: 26:14

I played it maybe like 2018, 2019 again, because I've got it on on the 64, you would assume that like a game, like like a fighting game like this, uh, where you know it would just hold up more, because the only thing that really moves are the characters you can have. Yeah, fairly static backgrounds for the most part yeah yeah, um, I'm thinking I'm biased.

Mark Trobough: 26:34

I think a lot of 64 games still hold up, even though they graphically just don't look as good. They're still fun. But there's obviously a lot, of, a lot of memories and stuff there as well no, I think I think the 64 gets too much hate.

Brandon Hurles: 26:45

um, you see it like I see, but it's weird, let's see, I see, I see it get a lot of love and then I see it get a lot of hate because people, the problem it's just a small library of games, there's hardly any games, but then you pull up the list of bangers for the 64. I'm like it's a pretty big list of games. For me. If I had just those games, I'd be content with the 64.

Mark Trobough: 27:06

If I had just all those games that are the bangers, all those bangers are obviously first party or second party games, because you look back to the era all the third parties were with sony, using the disc instead of using cartridges. But yeah, looking back, I think the 64, a lot of 64 games hold up a lot better than a lot of playstation games do I say the same thing.

Brandon Hurles: 27:26

I think, uh, visually speaking, I think 64 games hold up a lot better than a PS one. Like there's something about I always try to explain this cause I talked about before on the podcast, but there's something about like the the sharpness of the polygons on the PlayStation that are so unappealing, like there was less love and care to put into it, to to adjust for your graphical imitations with the, with the, with the design and an art style.

Mark Trobough: 27:57

Yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 27:58

I think it could have just been the the architecture of the PS one, because I mean, like almost all the games are like that, like you think you look back at like Twisted Metal 2 or something like that. I'm like I don't know what it is about. The sharp polygons that like just throw me off. So much I like the PS one but. But I think there's a lot of great games. Obviously, the RPGs on there are fantastic. It's got some of the best ever made.

Mark Trobough: 28:22

I think you see a lot of today. A lot of those third-party studios are just trying to get games out the window. They didn't put as much care or effort into their games when Nintendo, a lot of their studios requires a level of like fidelity especially like rare is probably the the best studio they put out, arguably the best games on a 64 yeah, they're outside of like, outside of like 64 jet force gemini uh, because when you, when you think it's 64 you're pretty much thinking of like every single rare game ever like.

Mark Trobough: 28:49

That's that the rare was the 64 library it really was.

Brandon Hurles: 28:52

I mean, we looked at like the list of all the games, from rare, from like snes to 64, and it's like it's a shame, nintendo, I mean even yes, but it's a shame nintendo didn't snatch up the studio they love. Yeah, my mountain yeah, it could have been a whole different, a whole different story with uh rare today. Now we just got uh uh, pirate, that's all.

Mark Trobough: 29:16

That's all they work on now. See if these we don't get anything else out of them it's crazy they got that one.

Brandon Hurles: 29:21

What's the game they they've been working on for like ever I have? No, I can't forget what I forget what it's called, but yeah, I guess we'll see what happens with them.

Mark Trobough: 29:31

Uh, we've got what we got next borg uh, nintendo addressing some of their their supply issues. Uh, from what they're saying, is the demand for the they're coming out and saying the demand to in the us for the switch to is expected to be met all the way through 2025. Uh, I don't know exactly what they mean. Are they expecting it to continue to sell out? Are they expecting to meet demand the way they kind of word some of this stuff? But essentially, nintendo said they plan to produce at least 15 million Switches globally by March of next year. So I assume that, based off of what they're saying, I assume they're planning to make another 15 million more by next year, which means they're what it takes about a year to produce 15 million uh, consoles. That's like their, their production limit. Essentially. Yeah, that's the way I'm kind of.

Brandon Hurles: 30:19

I'm kind of reading this, unless yeah, I'm kind of taking it the same way. Um, yeah, I don't know, this is interesting. It kind of goes on top of a little bit, um, but uh, game stop. Just a few hours ago said they're going to have additional units available in-store and online day of launch, which is interesting. Let me pull this up.

Mark Trobough: 30:44

They came out and said as we look at our plans here in the US, we do believe we'll have production and supply that will allow us to meet consumer demand. Essentially it was reported in the Japanese outlet Nikkei that Nintendo allow us to meet consumer demand and essentially it was reported in the japanese out in it uh, nikkei, uh, the nintendo was prepared to delay uh the then unannounced switch uh indefinitely, until it can ensure that supply chain would meet the, the early demand for the console. So they kind of what we were kind of expecting already. They delayed the announcement because they didn't want to essentially release the console until they could meet the demand of the uh, so they wouldn't run into supply issues because they know they were going to have a a lot of demand up front. Uh, so the idea is we want to, you know, be able to deal with that. So when demand isn't as high we can still pump out consoles and it not not be an issue. You, you would meet that initial hard demand and then you can steadily pump out consoles to to not have an issue. But obviously you don't want them just sitting on shelves forever and stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 31:37

So, uh, brandon brought up some gamestop stuff, uh didn't pre-order. Additional switch to units will be available in store and online at launch while supplies last, uh, yeah, I don't know how that's supposed to work because I don't I know. As far as gamestop, I talked with my gamestop stores and they were getting x amount of consoles and I'm pretty sure those, those were all allocated to pre-orders. Uh, but I'm not. I didn't ask as far as they were expecting to have any on launch day. We just, they just knew they were going to have x amount of consoles allocated to their store at launch.

Brandon Hurles: 32:12

Essentially, yeah, that's what I thought too, but I mean, this is going to be obviously probably a per-store basis type deal yeah.

Mark Trobough: 32:22

I don't know if the stores were saying, hey, you have to hold this for launch day, or if you don't sell out, they're going to do something else. I don't know, I haven't looked into it to ask as much.

Brandon Hurles: 32:33

But I guess the big thing is they're going to have additional units online too, yeah, which is nice, there they're not releasing their whole stock and stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 32:42

It's like this is what we have right now we're going to get X amount by launch and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 32:49

I mean, I got to say this is the best launch for any, anything in like a long time, I guess, since the delay was probably worth it to hopefully minimize the amount of supply issues.

Mark Trobough: 33:02

Obviously, not everyone is going to be able to get it at launch, but if they can, they can maximize the ability to get consoles out there at launch. That's obviously better. This is. This is better than the last console launch with with. We already talked about with with uh, xbox and playstation. Those launches were just terrible. Yeah, they were not every. Not every site was the best, but I think a lot, a lot of sites and stuff like that, like walmart and best buy, had some of the better. They had a better system in place than we've had in past as far as pre-ordering online and stuff like that. Still not perfect, still issues here there, but it was better than say what, um, I don't think staples is not the right thing. Target had, which was still the just good luck, we're not. We're not changing our website for you.

Brandon Hurles: 33:44

Somehow I got through every website, like for friends. I didn't get any like extra units or anything but um, yeah, I mean, target was a mess.

Mark Trobough: 33:54

That was awful, um I don't know, at least very lucky sort of uh, they had some sort of queue in place to help mitigate the not only the issue on their website, but to to uh make the process, you know, go a little bit smoother what time in the morning was it for you when you got through walmart?

Brandon Hurles: 34:11

I think it was almost 1 am. Yeah, it was 1 am. Your time too. Yeah, that's great it was.

Mark Trobough: 34:18

It was like that's like what, that's like, that's like what 3 am for you, or something like that yeah, yeah, that's crazy because it went live at 12 my time right yeah, it's about. There's about 10 my time, so it's about about two and a half hours or something like that, two and a half, three hours, I don. I don't know the exact time, but it was well past midnight.

Brandon Hurles: 34:37

Yeah, that's crazy.

Mark Trobough: 34:37

Because I assumed it was like oh, I screwed up. I'm like, all right, nah, 15 minutes in, I'm like I'm screwed, it's sold out. I'm so used to these websites working in a very specific way with their pre-orders.

Brandon Hurles: 34:46

If you don't get in in the first, yeah I mean, that's what I'm saying, the fact that all the websites people were still getting it that much later, because even Target, as much of a crap show that was, people were still getting it into the morning. People were still getting through somehow. And then Best Buy. I think Best Buy was the same way. I think a few hours later was it Walmart or Best Buy. The next morning Some people were still getting units.

Mark Trobough: 35:15

I, it was I'm not sure it might be a walmart but as soon as we got through and I figured like what I was and wasn't get through, I'm like I'm going to bed and I just didn't.

Brandon Hurles: 35:20

I didn't look anything the next day yeah, I just, I just I saw like some tweets and stuff from people that were still getting through. But yeah, it's uh, um, I mean, I think it's been a better like you know, sort of. Yeah, the system hasn't launched yet, obviously, but uh, launch uh pre-order window, whatever for it, uh, but yeah, I guess, I guess we'll have to see what kind of happens. I, I feel I have a strong feeling like, uh, we're going to see these in stores a lot quicker than we did like previous systems and stuff.

Mark Trobough: 35:53

Yeah, like probably the first two, three months it might be out of stock, but the I think Nintendo's goal is they they want it to not be a stocking issue. By the time you get a holiday season, it's a big sale, so you have yourself a buffer. You, you get a lot of the immediate uh. Uh, they're out of the gate right at the, at the offset, so you still have a strong demand, but it's not that that immediate like the people that have to buy it right now out the gate and stuff like that right, and hopefully this will keeping a good supply chain will probably mitigate the issue of scalpers as well for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 36:28

So this next game. I was like kind of shocked by this a little bit, because I've been playing this game a lot and I love it. I think it's a great, it's fantastic game, Um, I mean fatal fury S and K game. Obviously S and K puts out you know, big fighters, or has for years and years past anyway. But what I didn't know was Saudi Arabia basically bought SNK it's not in this particular article that I've got on here, but I read it a couple of days ago and they own like 98% of the company now, which SNK is obviously a Japanese company, Very Japanese. This game is also very Japanese. I was shocked to see that I didn't know the Saudi Arabia bought SNK, which is crazy to me. It is crazy. The game sold just 6,302 units on the PS5 and it's native in Japan through Golden Week. That is really bad.

Mark Trobough: 37:31

That's not good at all.

Brandon Hurles: 37:32

Really bad.

Mark Trobough: 37:35

Do you know how much it sold worldwide and stuff like that?

Brandon Hurles: 37:38

Let me see if I can pull up. Was this only on the PlayStation no it's on everything it's on PC, it's on Xbox, it's on Switch.

Mark Trobough: 37:52

I was just going to pull up the Steam DB and see what the numbers were on that. Probably horrendous On Steam, because this game launched May 10th yeah, I guess technically back in April. As far as the Steam chart goes, it peaked all time 25 days ago at 4,674 players on Steam. It's got just under 1,000 players right now.

Brandon Hurles: 38:18

This is so disappointing to me, you have no idea, because I love SNK. I truly love SNK. Big fan of the Neo Geo and stuff. This game truly is fantastic. Everybody I talk to that I do know is playing it really likes it.

Mark Trobough: 38:38

It's got a competitive scene. Yeah, I mean it's got easy, it's got an 84 percent or it's got an 85 on steam, uh, but it just doesn't have the, the numbers then it's it's being played competitively and stuff already.

Brandon Hurles: 38:48

So uh, like it's been announced for, like, the big tournaments and stuff.

Mark Trobough: 38:53

So hopefully it gets some better views. Maybe people just don't know about it. Yeah, I don't know. I mean usually, like your first two weeks is like where you're gonna get the bulk of your sales for for most of these games it says, the playstation 4 version sold 2,599 copies in its first week and didn't make the top 30 charts in the second week. So you're saying this game is still less than 100,000 across the board globally, which would be terrible for this. This game would have lost probably money at that point.

Brandon Hurles: 39:23

Yeah, I'm assuming that this has probably lost money.

Mark Trobough: 39:27

I don't know how much it cost. Maybe this game didn't cost that much to develop, but you assume this game probably cost at least 50 million to to develop. So they're probably losing money somewhere.

Brandon Hurles: 39:36

I'm, I'm guessing that this month this game's gonna lose money.

Mark Trobough: 39:40

Uh, it's got to, because even if it breaks even, it's not gonna make that much money, to the point where it, if this game doesn't make money in the next few months, it might just be the end of fatal fury for a while.

Brandon Hurles: 39:53

I was trying to see if I can get a total sale number of where we're at. But I'm just getting first couple weeks sales because it just launched not that long ago. So I guess that makes sense. But yeah, I mean this is crazy. This is like crazy low. I'm just surprised to see some of these numbers for some of these game launches. But yeah, I mean that's unfortunate but it is. It is a really good, really really good fighting game. Um, I have a lot of fun. I'm playing through the whole like story with all the characters and stuff like that. So it's been basically until doom launched. Um, I mean, I played six levels of doom so far but, uh, until that that's all I was playing. Pretty much it's like one of those games where you can pick up and play type deal, so I'd play for. You know, if I had 45 minutes or whatever, then I'd play for 45 minutes or something like that.

Mark Trobough: 40:45

Yeah, maybe this game probably suffers from a lot of stuff. I don't know if it was marketed all that well.

Brandon Hurles: 40:52

That's the thing this game had, like crazy Alright, so let me see if I can find.

Mark Trobough: 40:58

Because I didn't even see this game come out in my GameStop. Like usually the new games that got out and stuff like that, I've never actually seen this game pop up once, even on the coming zoom stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 41:09

They just advertise new games oh, okay, okay, so here's a little bit more info. Um, all right, so this was yesterday. This article came out s and k ceo steps down after fatal fury, city of the wolves bombs. Um, this is for. So for this particular, it's hard to explain because, uh, you've got like king of fighters and stuff like this. That's kind of like connected to Fatal Fury, that's connected to Samurai Shodown. All these games are sort of connected in this sort of deal with Neo Geo and stuff. But this is a.

Brandon Hurles: 41:45

It's been 26 years since the last City of the Wolves or since the last Fatal Fury yeah, game. It says they poured a lot of money into the marketing and advertising standpoint, but it does appear to have paid dividends and now SNK's CEO has stepped down. Barely a month after its release you might have seen it advertised somewhere. It was all over WWE's ring during WrestleMania weekend. It's been heavily promoted on the internet and YouTube. Snk Corporation went all in on the franchise's first new release in the quarter of a century. Yeah, I mean, like this has been everywhere in like boxing matches and like different like you know, wwe and stuff like that. Like I've seen it advertised everywhere, tons of advertisements online. Sk today announced that Mr Kenji Matsubara will transition to an advisory role where he'll continue to lend his expertise and vision. Fatal Fury's all-time scene player count 4,592. In Japan, the game had only shifted 10,000 copies on PlayStation by the end of its second week. Remains to be seen if the game receives a boost in the future or if it's already DOA. Yeah, it's unfortunate man.

Mark Trobough: 43:02

You'll probably know in the coming weeks whether this game's going to get any kind of boost or it's just going to kind of fizzle out.

Brandon Hurles: 43:07

Then again it's not even like a Japanese-owned company anymore, it's like 98% Saudi Arabia. So I mean kind of ruined the mysticism of the company for me. But you know, that's just where the money comes from.

Mark Trobough: 43:21

It's still developed in Japan. But I mean like it's not good for the future of the company if they have like a massive flop like this.

Brandon Hurles: 43:28

No, it's not for sure.

Mark Trobough: 43:33

I just wanted to bring it before we moved on to the next thing. Some because we were talking about these, uh, stellar blade region lock stuff. I I didn't see this until like a minute ago, okay, uh, but apparently they came out and the developer says we are closely discussing the region lock issue with the publisher and are doing our best to resolve most of it as soon as possible. As shown in the test chart below, the dirm has been hard tuned to maintain the same average frame rate with even higher minimum frames in some cases. Mods are fully supported without any restrictions. Psn connecting entirely optional and never required. Both pc and ps5 versions offer the same content. We will make sure that early buyers are never at a disadvantage through future updates. Well, that's not entirely true. Ps5 versions offer the same content. We will make sure that early buyers are never at a disadvantage few uh through future updates well, that's not entirely true.

Mark Trobough: 44:16

Ps5 doesn't offer mods, but you know the, the, the base content is the same and stuff like that. Yeah, and these were some of the uh performance with and without the. Uh, uh, drm essentially, uh. So what they're saying is we DRM essentially. So what they're saying is we kind of know like, yeah, the Denuvo is not the best, but it's for most people, it's a minimal impact on actually performance and stuff like that for the, for the most part, With some games.

Brandon Hurles: 44:47

I think it's a game by game basis.

Mark Trobough: 44:48

Yeah, and then they gave a more. Well, this can, because obviously, like Steam had its own stuff for like the minimum. I think it's a game by game basis. But yeah, and then they they gave a more. Uh, I don't know how well this can uh, cause, obviously, like steam had its own stuff for like the the minimum recommended steps and stuff like that. But if you want to play it very high 40 K, 60 FPS, uh you need to need at least an I five 8,400, amd or resin five, 3,600 X, uh, 30, 80 or a RX 7900 I can't speak, obviously. Same RAM, same storage. It's going to be SSD essentially and then, you know, at least a Windows 10. So, in theory, as long as you have a display, you can. You should be able to run this at 4K yeah, that's pretty good on the CPU side.

Mark Trobough: 45:30

There for the 4K this was obviously posted via stellar blades, uh, twitter account. So if you want to go over there and track a lot of this while it's going on, I just saw that while we're reading the other things I was like, okay, this is a like a quick little update. Yeah, for sure, I wanted to bring, just kind of we were talking about it and uh, so they're they're they're trying to resolve obviously the issue, but it's sony's decision ultimately.

Brandon Hurles: 46:00

So yes, next one's. Uh. Next news article we got is pretty interesting. So bungee confirms that marathon uses unauthorized artwork in undertaking review of in-game assets. Uh, developer vowed to do right by the artist in question, but yeah, we had actual like tweak so essentially bungee tried to just steal art.

Mark Trobough: 46:16

They got caught and now they're trying to backtrack with PR like oh, they did this in destiny as well.

Brandon Hurles: 46:23

They're there. This isn't the.

Mark Trobough: 46:25

This is an accident. We know what happened, this is. We know we got caught and we're just gonna we're gonna BS it and hopefully everyone forgets about it. Like, let's be real yeah, I mean uh I don't, I don't believe this was an accident. This, this was 100 intentional and they just got caught second time this happened.

Brandon Hurles: 46:44

They did it with destiny too. There's still artwork for that.

Mark Trobough: 46:46

So I mean, like it's obviously there's a problem there there is a track record because they say, like, what like are the lead artists? Or something like that. Yeah, because I was listening to something else earlier in the day where it's like oh yeah, this dude follows this artist. So it's like we don't care who you're trying to throw into the bus or this person's not here anymore. Like you follow this artist, like you're getting we know you just jacked this this art the, so they, they follow the artists like you, can I?

Mark Trobough: 47:13

believe I don't know if it's going to be in this article, but I was listening to something that the like the lead designer, lead artist, something like that, somebody high up followed the artist that that made the art that was stolen. I just don't have any of the stuff, uh stuff pulled up I don't. I don't remember if it was asman or somebody else I was listening to. I can't remember off the top of my head, but it was like that's, that's what they were talking about, like oh yeah, that's essentially we know, you just jacked it and you didn't think you were going to get caught.

Brandon Hurles: 47:38

That's crazy uh, the artist antriel pointed out the use of our artwork in the game on social media, while tagging in the developer and franchise art director, joseph cross. Uh, the artist said bungee is, of course, not obligated to hire me when making a game that draws overwhelmingly from the same design language I have refined for the last decade, but clearly my work was good enough to pillage for ideas and plaster all over their game, without pay or attribution, in 10 years I've never made a consistent income from this work and I'm tired of designers from huge companies mood boarding and parasitizing my designs while I struggle to make a living.

Brandon Hurles: 48:20

So I don't know, that's interesting. Um, yeah, yeah, bungee, don't.

Mark Trobough: 48:26

Don't steal artwork oh, it's a, uh, it's a, it's a parasiting. Essentially, I don't know that's what you're trying to trying to say. I'd pull it up. Yeah, I looked, uh, it was bugging me. I was like what, what's going? On sorry my bad, um, they were, they were, they were ripping off this, this, this artist's artwork, essentially, and just just using it, thinking they could get away with it they said, as a matter of policy, we do not use the work of artists without their permission.

Brandon Hurles: 48:52

the account said you legally can't.

Mark Trobough: 48:56

It doesn't matter if it's your policy. There's laws that you can't just steal artwork. Yeah, that's crazy, but you're big. You thought nobody would notice. You Get away with it.

Brandon Hurles: 49:03

I mean, they probably could have got away.

Mark Trobough: 49:05

I'm never going to give any major company the benefit of the doubt when it comes to stuff like this no for sure I'm gonna assume you knew what you were doing intentionally, even if it came out that you didn't actually know. It was like one person, like I. Just I don't. I don't give these major studios the benefit of the doubt, oh, this is the third time this has happened.

Brandon Hurles: 49:22

In 2023, artists pointed out the similarities between artwork and a piece that appeared in destiny 2 cutscene 2021. Fan art was used in a trailer, which Bungie again resolved after reaching out to the artist in question.

Mark Trobough: 49:35

So Well, you know what is its comeback Once is by chance, twice is a coincidence and three times is a pattern.

Brandon Hurles: 49:44

Yeah.

Mark Trobough: 49:46

I had to pull it real quick because there's an actual saying that goes along with this.

Brandon Hurles: 49:50

By the way, this game looks like absolute dog crap to me.

Mark Trobough: 49:54

I think everyone was knocking on it.

Brandon Hurles: 49:56

It does not look good.

Mark Trobough: 49:58

I'm sorry it looks like a more sanitized version of what Destiny 2 was. I don't think this is not the Bungie that made Halo. This is not the same studio.

Brandon Hurles: 50:06

I didn't even like Destiny. I know people like Destiny a lot, especially 1 the more I played it, the more I liked Destiny.

Mark Trobough: 50:12

I know people like Destiny a lot, especially 1, right. The more I played it, the more I liked Destiny 1. To some degree, destiny 2 at launch felt more like an expansion of anything else. But the problem is I didn't like the fact they started removing content in Destiny 2 and recycling, because it's not the same game and you can't play all the content now. I didn't care for some of the decisions and that's about the time. I just forever dropped the game and never even bothered to go back to it do you mean I put more time than the destiny one?

Brandon Hurles: 50:42

uh, destiny I, I just didn't care. I didn't care what wasn't halo, because, like, I don't know if we remember, like the build-up to destiny one, but like people, I mean it was.

Mark Trobough: 50:53

It was like the next big thing after halo 3 that they worked on yeah, it was like a big deal, because I mean halo 1 through 3.

Mark Trobough: 51:00

Well, because at that point they had only they had a track record of success, making really good games, yeah, and I think destiny one was still a decent. But the problem is more time goes on, they people leave and they, they, they downsize and rehire and it's, by the time you get destiny 2, like it's not. It's not the same studio that made halo. Like everyone that worked on these games is essentially moved on to do other other crap.

Mark Trobough: 51:20

It's the problem that a lot I think a lot of these western studios have is there's no continuity between games right, you just hire and fire after every game, essentially where when you see a lot more in the Eastern studios, where they don't do that they value a level of continuity which, at least at the managerial level, the game director level, the higher level if you have that continuity, there's a level of consistency, game after game, Even if just the grunt work essentially is done by different people. If you have some level of continuity of people that are actually making decisions creatively, artistically, in the writing and stuff like that, you'll have some consistency in your game and in your studio.

Mark Trobough: 52:02

It's a big problem. They hire and fire randomly and then there's no continuity. So between game to game it's like, well, yeah, it's the same studio, but it's not the same people.

Brandon Hurles: 52:14

It's not the same people. It's not the same people.

Mark Trobough: 52:16

Yeah, I mean, you look at japanese studios and you've got people that have been working there 30, 40 years, you know, and work there obviously the biggest one is like nintendo, just because they're the, they're the immediate and the recognizable faces, but the fact that you've got people that were there in the 80s still working there now, the people that started out, like you know, the mario games and the zelda and stuff like that, and and metroid, like those same original creators still there.

Mark Trobough: 52:34

They that's like why these games have such good continuity. Yeah, I mean some, some are going to be good, some are going to be not as good. Looking at you, uh, skyward sword, but uh, there is a level of continuity with the same creators there, even if they they try something else and it doesn't work. Uh, and then the big issue after that because I think we've talked about in the past is you eventually have to move on to to new blood and new, new creators and stuff like that. But if you have these, if you have a hard level of consistency at the top for for several games, for for several decades, you can. You can have a consistency as far as the the type of quality you can expect out of a game.

Mark Trobough: 53:09

Not Not every game might be this great game. They might try something new that just doesn't work out. You have people there you can trust. You can put your faith in the studio because you've got this lead director, this producer that's there that has the reins on it, game after game, or with Bungie, or with ID Software or Bethesda. You don't know. Id software, bethesda, you don't, you don't have that right yeah, I guess for bethesda you bethesda game.

Brandon Hurles: 53:37

So you got todd howard, but he's more of like a figurehead at this point for their company than an actual lead designer yeah, pretty much, yeah, uh, yeah, the game just looks dreadful to me, but uh, I guess, I guess we'll see the alpha. Is the alpha out?

Mark Trobough: 53:54

right, I I'm not sure, I can't it's like we saw also trailer. I'm like, oh, this game's gonna this game looks terrible and I'm just like I haven't followed it since yeah, the trailer looked terrible to me, just did not look good.

Brandon Hurles: 54:06

But uh, we've also got uh, jade raymond uh steps away from Haven Studios. So it says Jade Raymond has been an incredible partner and visionary force and founding Haven Studios and obviously she's been around for a while but founded Haven Studios in 2021. We are deeply grateful for leadership and contributions and we wish her the best in the next chapter.

Mark Trobough: 54:34

Um before your game comes, that's. That's like a weird thing to step away from. So you made only like four years ago yeah, she stepped away from another studio.

Brandon Hurles: 54:43

To try to think what the name was. Uh, ea motive in 2018 that she, uh, was a co-founder for in 2015. So I don't know. Uh, she was a co-founder for in 2015. So I don't know. She was at EA Ubisoft. She worked on some of the early Assassin's Creed games in the original Watch Dogs at Ubisoft before moving on to EA and then worked on the Google Stadia. That's not good.

Mark Trobough: 55:08

It was a field console.

Brandon Hurles: 55:10

Yeah, you wouldn't call it a console.

Mark Trobough: 55:14

It's just a stringer.

Brandon Hurles: 55:15

Yeah, but yeah, so you know she's gone. There's that. I mean. It's not much for me to add there, she's gone. I saw a lot of people tweeting about it, though I saw a lot of people.

Mark Trobough: 55:30

I didn't even know who she was. I haven't even heard of the studio until a few hours ago.

Brandon Hurles: 55:37

Yeah, I threw this in here too just because I wanted to mention it, but if you're an Avatar, the Last Airbender fan, paramount delayed the Aang Avatar movie until October 2026. So I mean, that could be a good thing. Maybe that's the hope. I'm not going to give them the benefit of the doubt. I was being generous with saying that that might be a good thing. I don't know. It's a little bit different with movies.

Mark Trobough: 56:04

The last movie they did was a terrible movie. Oh, I'm the airbag. Like bro. There's a TV show of like what 60, 90 episodes like? How do you screw up these names? I mean the original let's do all this stuff just to move a little pebble up.

Brandon Hurles: 56:18

I'm like, oh my god, like I don't, I don't know that that was. That's one of the worst movies of all time. Like it's there with dragon ball evolution, it's there with Dragon Ball Evolution, like I don't know which one's worse.

Mark Trobough: 56:31

They're both really bad, but uh, you know, didn't uh uh Evolution reference airbending or something like that in the show. I feel like uh god did it. I thought it did at one point. Am I, am I?

Brandon Hurles: 56:47

I don't remember. I have to know because it's such a bad movie, just dreadful absolutely dreadful. I don't remember. I have to know because it's such a bad movie.

Mark Trobough: 56:54

Just dreadful, absolutely dreadful People tried to forget this, but I mean I can't find an immediate clip on it, but I thought they did to something like that it might have.

Brandon Hurles: 57:11

It might have, but this is second delay, so that I mean, that's not good news, you know yeah, I mean it could be, could be a death nail for for a lot of these movies.

Mark Trobough: 57:19

But I mean m night Shyamalan's not working on it, so he can't be absolutely terrible. His movies are absolutely amazing or they're terrible yeah, yeah, they got, like they got one of his, one of his worst movies. What no?

Brandon Hurles: 57:37

you're watching me. Yeah, you're watching the village one about the like the killer pigs. I'm not, I'm not particularly a fan of him. There's like a couple of movies that I sort of like, like, uh, the lady in the water, um, but I've never been like a super. I mean like signs, you know, I don't know. There's a couple movies that are I kind of like, but he's a weird. He's like I always put him as like a weirdo director because he just he does weird off the wall stuff that I don't know. Yeah, so it's okay, but uh, I don't know, the original series to me absolute.

Mark Trobough: 58:16

Uh, yeah, the happening yeah, how did I bring it up? What it's such a meme. It's so funny. I just I laugh like I have to, I have to, I have to hear this because it's such a that movie it's not like the worst movie in the world, but it's like it's got some of like if you ever watch like mark wolbert movies. It's one of his worst acted movies. It's not. It's not a good horror movie. It's like it's the wind or it's the tree you know like, oh my god.

Brandon Hurles: 58:42

So that's what I'm saying. Like his movies are always like something stupid, like that where it's like some something dumb, is like going on, there's or there's like a, it's got a meaning behind it or something, I don't know. It's like oh, it's a really deep media.

Mark Trobough: 58:54

I'm like, bro, this is deep. If you're like 12, like come on. Yeah, there's not something. This reads like a fan fiction.

Brandon Hurles: 59:00

I don't think any of his movies are are like. They're like pretend want to be deep but uh, they're not.

Mark Trobough: 59:06

I don't know no, I gotta pull it up. They know, like the sixth, the sixth sense is a really good movie.

Brandon Hurles: 59:12

It's a good movie, but I think it's a pretty.

Mark Trobough: 59:15

You could argue that was like where he peaked I mean like his one really good movie, that, or it was just carried by by bruce willis, I don't know even that movie. I feel like it was like kind of I don't know did what it doesn't, because I don't remember a whole lot about it. Do you think what signs a good movie? It's all they're like major one, like I feel I feel like that was probably his peak.

Brandon Hurles: 59:40

But even that movie I feel like watching it. You know I've watched it in recent years and I'm just like the movie's not good yeah, because then what 2008?

Mark Trobough: 59:47

yet the happening, which was not a good movie. Then then after earth, which was a god awful movie, it was really bad it was really nothing. He's done it because he's done other movies ever since, but, like I, I didn't even know they were like movies, because you had what?

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:01

the visit in 2015 the lady in the water, I think, is the best movie in my opinion.

Mark Trobough: 1:00:04

Yeah you had. What's the visit in 15? Split in 2016, glass 2019, old in 2021 and Knock at the Cabin? I didn't know these movies existed. I guess he had Trap that came out last year, I don't know. Game Frank said it can't be worse than Tusk.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:23

Yeah, tusk Game. Frank said it can't be worse than Tusk. Tusk was really bad. Kevin Smith movie.

Mark Trobough: 1:00:32

I don't even know what that is.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:34

Look it up. You should look it up. We don't need to show nothing about it.

Mark Trobough: 1:00:40

I mean, if the actual Poster for it? Yeah, it's legit, yeah, it's pretty bad. What's the review Cause I have to know what it is on rotten tomatoes. It's got a critical score of 46 and an audience score of 36 it's really bad. Yeah, look it up, don't watch it yeah, don't it's not the reviews, enough for me to know like nah, I'm, I'm good uh, but we got doom.

Brandon Hurles: 1:01:07

The dark ages obviously launched, uh, so came out yesterday. Um, but mark pointed out you want to go over this chart yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:01:18

So obviously the game's on it's across the board, but a lot of people were looking at because steam db is like one of the few places you can actually get reliable information for how well a game's doing and the games that. What it peaked yesterday, you know, just shy of 31 000 players. It's sitting just shy of 25 000 players on steam right now and obviously it's also on game pass, which is going to eat up a decent amount of people. But obviously there's been other games, like expedition 33 that we talked about, as well as oblivion, that they're on game pass. But there's also a game that's really well on steam. So it's like a percentage by volume, the more people that play it's gonna, it's gonna bump it up, uh. But it's one of those things where it's like it's it's lower than what you would expect. Obviously it's not terrible. People are gonna play on a game pass. The game is on consoles. So I think this game, this game's gonna, is gonna make money. It's just uh, you would expect it to be doing better, at least on the steam side and side, and obviously we don't have a lot of these other numbers and stuff like that and I think this game is going to do. Well, it's going to make money and stuff like that, but it wasn't doing what the?

Mark Trobough: 1:02:21

I can't remember the other Doom game that came out, not 2016,. The other one, eternal. Yeah, doom Eternal. Sorry, but I mean people rightfully noticed that game was only on steam at launch. It wasn't on game pass, so obviously it was going to have higher numbers with the steam charts. Just, uh, you, you would just expect these numbers to be to be a little higher, but it's not like it's. It's doing terrible. Like 30 for most games. 30 000 players on steam's not not a terrible number, especially since it falls under bethesda, and I highly doubt I would hope they didn't spend like 200 million dollars on this game, where it would need really really high numbers and stuff like that. This game is probably gonna sell sell at least 2 million copies. If you had to ask me, yeah, um, I think I think this game will break at least a million this weekend, probably another million next week.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:09

They definitely spent a lot, of, a lot of money on the game. I can tell you that but, playing it. They spent a lot of money on I don't know how much or anything like.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:15

There's no numbers out there, but um, I mean, I've heard everyone that's played this game has said it's a good game. Obviously it's fantastic. There are most of the steam reviews I saw were negative, weren't about the game, it was about ray tracing, some of the some of the some of the performance issues on.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:30

Yeah, I do know I do need to because it's in it a uh it's in an 87 uh with 9 000 reviews on steam, so it's a well-reviewed game. It's just it. You people expected this game to have higher numbers but we obviously we're not going to know hard numbers and stuff like that. And it's on game pass and every other console. So yeah, well, we'll, we'll know how well this is doing when they come out and say, hey, we made this mini, when they officially say their their actual sales numbers and stuff like that. But I, I expect this game to, to you know, by by the end of this, by by about a month. It hit like what? Two, three million copies and that's gonna be probably probably decent.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:08

I assume they expect this game to sell probably at least five million lifetime, if I had to guess I was looking up because, you know, obviously we can't give any numbers on this, but basically, a little more than a year ago, game pass is sitting at 34 million subscribers. So february 2024 um, I assume that there are probably a lot of people playing on game pass. Well, this is a.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:30

This is a microsoft owned game and stuff like that. And let's be fair, if it's on game pass, they've, they're, there's, there's probably either a set percentage of people that play it or does they guarantee a set number of money that the studio is going to get anyways. I don't expect that anything to happen to the studio, like I expect this game to to make money, because I assume this game is probably sitting closer around 100 million dollars mark and stuff like that, which you probably hit 2 million copies, you're, you're, you're, you're breaking even and stuff like that or you're in the green at that point.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:57

So and it's, obviously it's, it's cross-platform, you know it's a game you had earlier.

Mark Trobough: 1:05:02

The game just launched and the only noticeable thing to talk about that I saw on social media was all the steam charts are not as high as we thought they would be, and that's like the only thing, because everybody else that's actually talking about the game that's played it had the chance to play. It heard, heard nothing, but but great things about the game, so I I expect this game to do well, like the first two were good.

Mark Trobough: 1:05:21

The only real issue with this is is that mick gordon isn't here yeah, it's like the one big, big issue with the game, but outside of that it's, I've heard nothing but positive things about the game I do know that um moist critical is like having like big problems with, uh, getting doomed to run.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:38

Like there's been some people that have had problems with getting doomed, it's the only negative.

Mark Trobough: 1:05:42

I heard about the game with some performance, but most people that are playing it don't don't have a problem and I assume it runs just fine on on console. It's probably more of a pc issue because they require ray tracing.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:51

So yeah, yeah. So I mean, uh, so far, what I played I think I'm six levels in or something like that it's, it's really good. I will say this is probably a hot take because I know it. Like, uh scored really well and I'm a big doom fan. I love these, I love these games, um, you know, going way back with doom, but I feel like, uh, I haven't gotten in giant mech yet. I haven't gotten that yet.

Brandon Hurles: 1:06:16

I'm assuming it's next, because I just got into the dragon but like, yeah, the dragon's really gimmicky, um, and like, there's like, and I did get into the back I'm an idiot, hold on. I did get into the mech. Sorry, the mech was first, but it was like very brief, because I think it was for one level, uh, and like a really short level, but that was really gimmicky too, um, and it just felt like kind of tacked on, if that makes any sense. Uh, it just felt like one of those things where it was just like it didn't feel like it really sat well being. Is it one of those that they added it after?

Mark Trobough: 1:06:52

the fact didn't feel like it really sat well being. Is it one of those that they added it after the fact, or it's just kind of like a gimmick they use to get people in the game, or I don't just wasn't. It was just like it just doesn't. It was designed for this one very specific stage and that's what it felt like.

Brandon Hurles: 1:07:04

Yes, that's what I felt like. So it felt like it was going to be one of those things where I was like okay, you, you got your, you're in like three normal stages and then you get into a stage with you know where you're flying in the dragon, and then it just didn't. It didn't feel like the way that. It was kind of um advertised. That's just how I feel so far. But um, yeah, I mean I played, played through a long stage just a little bit ago or a little bit ago this morning, uh, before work, and it was flying in the dragon. It just felt like kind of um, I don't know, I kind of lame a little bit. Um, I guess not what you wanted.

Mark Trobough: 1:07:41

You wanted a little bit more control, but it's. It's just like a. It's like a set piece is really all it is yeah, that's what it felt like.

Brandon Hurles: 1:07:46

I mean, I get you know, we'll see what uh comes with that. But other than that, like the standard game itself really good. I mean it is really good. So I guess we'll see that. That's that's just my opinion so far with it. But uh, we what we got, next we got uh boralea for removing the mini map.

Mark Trobough: 1:08:04

Yeah, so it was the, the we got some information. Essentially, the more the game comes out in a few months and stuff like that, we get more information. They essentially replaced the mini-map uh with a uh with like the, the top bud hut at the bar where it's like the, the map scroll thing, essentially kind of like what you'd expect, like a skyrim kind of thing. Is what I saw from what they said.

Mark Trobough: 1:08:24

The way they the traditional mini-map wouldn't work with, the way they were doing the map design with a lot of verticality and a lot of different, different things from what they came out and said at least there were Randy pitcher came out and said it just didn't fit with the, what they were trying to do and stuff like that as well, as you know, especially with like friends can transport right to you and stuff like that. It's just like they wanted and I could see the benefit of trying to try to do push exploration instead of just using a map to get from point a to point b, essentially, which having the mini map kind of you kind of tend to do. You kind of use that instead of just exploring an actual map. If you want to encourage people to to organically explore a world, you get rid of a mini map that you can constantly just use to, to just follow essentially. So I can see that, I can see the pros and cons of that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:08

Can I say something? I've never really liked that scroll wheel concept, necessarily like even with outer scrolls and stuff.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:15

I don't love it like versus a mini map, but I I get, I get the concept some, some designs like if you're trying to either push exploration or if you're designing a very leveled vertical verticality level, yeah, and stuff like that it it becomes harder and you gotta put more effort into to designing a mini map so I can see how it's not more effort it's not the worst thing because because when borderlands, one originally didn't have any mini map until the, it was a game of the year.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:41

Edition. Two and three had it but like most of those worlds are very flat worlds, there you would go up but it was the map was generally flat and spread out. So if you're trying to be more condensed, be more verticality, it would cause issues with an actual map, especially like am I too high, am I too low, where exactly am I going? And stuff like that. Or if you generally want, like a lot of elder scrolls games, you want to force exploration, you just get rid of the map and something you give a different way to to know whether you're going. But you you get rid of a mini-map to force the players to properly explore the map, which I don't think is the worst thing in the world.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:16

No, I'm a lot less excited about this game after playing the Tiny.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:20

Toon. This would have zero impact. The impact of this is one I don't like. Randy Pitchford and Borderlands 3 still left a very sour taste in my mouth and I just wasn't sold with the trailer. This is a game, so it's like I will. I will wait and see. Yeah, I'm not gonna pre-order it. I'm not pre-ordering whatever special edition. I made that mistake with three and I'm just like I. You're gonna have to prove to me that you deserve my money for this game, because with the borderlands 3 outside of the dlc, I thought it was a lackluster game. Combat's great, but I didn't like the story.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:52

It's like what I was saying.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:54

We talked about it probably a hundred times.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:56

Gameplay is probably peak for gameplay, but I still rather go back and play two than three.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:02

It's got subpar gameplay.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:04

I just think it's a better and funner, fuller experience if that makes sense.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:08

Yeah, it's just a story.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:12

And then, obviously, new Tales of the borderlands. I'm like, okay, you all can't write for for for crap. Um, I mean it's, it's.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:16

It's a terribly written game, it's not tales, which was done by a completely different studio. Yeah, you all wrote this game and this was terrible. I have zero faith in this game. You're gonna have to like prove, prove me wrong, or else I'm just not gonna buy this game, which is disappointing, because border 1, 2, I've come around on the pre-sequel. I don't necessarily care for the gameplay as much as that game, but I really like the story in the game and stuff like that. And then Tales are all really, really fun games to go through and play, and it was really around 3 where I'm like, oh, this is not the funnest game to come back and replay.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:52

But I mean mean, that's just my opinion. Game frank said two is peak story, three peak gameplay. I agree with that that. That's where I'm at with it.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:55

Two is peak story, three peak gameplay one is kind of iconic and I do like going back and playing it. The the benefit of one, with it being kind of I don't say archaic, but really bare bones, is it's not a long. You can beat the game in like 10 hours, like it's not a very long game to get through at all. And then the only issue with the dlc is the way those maps are designed. The fast travel doesn't exist, so it's kind of a pain. But like the base game of one is is extremely short, especially compared to two pre-sequel three and stuff like that, it's not a it's a very quick game to get through yeah, for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:26

Uh, we've also got. Uh, pokemon releases official replica of Penny's Evie backpack. Oh, that's interesting, it doesn't actually there's always.

Mark Trobough: 1:12:35

There's been a surprising a lot of Pokemon merch recently, which I guess they're. They're trying to like maintain hype for it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:43

I mean, I'm not surprised at all. Pokemon's just like explode. It's the number one IP in the world, bro.

Mark Trobough: 1:12:49

Yeah, so this is what the? It's just the the evie backpack, essentially, and I guess you could wear it like, like, uh, like she does in the game, which I assume is not the most comfortable way to carry a backpack. I love how it looks, the model I wear a backpack like you do. It goes over the shoulders and it's.

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:04

I wear it because I need to store extra stuff I don't want to carry around, but I wear a backpack fancy, you know, or you can it fancy, or you can do how we always do the one shoulder with the backpack. It's cool.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:16

I don't do that anymore. I don't do it anymore, but I definitely didn't. I do it if I'm carrying something for a short amount of time. But otherwise I just put the backpack on now. In other words, I wouldn't be caught dead wearing this, obviously, but if you, I wouldn't be caught dead wearing this obviously. But like if you had, like a, a you know, a kid or a daughter or something like that, or a girlfriend who?

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:35

who liked it, or something like that.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:36

You wouldn't wear this right. That makes sense. It's very obvious. It's a like, it's a feminine backpack. You wouldn't wear this to work, absolutely not. I'm sure if these girls would be hurled at me. I'm just saying the fact. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know the people that I work with and what they would say.

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:58

Yeah, yeah, that one's, uh, that one's that it's gonna be a no for me uh, to be fair, just to clarify.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:05

So nobody says it'd be all. It's obviously all in good fun, but and I maybe I said a little bit harsh, but I know what would be said at work which isn't isn't very uh, isn't, is not politically correct at all uh, we also got.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:17

Uh. Pokemon fossil museum is coming to the? U I saw this earlier. This is kind of a neat concept. Us Pokemon fans can visit the Pokemon fossil museum. In May 20 26 at Chicago's Field Museum Museum will feature life-size replicas and Pokemon skeletons compared to real fossils. He's a bit aimed to educate fans about Paleontology through Pokemon, with a very collection on display. I think it's a pretty interesting concept actually. I think it's kind of cool.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:46

Yeah, I think it's. If you're trying to get people into paleontology, even archaeology to a lot of extent, stuff like that using because they always have fossil Pokemon, like what to every game essentially since Gen 1 and stuff like that, you know you've got a very popular, good ip that pull people in and then just use. Use a use of this ip to then transition to a form of education is a very smart thing to do and stuff like that, especially if you have some kind of hands-on stuff, because a lot of their, their false pokemon, take inspiration from, from the real world I think. I think they all do to some degree. So, yeah, it's not, it's a really good thing, I think I think it's.

Brandon Hurles: 1:15:22

Yeah, I think it's a cool concept. I saw one article that actually showed the concept of like charizard next to a t-rex like the bones it was pretty cool, I was like that's actually. I like that and it's very obvious charizard was somewhat inspired by.

Mark Trobough: 1:15:33

I know we got it like an actual t-rex, uh, yeah uh, false pokemon, but charizard like a like a traditional what is a western dragon which is more like a wyvern. Yeah, inspired stuff like that, where the eastern dragon's like an actual dragon. If you care about these, these fantasy, uh, fantasy dragons for dragons and stuff like that for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 1:15:55

Yeah, I think this is a pretty cool concept.

Mark Trobough: 1:15:57

So um, well, I mean I wouldn't go to Chicago. I'm not trying to get shot, but I think it's an interesting thing, chicago. I didn't mean to swear there. I went to see Shots Fired to be fair.

Brandon Hurles: 1:16:19

I mean, like I went to Chicago last year and sorry 2023, and it was a little sketchy, you know, to be fair, I went to Chicago last year, sorry 2023. It's a little sketchy. It's a little bit sketchy. You got to be careful.

Mark Trobough: 1:16:29

I think I was still in high school last time. I've only been to Chicago once and it was the big tourist downtown. I say I went, that was like 10, 15 years ago at this point.

Brandon Hurles: 1:16:37

Pretty much in one area, because I was at a convention. It was interesting.

Mark Trobough: 1:16:45

What's the god? It's okay, don't worry. Eventually it'll just be, you know, west ohio, so not all in due time yeah, I saw that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:16:53

You know ohio was one of the worst rated states in the the us.

Mark Trobough: 1:16:58

But it was like I saw that and a lot of people in ohio got real butthurt about it. I just, I just laughed. It was like I left the state for a reason.

Brandon Hurles: 1:17:05

But but I mean, like my take on it was like it seemed to be that a lot of uh, because, like, um, let's see what who else was on. I was trying to think of who, the? I think was it utah, that was the number one.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:18

Worst might have been utah, I forget, I mean I could see utah for for very different reasons, but I don't, I don't know, I don't I've never been in utah so I don't know wyoming was low on there. I mean, utah is great if you don't mind the hot, dry heat, a lot of desert and stuff like that. Yeah, a lot of terrible, terrible drivers in utah. That's not that, that's not throwing shade, that's just a fact.

Brandon Hurles: 1:17:42

Utah drivers are terrible.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:44

I hate them.

Brandon Hurles: 1:17:45

Oh my gosh, All right, we got a Steam debunks reported data breach. I heard about this, mark, do you know a little bit? I just heard about it.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:53

Essentially there was a report that was like oh go, change your password. There's a big leak. But essentially Steam came out and says it it's breach if was affecting, uh uh, the sms text messages sent to customers. They say no, no systems were actually breached. Outside of the actual reports and stuff like that. They came out pretty quickly within a day and say, no, your, your account information, uh uh, was not at risk, essentially. So, like you don't, if you want to go and change your password, obviously you should be changing your password every I don't know what x amount of months and stuff like that is like generally good practice. But like uh, especially if you got, if you have two-factor authentication and stuff like that, like you, especially with that, it should not be at risk. But I mean, obviously it's, it's not the worst thing I gotta be honest six months, you should probably be changing your passwords.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:37

anyways, steam is like the most annoying one to to into with stuff Like not really Well.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:44

The thing is because the Steam guard requires you to have the app. Download the Steam app on your phone.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:50

Yeah, that's why I say it's kind of annoying, but, like I mean, it's a good thing obviously.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:53

I like never log out of Steam, so it's not really a problem for me.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:57

On my okay. So when I go to like claim games that are like free free where I see tweets about, and stuff like that it's just kind of annoying on my phone if I'm gone or something. Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of aggravating a little bit. But Steam Guard is a good job.

Mark Trobough: 1:19:14

People like Steam mainly because Steam focuses on the user experience. They don't focus on the developers and stuff like that. Uh, outside, like the whole free game that some of the other studio, these other platforms you use, which feels more of like a way to just get you to use their platform, steam's the way steam's design, the way steam operates is, is very clearly they think of the user experience first and foremost for the most part, and then everything else is kind of secondary and stuff like that, which I think is a really good practice. It's's why they dominated the PC space for for what? Like two decades? At this point you're saying Epic's not great.

Mark Trobough: 1:19:48

It's a terrible platform If you, if you play, if you steam, and then you look at Epic, it's not. It's not even it's night and day. Epic does not care about the user and user experience induced your experience. Steam actually cares. All right, well, you heard it from mark here. That's not, that's just a fact. Like everyone, everyone knows that. I mean you can, you can use both platforms they're both on pc, but one obviously actually caters and that there's a reason steam is like the number one platform all right, steam, uh rules out everybody else I mean it, it does, it's not even close.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:23

No it seems great Outside of your DRM and stuff like that. It's just a really good platform.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:31

DRM does suck.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:33

I'm not going to lie, it's negligible at the end of the day. As far as the performance side of it. I know some people complain and say it has all this stuff. I'm like, yeah, 10 years ago it had a significant impact. Now for most people it's negligible as far as the performance drop you're going to see on average, yeah, because I game all the time and stuff like that. I don't see the issue For most people. Your actual hardware is going to have a bigger impact on the way you have your settings, have your settings set up and then then drm and stuff like that and there's different types of it.

Mark Trobough: 1:21:13

But, yeah, whatever it is what it is. Uh, I was like I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm rambling this point to stop talking about it. But apparently, if you live in the uk, uh, there's a summer promotion for for pokemon cards featuring dragon type pokemon, like charizard. Uh, they say the us and japan previously have had that and stuff like that. But uh, this summer I don't know if anybody here listening is from the uk, maybe, maybe I want the podcast, uh, but a if you, you'll be getting pokemon in the in your happy meal and stuff like that at mcdonald's, so they're rushing it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:21:43

Those scalpers will be all over those. You know what's crazy. The last mcdonald's person we had I think I sent you stuff about it where people were selling, I think you did. Yeah, oh my god, like what is the problem? Like it's making me uh, I just got back into the hobby, like recent, just recently, I got back in the wrong time, didn't I?

Mark Trobough: 1:22:03

I mean, I only beat you by like a few months, like a year, and I haven't bought cards in months at this point because I just I can't find them and I'm not gonna pay over msrp, I'm not gonna like well, they're gonna respond to me.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:14

Get there, right away.

Mark Trobough: 1:22:14

I'm like no, I'm just not gonna do that never pay over msrp, that's just.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:19

And I can't just walk into a store and see it, I'm just not gonna buy it.

Mark Trobough: 1:22:22

If it's that, if it's that hard to come by, it's just like, yeah well, it sucks, but I'm not not gonna buy your product yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's uh unfortunate.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:29

I will say this once it's back in in stock and it's not an issue, then I'll start buying them again I see stuff go up all the time on amazon like I even got the uh, the charizard boxes I have back there below MSRP. So deals do come up. But as far as going to the store, I even told you they do the restocks on Friday. I walked in. They're all gone. All they have left are the crappy free packs.

Mark Trobough: 1:22:54

They figure out, they know when they're going to restock and they just wait.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:58

It's like I feel bad for the kids that are into the hobby. It's like can't even you know what I mean. Like when we were kids it wasn't a problem at all.

Mark Trobough: 1:23:07

And it's like I wasn't that big of a card as a kid, like I had them, but it wasn't like something.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:12

Then again, my parents didn't have the money to buy them anyways, so yeah, I mean I only got them for like birthdays and christmas and stuff, but I really I really enjoyed them as a kid. I thought they were great. I like you, you and stuff too, but it's it's not the same thing anymore. It's unfortunate. It's like, uh, you know what? I'm gonna come out and say it the the adults now that any of the stuff that they carry out as a kid like ruin the hobbies for like everybody else because people will see it as a quick way to make money, because cards go for for x amount of dollars, like you see, like the disney adults that like ruin the the park for everybody else and stuff.

Mark Trobough: 1:23:47

You know I this might sound mean, when I see disney adult I'm like that's so kind of quasi pathetic like I. I like I like some other stuff and I like games and hobbies and stuff like that, but like I'm not gonna like dress around and make that like my whole personality.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:02

I mean, that's a thing they kind of do, and it's just so many of these hobbies are ruined for, like I really do think about it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:10

You can tell, like my daughter has gotten to the Pokemon cards now she likes opening them up. So that's why I started, you know, really getting them again, especially the packs. We really like to journey together. Couldn't get any more packs. I've tried for the last two weeks and it's like I mean, what am I even stopping at the store for? At this point? I can't get. I can't get any of those and like the single packs. She really likes the single packs for some reason, but I don't know.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:36

Cause, the way I kind of see it and stuff like that, it's like you can, you can enjoy this hobby, but this is it's obviously like it has a target audience. That's that's clearly, you know, for kids and stuff like that. And I'll see the other thing I like what's like a better way to to stay in a hobby than to like, do do the hobby, like with your kids, or something like that and stuff like that, because then you can enjoy the experience, like most people I know, like if they have hobbies, they they share with their kids and that's how they they, they they stay enjoyed with it and they just kind of, you know, pass it on and stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 1:25:04

And then there's other stuff that you're into as well and stuff like that. So I mean that's the way I kind of look at it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:25:09

Yeah, it's, it's. It really is unfortunate for kids with some of this stuff trying to be trying to be a kid with no money to trying to do it, you know this isn't like the peak of like pokemon mania in like the 90s and early 2000s where pokemon mania was like at it. It was like a fever pitched but, and even then you could just walk in the store and buy the game or buy the, buy the car well, I don't think that.

Mark Trobough: 1:25:34

I think the cards had the monetary value that they do today they did, they didn't, they didn't. But the people that grew up with it got older, they got money, and then all of a sudden I really want this card. They're hard to come by. People just start but mark.

Brandon Hurles: 1:25:46

It's like yeah, everything has that monetary value. Now, like all all this stuff, you look at the retro gaming like we talked about it 100 because you grew up with it.

Mark Trobough: 1:25:54

You don't have it anymore. You want to get back into it. But some people want to get back into it because I see they can. They can flip make some money or make some money off of it. On the people that want to just go back and enjoy.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:04

You know something from their childhood, essentially, right, like all the, all the it's not because, let's be fair, a lot of these hobbies, it's gonna spike and then it's gonna go back down, it's gonna spike and it's gonna go up and down.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:13

A lot of this is it's still residual from from 2020 as well. So unfortunately.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:18

Yeah, I mean I feel like all the hobbies got ruined around then, because, yeah, I don't even know, I wanted a Tornado watch, though that's fun.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:28

Brandon just randomly disconnects. He just got sold yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:31

I just wanted to bring it up because it's like you know, just in case anything happens here we got Rust has some bad news for PS4 and Xbox One games. They're still playing on those old things, you know, I mean essentially they're.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:43

They're dealing at the end of this month from from ps4 and xbox one and they're essentially upgrading it. They're having an upgrade this summer to ps5 and xbox, uh, the, the series x or whatever series or something like that. So essentially they're because they use its server base, they just want to hard upgrade it, which means it's leaving these older consoles because they want the better performance but they don't want to have to deal with both sides of it, kind of like, have you what I, what I picked up on when I first saw this? Have you played this game? Not in like a year and a half, two years, but I've only ever played it on PC okay.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:17

Well, what's this game about? Because I've heard it's a.

Mark Trobough: 1:27:20

PVP base building game, essentially so usually most, most servers are up for uh, a week to about a month before they reset and it's just you hop in and it's just pvp, you build a base and you attack other players, get resources to upgrade your base and stuff like that, okay, and then then the servers reset, it's. It's essentially it plays the same as arc, essentially okay that's what I was wondering.

Mark Trobough: 1:27:42

They're both pvp, like art, but they're pvp pve, depending on the map, base building games but it's not like a permanent thing, it's like depending on the server.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:51

Most servers reset like every every month, essentially hey, shout out to dds dave in here with us. What's up, man, what's up, don't, don't know what. Uh, we're streaming tomorrow anything yet I'm hoping. Uh, so far I bet I've gotten really lucky at the pc stuff because I've had no issues tonight. But now I need to watch, but but he's uh, uh.

Mark Trobough: 1:28:11

The developers came out and said as you know, we are releasing a new version of rust console edition for ps5 and xbox series x and s. So starting may 29th, the old gen version of the game will no longer be available in platform stores. If you already own it, you can keep playing until the final wipe, which will wrap up in october. We're planning to make uh, make that one something special. Players will have until the end of october to transition to the new and improved version of the rust console edition, which is expected to launch sometime in this summer. Just to be clear, the release date is not may 29th 2025. We still need a bit more time. More will be announced at a future date. So essentially for their, they want really just one console version as far as the development team, but they obviously want to take advantage of the better hardware and stuff like that. So they're gonna just in support for old consoles so they can just focus on on one version of the game and one way.

Brandon Hurles: 1:28:58

This like sucks for for players, because I'm assuming this probably has a massive player.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:04

Yeah, but let's be fair. The next-gen consoles have been out for what? Four years now, which is a decent amount of time to support into, yeah, five years now into the next life cycle. So at this point it's like it's eventually at that point of like yeah, it's time to upgrade. Yeah, I mean in one way.

Brandon Hurles: 1:29:23

One way, like you said, it does suck for those players that are playing on that, but then the other, like ps6 and stuff's right around the corner like we're like, and you have the behind the scenes development stuff.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:33

They want to take advantage of the hardware on the new stuff. They don't want to deal with multiple versions that are eventually obviously not because I mean so it's in like two years.

Brandon Hurles: 1:29:41

If this is a I would assume would go on the next consoles, right, it's probably a pretty big game.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:46

Um then, they're giving you a bad about essentially you know they're giving you a five month window to to upgrade essentially yeah, so they're giving you plenty of time. So you have till the end of the month to get the game if you haven't yet, and then, uh, well that's, you've got five months to to get a new console or just to continue to enjoy it until it kind of I think it's fair.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:06

I mean it makes sense, like because the next console is around the corner, this game I'm assuming it would be on that three console versions and pc would be crazy, you know.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:15

So I don't know how much money they make on this on console everything. Most people I see play this game, usually play it on pc, but there's obviously a decent enough support on the console if they're supporting it. So yeah for sure. Yeah, I mean it sucks, but it's like an inevitability. Eventually, the, the old hardware, eventually has to get phased out, because it's just like it's like what 10, 15 year old hardware at this point.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:39

Yeah, yeah for the for the ps4 so eventually you want to do stuff that the old, old hardware just can't it can't handle for sure uh, what we got next uh, some dragon quest 12 rumors.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:52

Essentially, uh yuji hori had made some comments about the uh development. Essentially he came out and said uh, dragon, a dragon quest 12 is in full swing. So this game is coming, is it's in development, but we don't really have a hard timeline because obviously we just had the HD 2D of 3 come out and then the 1 and 2 comes out later this year. I don't think we had a hard date. We just know it comes out sometime this year. As far as new games, I played the 3 HD 2D and I played the X or 2D and I played the X or the Dragon Quest.

Mark Trobough: 1:31:25

10 yeah but I know there's been other games, since I've haven't got around is a beautiful game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:32

Oh my gosh, 11 is so like I can't even explain to you how good that game is. 11 has this really cool mode to where you can switch from a 3D game to a 2d game, which is crazy. Like it's just, it's a crazy thing. But you can do it like on the fly too, which is crazy. But uh, yeah, I'm really excited about this game yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:31:56

So uh, on dragon quest 12 is supposed to be called the flames of fate, that that's what we know, and stuff like that. And then uh Hori came out and says, uh, putting a lot of work into it. I can only say that the next work will be great. Please look forward to it. Uh is the only thing that I can say. And then I think this kind of goes back to to one of the other things. You've got the same developer. That's for forever. So you have like this, this continuity which benefits. And if you had like a different director, every like two games, or every every new game was like a new, a new director, you'd have, very wildly different qualities of games and it might not have made it 12.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:31

At this point. I wonder if this because we don't know what you know happened before and stuff I wonder if this is going to be the first game without because uh was dragon quest hd 2d or uh, dragon quest 3 hd 2d. Did that? Was that akira's artwork in the, do you know? I mean, because I was gonna say, is this the first game where we won't have akira's uh artwork and on the cover did he work on these characters.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:57

Yeah, for dragon quest. Uh, yeah, I would assume. I would assume, because it's still the on the game. It'd still be based off his work.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:04

Well based off. I'm saying he did all the artwork.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:08

Did he actually do the work? Yeah, he did the artwork. I didn't know.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:17

Yeah, he did. I mean they came out.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:20

The three came out just after he passed, essentially, if I remember. Yeah, because right around the time Diamond came out as well.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:27

I'm assuming he probably did that.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:29

I don't know If you're within a year of the game coming out. A lot of the work's probably already done on the behind the scenes, so he probably did do a significant amount of work on one and two, and obviously three was essentially done by the time he passed away.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:45

What about the Hc2d for one and two? Yeah, I'd be?

Mark Trobough: 1:33:47

uh at the very least, if he had any hand in it, he probably they were fairly well into development. These names are going to come out within a year of him passing. Yeah, uh, probably the bulk of the artwork was already done, if I had to guess. Because you see, that point, it's, it's all you're working on. You know finishing up the game, fixing bugs. You know finalizing.

Mark Trobough: 1:34:04

You know behind the scenes, mechanics and stuff like that, right yeah I mean, I'm sure there's some world design and stuff like that and some mechanics and stuff like that. Usually near the end of the game that wouldn't be done.

Brandon Hurles: 1:34:15

But because this cover, those cover arts are super iconic. For, yeah, I was just curious if, like, he was actually doing it. I mean, they're obviously gonna stick with the style, but uh, yeah, kind of off topic, but I was just curious.

Mark Trobough: 1:34:28

But hopefully in the next, like two, three years, we get 12 could come out, if not 2026, hopefully by 2027. Yeah, hopefully, hopefully we get like some kind of like official trailer announcement sometime next year.

Brandon Hurles: 1:34:42

And then what's this? We got about Sea of Thieves leaving Xbox Game Pass.

Mark Trobough: 1:34:47

Is it the Sea of Thieves?

Brandon Hurles: 1:34:49

No, no it's not I was about to say.

Mark Trobough: 1:34:51

I looked at the we talking about like that's, that's its own thing, yeah, but there are five games that are leaving Xbox Game Pass. I don't know if we got a hard date on that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:01

May 15th.

Mark Trobough: 1:35:02

Mayth, all right, so it's like, uh, also they already left oh, yesterday.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:09

Okay, so if you're watching live, they left yesterday.

Mark Trobough: 1:35:12

If you're listening to the podcast later, yeah, so so the games that had just left were uh brothers at tale of two sons, uh chanters of uh cinar dune, spice Wars, hoontie, and then the big con, nothing like big and stuff like that. But you know the issue if you play on Game Pass.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:30

Little kiddie big, pretty big. I mean, a lot of people love that game From what I hear. I ain't being serious with it too. By the way, this guy, yeah, is the TLC S sons. Is that one of those multi? Isn't that one of those multiplayer games where you had to play the? I'm not sure, I can't remember, honest, yeah, but uh, those are already gone, so goodbye. I guess, uh, I guess, uh, onto our bigger news that we'll kind of run through here, but uh, I guess before we got into it, did you.

Mark Trobough: 1:36:07

Uh, do you want to do any pickups real quick, or?

Mark Trobough: 1:36:08

oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead and grab yours, I gotta okay, so I guess I got mine right here, because I I said it's been a few weeks since I found a. I found a pokemon game, uh, in town and stuff like that. I'm still. I'm still looking out for brandon, uh, but there were. I was looking at some more older stuff, nothing new. So I was looking at some uh, I don't know if you want to call it retro, uh, with the two 3ds games, just because you know. You know why not they? They always had a lot of games there. So these two they actually had a case for for once. Uh, etheren odyssey, untold, the, the millennium girl uh, don't know anything about these games. I know it had fairly decent reviews when I saw it online and stuff like that. It only had the defunct Nintendo Club stuff on the inside. No actual game case.

Brandon Hurles: 1:36:53

Oh, you can't get away that code, bro. It doesn't work anymore, it might be good in the future.

Mark Trobough: 1:36:58

Nintendo Club it's defunct, just kidding, whatever. And then the other game, uh, which I know brandon talked about. I saw it and stuff like that. Uh, it was a rune factory 4 I know it came out on the switch but it actually had the ds version. So I was like I'll just pick this up it's. I saw it as an xc game and had the case. I'm like xc makes a lot of good. They publish a lot of good games yeah, so it's a harvest moon.

Mark Trobough: 1:37:20

slash r yeah this one actually not only had the case, it has the game on it, but I didn't realize it did this little. It used the holes in the case for little faces for the characters.

Brandon Hurles: 1:37:31

So that was a really neat thing, Beckham with a Caird.

Mark Trobough: 1:37:35

So this one actually had the actual proper and it's in decent condition, the actual case and stuff like that, or the booklet. So I think I spent a total of $60 on these two games Nothing big. But I was like, let me pick something up. Who knows, I might get around to actually playing these games one day. They just won't sit on a shelf. Do you have anything else? No, it was just those two things that I picked up.

Brandon Hurles: 1:38:00

Okay, I just got a couple things myself. I showed this off a few weeks ago this Evercade game that I got. I finally got something to play it on. This wasn't exactly what I wanted to play it on. I wanted to play it on the actual. They've got a full-scale handheld, but this is a cheaper budget handheld. It's just what was in stock and it actually went on sale. But this is the Capcom Edition Super Pocket, so it's got like building games, but it also plays all the cartridges, so you can play all these Evercade carts on there. So it went on sale and I got it. I wanted to be able to play the cartridges.

Mark Trobough: 1:38:42

Fair enough.

Brandon Hurles: 1:38:43

I just don't like the way that it. I can show it on camera because I got it right here charged, but I just don't. It's too small. It's a lot smaller than I thought it was going to be. That's the problem with it. I was getting hand cramps right away. But here it is. It's just too small. It's a problem.

Brandon Hurles: 1:39:06

I was like playing, uh, one of the building games. Yeah, I was playing street fighter 2, hyper fighting. Oh my god, the fighting on it was terrible. It was just like it was too hard. Uh, uh, the layout and everything, because it's like kind of the layout of the game boy with like two extra, you know an x and a y button. But but the cartridge though that I got, that I showed off a few weeks ago, was really good. So, yeah, that's cool. I got that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:39:30

This just came today because it just came out today. That's Capcom Fighting Collection 2. I haven't even opened it yet, but it just came today. So it's got Capcom vs SNK Millennium Pro and then Capcom vs SNK Millennium Pro and then Capcom vs SNK2, capcom Fighting Evolution, street Fighter, alpha 3, upper Power, stone 1 and 2, project Justice and Plasma Sword. So the fact that it has Power Stone 1 and 2. I would have bought those games by itself. I was really excited about this. So I will say that Capcom Fighting Evolution is a horrible fighting game, though I can't believe they put that on there, I guess if it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:07

Oh, there's a. You hear that? No, I didn't. You know. Okay, that was a loud one, it's, it's storming, uh. And then we're just talking about all the s and k stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:19

But I got a boxed neo geo controller. It's really cool, nice, uh, joystick controller. I'll show it off here, still in the bubble, or not the bubble wrap, but in the the plastic and everything which is just you know anything about that neo geo stuff I think you know a little bit about. Oh, my god, it's so expensive. But this was came with the bundle that I. So the guy didn't ship out all the stuff. Uh, that came with the bundle that I had bought. That showed off a few weeks ago, but uh, yeah, so he finally shipped out the. The rest of the stuff I bought off ebay. Uh, he finally shipped out the rest of the stuff. Like the actual power adapter. He sent out a cheap one. It came with it. I was like really frustrated, but anyway sent out. I didn't know, I thought that was just the box. Like even the box, just the box. When did you change my name to chicken butt?

Mark Trobough: 1:41:11

oh, like a minute ago you had nothing there. I was like, oh, let me add something that's a little funny but yeah, anyway, that that was really cool.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:21

It had a controller in it. I didn't know it came with control, I thought it was just the box like. Even the box is like a big deal, you know what I mean.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:27

So yeah, I've got some of those stuff so you're like, even better, there's a controller here yeah, I had no idea that there was a controller in it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:33

So I was like absolutely shocked. So I was like, okay, this was worth the the weight for the other stuff, because the controllers, those are like $200. The controllers, loose by themselves, are ridiculous, you know what I mean. So I was like, yeah, that's cool. And then I think that's all I got. Yeah, that's it for the pickups.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:52

I know it's crazy. It's not necessarily game related, because you're talking about stormy yesterday. I need to cool off uh your uh, uh hot spring. I drove in the snow yesterday up on the uh, this is going through the, uh the uintah mountains, so I'm like that's crazy. Or 85 000 feet, but I was like that's crazy. It was only like a five mile stretch because it was only precipitating on the mountain range essentially. But I was like bro like, who thought I'm driving through like mid-may and it's like snowing outside, like that's crazy.

Brandon Hurles: 1:42:21

And like he sends out, I'm like it's like 80 here bro.

Mark Trobough: 1:42:26

It's been in the 40s and 50s for a few days out here, pretty windy, getting down to the 30s overnight, but that's just like May is like the middle of spring for me right now for us out here. Yeah, that's that's crazy.

Brandon Hurles: 1:42:37

I was like holy crap.

Mark Trobough: 1:42:38

I was like holy crap, snow I was like ah, who would have thought it's snowing? I mean, like I get, I'm on the mountain so I'm a little bit higher up, but I was like this is crazy, yeah that's, that's wild your brain. Let me, let me send you some stuff, because I know you're not like expecting to see snow this time. I wasn't.

Brandon Hurles: 1:42:50

No, I always look forward to the the mark snow videos, though, because you've been doing it for years now.

Mark Trobough: 1:42:55

At this point, so, like I, I I but I think earlier this week I was watching some videos because the wide dot posted some stuff. There's some I don't remember, which I don't know. I think might have been the bighorn mountains. Uh, because these are roads that just close for like half the year, that it's a way they don't have enough traffic. It's a waste of time to to try to plow snow plow because the moment it's clean it's completely snow covered again, so they don't even bother. Uh, because they're out there still like plowing, like feet of snow, with those big snowblower stuff that they have on the roads. I was like that's crazy, you know, I end up driving in, like you know, and you couldn't tell from that video. But some of those areas, like at the peak of the elevation where I was at, uh, it was coming down pretty hard and big flakes. Luckily what it had been too warm recently so it was only sticking to the grass wasn't sticking on the road.

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:37

But yeah, I think that's crazy.

Mark Trobough: 1:43:40

That is most people don't get it. Most people don't see snow most the year. Anyways, let's see it like maybe once, if you're lucky and I'm like bro, it's may yeah, like I've seen it snow in may and I've seen it snow in september at this point being out here, so I'm like this is, this is crazy that's hilarious, oh my goodness, because I think it was.

Mark Trobough: 1:43:58

It wasn't last year's, the year before or it's been like a year and a half. When I was in yellowstone in september it didn't. It ended up snowing like late september when I was up yellowstone, so you ever watch that show yellowstone um, I know people that have. I've never I haven't got around to watching it first, it's pretty good.

Brandon Hurles: 1:44:18

Uh, okay, what do we got next? I'm trying to sorry, I was trying to get some images to show for something that's coming up.

Mark Trobough: 1:44:25

No, you're good. Uh, so we got some uh, obviously some more nintendo stuff to talk about. Uh, apparently there was an issue as far as the uh what they call an error with the switch to. So the switch to will only support vr in handheld mode, not docked, which doesn't really surprise me all that much, can I just say something?

Brandon Hurles: 1:44:44

but their website claimed it supported on on both, essentially I don't know how this is going to support uh vrr, but um, that that kind of sucks for the dock mode, because I think that that's. I mean, I think it's a. It's pretty standard right now at At this point, VRR is pretty standard. It was like when the Pi came out it didn't even launch with it. So this could be updated later, but that's only if they implement it in the console right.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:11

The best I could see, that is if they're actually doing VR. It means the actual Switch itself will be the screen that you're using. They'll have probably something that they put it in the Switch itself will support it which you're using. It'll have some probably something that they they put it in the the switch itself will support it, which means it. They're not going to create a whole different peripheral for it no, this is variable refresh rate vr.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:32

Oh, I thought it was a, a virtual virtual reality. I was like I could see that I misunderstood it. I don't know the switch could support vr it's its own doc, essentially. So I I see vr. I think of virtual reality.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:47

I'm sorry no, you're good, there's an extra r there, so I, I'm dyslexic.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:51

Apparently you thought the switch she was gonna support vr.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:55

Oh man, I don't know why. Why would I be wrong in thinking that?

Mark Trobough: 1:45:58

like it's a perfect thing. You, you, it's the own thing, it's the perfect size, and why would not support vr? It's really perfect thing, you, you, it's the only thing, it's the perfect size, and why would not support vr?

Brandon Hurles: 1:46:04

it's really popular right now, kind of quasi oh my gosh, I thought you talked down on vr. Uh, anyway, yeah, go full screen to me. Uh, no, this is good that the handheld stuff is good. It makes sense because it's got the built-in screen, so so if it wouldn't support VRR it kind of wouldn't make sense. It's got to be kind of synchronized with the screen, so that makes sense. The technology is working there. I guess the one point I've seen brought up about this is the fact that it doesn't do 4K and 120 hertz at the same time. So it's one or the other. Yeah, I don't know, as far as my understanding of VRR, I could be wrong, but if you're doing the 120 frames per second mode, to me I thought from my understanding of the technology that would matter because that's the fluctuation of the frame rate, essentially right, the refresh rate. So that's kind of the fluctuation with it. But I don't know. I guess we'll see.

Mark Trobough: 1:47:10

I don't know why it would guess we'll see, um, but I don't know. I would only be in rock mode or it'd only be in handheld, unless it has to do something with the screen and stuff like that. So they don't want to deal with dealing with with different uh uh, this type of displays and screens and tvs and stuff like that, which is either to just have it be a handheld mode or it is a way to boost the handheld mode performance. Essentially.

Brandon Hurles: 1:47:29

Yeah, yeah, I guess I guess we'll have to see you know they they could. They could eventually patch that down the road, because the PS five did not launch with VRR. If I remember correctly, it wasn't for a year and a half later that we got the VRR mode. So I mean they patched that into the PS5 and then launched with it. Series X, I think, launched with VRR, if I remember correctly.

Mark Trobough: 1:47:54

I think it was one of the reasons.

Brandon Hurles: 1:47:56

It was also one of the things at the time because the Series X, before the PS5 Pro came out, was technically the strongest console. But that was one of the things that people always threw into the equation. You know it supports VRR and PS five doesn't stuff like that. But you know, I guess we'll see they could patch it. Don't know We'll get, let's see what happens. But in other Nintendo.

Mark Trobough: 1:48:17

Switch to news they also came out and actually gave us the actual hard specs and stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 1:48:28

Yeah, stuff like that. Yeah, so they. They compared it with the switch to on the left, uh, and the switch one. So the switch one is using the nvidia tegra x1 chip. Uh, the switch 2 will be using nvidia t239, essentially. Uh, so essentially it's using uh 8x arm cortex for the cpu architecture.

Mark Trobough: 1:48:42

I don't know a whole lot about the actual architecture part of it with cpu. Uh, essentially it's doing about the same as far as cpu clocks. It's got a different docked and, uh, mobile version, but it's running about the same, yeah or less. Uh, it's going from one core to two cores, essentially with the six available two developers. Uh, the architecture. They're using amper, which some people criticize. I don't know enough about the, the architecture of of cpus and gpus to know what. What is and isn't good, but they're the cuda cores is obviously a significant improvement. Uh, the gpu clocks is significantly better and stuff like that. Uh, and obviously the, the actual, it's like almost like a half a gigahertz better than the actual maxed out GPU clock speed. It's doubling in on the memory with the bits and it's using DDR5, not DDR4 as well, which is not a surprising upgrade. And then obviously, the memory read writes going from essentially about 25 docked and 21 mobile to 68 mobile and 100 gigabytes docked that's a huge that's essentially going from a, from a hard drive, to an ssd, essentially, yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:49:56

And then the memory, uh, the system memory. Uh, for the switch 2, it's 3 gigabytes. Uh, not available for games as far as reserved from the 0.8. So the actual operating system is even a lot more space. It's significantly bigger, but the actual device has more internal memory. Hopefully that means it's better. That's the hope. It should just be a bunch of behind-the-scenes reasons why they're trying to at least make it look better. I mean 3 gigs isn't a whole lot of space.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:27

At least we know that eShshop is going to be somewhat better. Right because?

Mark Trobough: 1:50:30

that's the hope with with a bigger size of operating system. I mean that thing that thing up, bro.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:37

I've got it right in front of me. You load that thing up, that e-shop. Oh, it takes forever to load.

Mark Trobough: 1:50:40

It looks ridiculous.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:42

It looks so slow and it's like the slowest thing in the world. I'm like, oh my god, this miserable, like this is not a fun gaming experience. I'm like loading up now Holy crap, I mean, this takes forever. Come on feature. It's been like eight seconds. What's going on here?

Mark Trobough: 1:50:58

I haven't said I got to put my password every time I go into the store, so that takes forever. Yeah, what password do I use? I can, can't do that. It already takes long enough. Oh, my god, thanks, I don't. I don't hardly buy anything digital on there, so it's not really a problem for me?

Brandon Hurles: 1:51:16

yeah, I like d. I really only buy dlc anymore now when I'm on the on the switch store, don't blame you, but I'm good about the game's physical if I can, so yeah uh, so we've got not just one here I put them in separate, but the ones got screenshots. But we've got the switch one games that will get free to switch enhancements. So that does include what I threw in here I will show the screenshots is pokemon, scarlet and violet. We've also got what else we got on there, mark.

Mark Trobough: 1:51:39

Well, I pulled uh, uh, I didn't, I didn't have to pull it up either. Oh, you're good. Uh, so the uh list of nintendo switch one games with a switch to performance update. So you've got arms, which will have, uh, optima. Actually I can pull this up real quick. It'll be a little bit for those that can see and obviously read it off for, uh, for those in the audio. Uh, so, arms lab optimized visuals, optimized frame rate, hdr support. Uh, big brain academy. Well, we'll have a, they say, game GameChat support and stuff like that. Captain Toad, treasure Tracker will have optimized visuals, hdr support and obviously GameShare, gamechat, clubhouse Games 51 Worldwide Classics will have the GameShare stuff. Game Builder, garage, updated visuals, support for the mouse controls. New super mario bros u deluxe will have just visuals. Scarlet and violet will have optimized visuals and they say optimized frame rate, which has terrible frame rate. If you ever played it, the game slows down so badly this one is by far the bit.

Mark Trobough: 1:52:44

I mean like that's the one that's the biggest deal on the it shouldn't perform as bad as it does, but I think it's just a poorly optimized game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:52:51

Yeah, I think it's a game freak. It's a game freak thing. Be fair. 3ds games aren't exactly pretty either.

Mark Trobough: 1:53:04

Yeah, so hopefully the better hardware will help them with this open world thing they want to do with better performance. Hopefully, uh, super mario 3d world plus bowser's fury will have, you know, optimized visuals, frame rates, hdr support in bowser's fury and then the game share support as well as game chat, or they say, game share support. Four players in the 3d world and two players in bowser's fury. I don't know why it's separate, but I've not played the game they're like essentially two different games, basically.

Mark Trobough: 1:53:31

Yeah, super Mario Odyssey will have optimized visuals, hdr, support, game share and game chat for up to two players. Echoes of Wisdom will have optimized visuals and HDR. Then Link's Awakening will have optimized visuals and HDR as well.

Brandon Hurles: 1:53:43

Thank the Lord, jesus Link's Awakening's got problems too. Oh my god, the frame rate in that game is dreadful. I mean, the game itself is like great, but the frame rate is just.

Mark Trobough: 1:53:54

They did not spend the time hopefully that that list continues to grow over time. Yeah, the developers will at least give you some better, but so the game works just fine on the switch one. It shouldn't need this, but obviously it'd be nice to have some kind of uh, some updated performance and stuff like that yeah, and then I just had a quick image to share here for our video watchers.

Brandon Hurles: 1:54:14

But uh, we've got and it's gonna be a little hard to. Oh, that's the wrong one that's the whole different. Whole different graphics yeah, that's uh are you talking about the? Uh, the 4k screenshots for scott yeah, I was trying to show that.

Mark Trobough: 1:54:30

The problem is these are screenshots so I'm like no, that's a problem you can make anything look good in a screenshot, but like, what's the frame rate with with these? Uh?

Brandon Hurles: 1:54:37

well, the other thing is that we're capped. It's an ap on on this platform too, so I guess it doesn't really do much, but uh, well, I don't care, I don't care that.

Mark Trobough: 1:54:44

To me, the 1080p isn't the problem, it's the, the frame rate, the performance, because that game?

Brandon Hurles: 1:54:47

no, that's your biggest thing, for sure. I just it's not even.

Mark Trobough: 1:54:51

You can't lose the game itself physically slows down and there's some areas it just takes forever and battles take longer. You're just traversing takes longer, like that's. That's the problem with the lower frame rate.

Brandon Hurles: 1:55:01

I was game slows down I was talking to lucas earlier and I was saying uh, I mean, this is pretty much exactly what I said. It's like the game can drop down to like 12 frames per second at point, and it does regularly. That's the problem. I'm not, I'm not even and I hate to say this because I love Pokemon, but like I'm not even confident that they'll get this at a steady like 60. Yeah well, I said I'm not confident that we'll even get this at 60, so like I'm not confident that we'll even get this at 60, so like I'm not confident that we'll get this at like even the steady 30, really, yeah, so because they also they say the not only is it, it's better, but they can get more pokemon to spawn, which is, you know, ideal.

Mark Trobough: 1:55:40

But like that's great to have more pokemon spawn you need that in open world but like you need to not have performance problems, which is the big problem with this game. I mean, I've got issues with the game. I think the world's too big, too empty to be fair for an open world game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:55:53

That's like a a whole different issue than the actual performance issue of the game I mean, like this is one of those cases where this could have you know, potentially, if they did like a ultra sun, ultra moon, black, two white to any of those type of deals, like this would have been the game to do it, if it were like a switch to only title and they like actually went through the game and redid stuff. You know what I'm saying. Like this is a game that really needed the work, so, like to get a sequel, like that, I guess, yeah, what would have this would have been the game to do it. But I that I guess, um, yeah, what would have this would have been the game to do it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:56:31

Uh, but I'm not. I'm just not confident. I do not have the faith that we'll get this at a even lock 60 and don't expect anything above that at all I mean, if you have a, if it doesn't, if it stays above 30, it would be like it'd be nice yeah, I mean, I could see this being one where it's like a you know, 30 to 45 frames per second game or something like that, where it's a you know switching back and forth.

Brandon Hurles: 1:56:52

But I don't see this at a lock 60. I still don't and it's sorry I uh needs it more than any of the games on the list I saw this under that, under that post.

Mark Trobough: 1:57:01

I thought it was a really funny thing. Hey, we've updated our graphics. That's just a slightly, but it's slightly different tweak, that's hilarious I'm sorry.

Brandon Hurles: 1:57:09

I saw that that means that is in 1999 japan uh redesigned it's just it's a slightly brighter red slightly brighter red.

Mark Trobough: 1:57:17

That's hilarious as well, as I'm like yeah, that's great as a screenshot. Now show me 4k where you're actually playing it with all these and not and not lagging at like 20 frames or and this is also not going to run at 4k either. This is going to be a 14 it runs at 4k if you are playing on a p, if you if you play it on a pc yeah it's.

Brandon Hurles: 1:57:34

This is not running at 4k on the switch. You, I, I, I can certainly uh say I mean I'm confident in saying that this is a 1440p title. That's what the, the, the upscale resolution, is going to be. I'm confident in that. I don't think it's going to be a 4k title. I just don't. I mean I don't, I don't. Game freak is not like. If we're being fair, you know and I, there isn't any of the games that I dislike in the mainline games. I like Scarlet Violet, I have it's got its problems. I still think the game is good, I still had a good time with it, but it's got a lot of problems. But even like, looking back and we talked a little bit about this, but like Sun and Moon stuff like that, like the games aren't pretty, the games don't run great, like the 3D games like that, they just they're not, they haven't.

Brandon Hurles: 1:58:22

I mean, I would say, I would say the DS nothing has particularly been a great steady game where it's performing well. That's because obviously it was stylized different. But with the 3DS, even those games they weren't pretty, they didn't run great. There were sections of the game where there's this one section where the band is playing and stuff like that, with a singer and everything, and there's nothing going on. There's no singing, there's no instruments or nothing, but they're performing to the crowd. There's nothing going on in the game. There's stuff like that where Game Freak just drops the ball and stuff and they just do. Unfortunately, they just do now. That's just how it is and then come the deal with it.

Mark Trobough: 1:59:15

I need you to come to make a really hard decision right now. I need you to pick one of these four options right now.

Brandon Hurles: 1:59:22

I saw this one For me personally. This is not going to be a choice for probably 9 out of 10 people, but it's gonna be number 2 because I know 2 and 3 Is hard, I know.

Mark Trobough: 1:59:36

For me it really came down to 3 and 4 and I was like I think I'd take 3.

Brandon Hurles: 1:59:41

And I get 4 too. But for me, the DS, I told you it's one of my favorite systems of all time. Like it just is those specific games, that's it. Oh, if it's one of my, favorite systems of all time.

Mark Trobough: 1:59:52

It just is. It's the deal with those specific games, that's it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:59:53

Oh, if it's just those games, it's just the games on screen. If it's just those games, it's four for me. I love Metroid Prime, but I mean sorry, luigi's Mansion just doesn't. None of the games on the list beat out Ocarina of Time. For me they just don't. I love Metroid Prime. Don't get me wrong. I love the Spider-Man game on PS1.

Mark Trobough: 2:00:09

I still like Prime on PS8. I don't care for Ocarina of Time all that much. I know it's a hot take.

Brandon Hurles: 2:00:15

I love it I just don't think it's aged all that well.

Mark Trobough: 2:00:17

I think it was great for its time, it was iconic, but as time goes on, I just don't think it holds up in value Now, without now, without remaking the game they pretty much did on the 3DS bro it's still the same game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:00:33

It's a code of paint is what it had it's a really good code of paint.

Mark Trobough: 2:00:38

There's nothing wrong with that, remaster but it's still the core game from the 64 have you even played it?

Brandon Hurles: 2:00:45

yeah, you loaded it up. I don't believe you. I don't believe you?

Mark Trobough: 2:00:49

no, but't believe you. I didn't know, but I played several hours of the game. I played like four or five hours of it. Have you really?

Brandon Hurles: 2:00:54

yeah, well then, four or five hours, bro. You're almost through the game. What are you doing? The game's, not the game's. Short man, it's not that long. Come on, I mean, at least beat the game and then give me your opinion.

Mark Trobough: 2:01:07

I don't need to beat a game to have an opinion on a game See I don't have the will to want to finish the game. That's the problem.

Brandon Hurles: 2:01:15

That sucks, man, when you're collecting all the Zelda games and you got one of the best ones in your hand.

Mark Trobough: 2:01:20

There's a lot of games. It's going to take me forever to get through all these games. Anyways, it's like a whole different issue.

Brandon Hurles: 2:01:33

You it's like a whole different issue. So you just don't like ocarina of time at all I don't like it at the 64 I.

Mark Trobough: 2:01:35

I just don't think it's held up. As far as I get is one of my least favorites. I think mario 64 has held up better than that ocarina of time has.

Brandon Hurles: 2:01:39

I mean, I think, uh, I think overall, like as far as the game itself, playing the game, I think I agree with you. It's what is? It's iconic. I don't think I would like a remake of it.

Mark Trobough: 2:01:48

I just think the game as it is on the 64 just has. It's one of those games that just didn't age as time went on. It's just aged poorly, both graphically and mechanically.

Brandon Hurles: 2:01:58

I don't feel that way at all. I mean like, if you think, like Tomb Raider right there, that's one where, like you, go back and play it, that's one where I think it doesn't age well at all, the the controls for it. Like, have you of those?

Mark Trobough: 2:02:11

playstation games I think I haven't played the spider-man, but tomb raider and ring final fantasy on there's probably the only game that's aged well, but that's a. That's what final fantasy. Nine, that's eight. I believe eight, yeah, I can't tell yeah, that's nine. Sorry, but those games age differently because they're JRPGs and they're more. It's just a different style of game and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 2:02:32

But Nintendogs aged perfectly yeah.

Mark Trobough: 2:02:36

That's Nintendogs. Nintendogs is still there. I mean, I played Nintendogs but you know, like I think Prime has aged better than what SXX? Is it a skating or a snowboarding game?

Brandon Hurles: 2:02:47

I can't remember Snowboarding game Bro. That game's aged great. That's not the one I played.

Mark Trobough: 2:02:52

I thought it was skateboarding. No, it was the 1080 game. Was the skateboarding game that?

Brandon Hurles: 2:02:56

I remember playing. I like 1080.

Mark Trobough: 2:03:00

I bet it's just a skateboarding. It ages better than snowboarding game. I like playing Goldeneye 007, but it's not aged all that well.

Brandon Hurles: 2:03:08

Yeah, that game is not hard to go back and play the controls. That game is not aged well at all as far as the controls horrible.

Mark Trobough: 2:03:14

I still like to go back, but yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 2:03:16

It's still fun. I mean, it's one of those ones where it's like it's better to play it on NSO I'll tell you that than it is. I say that, and then we play, and then I say you played terrible yeah yeah, I don't know. Maybe I take that opinion back, but I don't even know anyway. Ocarina of Time. I think it's great.

Mark Trobough: 2:03:39

I think it's age great but you know, fine difference of opinion at the end of the day I just think you're wrong.

Brandon Hurles: 2:03:46

I don't even think it's a difference in opinion. I think you are dead wrong I mean yeah, whatever yeah, but I'm just we'll agree to disagree uh, what do?

Mark Trobough: 2:03:58

we got uh some ubisoft stuff going on. Oh, because they had their uh what their investor call yeah, and it was essentially their investor called verify what we knew. They uh assassin's creed didn't save them, they lost money.

Mark Trobough: 2:04:12

Really excited about this one so for their fiscal year of 24 25, they just reported a 159 million euro loss, uh, with a 20.5 drop in their net bookings, and I think they had a decent drop in their stock after this investor call uh and I think they had a decent drop in their stock after this investor call.

Brandon Hurles: 2:04:33

Yeah, you have to pull the stock up, but I mean, yeah, 20.5% drop in net bookings. It says Assassin's Creed Shadow had strong sales but poor performances. Ubisoft aims to break even. Break even in 2025 to 2026.

Mark Trobough: 2:04:51

Yeah, so they had about a. When their investor call happened, they had about a 14-15% stock drop the day of the investor meeting. It was not ideal. Look at that spike. That's crazy. This isn't the main one, but it follows. There's different listings for the.

Brandon Hurles: 2:05:08

I mean pull up the the max, so so we can show. Look at that let's go.

Mark Trobough: 2:05:13

Well, this max only goes back to I.

Mark Trobough: 2:05:15

Let me pull up because you showed me one that showed like for a while I think before right, yeah, the Google wasn't given the ideal one, okay, so Yahoo Finance is going to actually give me what I, what I want. It's going to bring up the proper. So you can still see on the ubisoft it's. Or the yahoo, you still see that, that, that, that drop off. But the uh all time. This goes back to like 2000. So what it peaked around 2018 pre-covid, and then it's just been a steady drop off after 2020 yeah, yeah, the drop's not good man, so their price peaked in the 90s and it's just been a steady drop-off ever since.

Mark Trobough: 2:05:55

Because I think it's under $10 right now. Yeah, that's crazy, it's not good.

Brandon Hurles: 2:06:03

I mean it's unfortunate, but when you're putting out absolute garbage, what do you expect? And they just announced Essentially, your guys aren't making money. After this, which I said before they announced this, that would be the death sentence of them, and I feel pretty strongly in the fact that either Ubisoft gets sold off or Ubisoft potentially If Ubisoft gets sold off, tencent's going to.

Mark Trobough: 2:06:28

Their IPs are going to be owned by Tencent. It gets sold off tencent, they're just their ips are gonna be owned by tencent. That's kind of where they're going. It'd be. But even even if assassin's creed had had been in the the financial success they wanted, they're still in the hole.

Brandon Hurles: 2:06:38

Like that game had to sell like 10 million copies just because they spent, like what holes their other two games, million dollars on it or something crazy yeah, that's on top of the other two games.

Mark Trobough: 2:06:46

They'd publish that that didn't make them money, like assassin's creed itself had to make like a lot of money just to compensate for for their losses and their other two games yeah, I mean it's.

Brandon Hurles: 2:06:58

It's just really it's ridiculous. Like the decisions they continue to make are stupid. I think the whole I mean we'll probably play it. I think it's just because you were like a big player of it before. But like I think the whole, I mean we'll probably play it, I think it's just because you were a big player of it before. But I think the whole CJAX attempt is stupid. I think the new free-to-play thing that they announced is pretty stupid, Like really really stupid. And they announced that they're going to go up against Overwatch after this.

Mark Trobough: 2:07:22

They're making desperate decisions. They're trying to chase trends to get people to come back.

Brandon Hurles: 2:07:28

Bro, because one game out of 20 in that category successful does not mean that you chase after that game. Because Marvel Rivals was an unexpected success. That was one that I think is across the board because, first of all, the interest in Overwatch 2 had dropped dramatically. Nobody cared about that game. The people I knew that played Overwatch did not care anymore. They were dumb. They were already dumb.

Mark Trobough: 2:07:52

Because a lot of their stuff they put in in Overwatch 1 didn't transfer over.

Brandon Hurles: 2:07:56

Yeah, didn't at all, and it's like it's. You know, it's one of those things where we kept we keep getting games like that. The Star Wars game came out. That was the same thing. That was an arena shooter like that. Star Wars Hunters. The game was around for like eight months before they announced they're closing it down. Things like that. Star Wars is a big IP. I think it's stupid for them to chase trends. I think a lot of decisions they made with Assassin's Creed Shadows is stupid. I think this was to be expected, but that's just my opinion.

Mark Trobough: 2:08:31

You can't have a drop in sales of 20% year over year, and it'd be really bad yeah, I mean, it's just crazy, absolute craziness.

Brandon Hurles: 2:08:40

So, and then next we've got. We got an update which is totally unexpected. Square Enix finally breaks silence on Kingdom Hearts 4. Shares screenshots. Says it's dedicated to making this experience that lives up to your expectations. So they did share some screenshots that we got to see on social media.

Mark Trobough: 2:09:02

I saw like 10 games under this weird umbrella. They have, yeah, and they're not even properly labeled. What old game orders do you play at this point? I?

Brandon Hurles: 2:09:13

would say this is the most convoluted series that I'm aware of Period. I do believe that this is how bad it is, mark. Let me put it this way the last two Kingdom Hearts releases I had to go back and listen to a timeline of the story because I got so confused with the games. When kingdom hearts three came out, I did it again. So I did it with the one before that that came out and I did it with kingdom hearts three. I was really disappointed.

Mark Trobough: 2:09:44

Three, I will say that, but I mean, if you want, here I can, uh, we can break it up real quick. So you've got Kingdom Hearts, then Chain of Memories, then Kingdom Hearts 2, then a re-Chain of Memories Coded, which is a mobile game 358 slash, 2 days, birth by Sleep, recoded. Then you've got Dream Drop Distance, 1.5 Remix X 2.5 remix. Unchained union x 2.8. Final chapter prologue. Kingdom hearts 3 dark road, meller, melody of memory. Then kingdom hearts 4, like this is this? This is insane, and I'm pretty sure all these are like mainline, like they all. All the stories tie together.

Brandon Hurles: 2:10:26

That's the problem yeah, that's the problem with the series is that like there is no technically spin-offs, because they all like everything ties together, so like they're all important.

Brandon Hurles: 2:10:36

It was like 15 games in this game series and they're like very confusing with the titles because, like some of you shoot off here and here and here it's like chain of memories. Oh, here, let's throw you over to this card based game that has like nothing like the other games, but and here and here it's like chain of memories. Oh, here, let's throw you over to this card-based game that has like nothing like the other games, but you get, this is their story here.

Mark Trobough: 2:10:53

So you want to play this game, um, it's on top of like coding, which is a phone game that you can't play anymore that's why they did recoded, which came out on the ds.

Brandon Hurles: 2:11:02

But yeah, it was a. It was a mobile only game in japan and it's like this has a ds game from 2010.

Mark Trobough: 2:11:08

That is probably not the easiest thing to find at this point. Let's say they've mastered it in one of these other 2.1.5 it is you can get.

Brandon Hurles: 2:11:16

So the good thing that they did was make the all-in-one package, which has you have to.

Mark Trobough: 2:11:23

This is so convoluted.

Brandon Hurles: 2:11:25

Yeah, essentially they put together this package. It has the full story, everything in it. But this is the worst All the games are there, because some of it is just the story of the game, so you can watch all the games yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 2:11:40

Not all the games are in that package. Don't think you're getting that for $30. Unfortunately, not all the games are in there. A lot of it is like you have to go through and watch the story of the game, but it's so convoluted, it's such a mess, but I will say like who is in charge?

Mark Trobough: 2:11:54

like they, either. The naming scheme, like like I don't. It's not that these games don't exist, it's like what order do you play? The way they're named and everything else. You're like 2.8, final chapter, prologue, like what is that? Who does who named that? Just just make it the the kingdom hearts three prologue, or something like that I know it's it's crazy, but yeah, I think it makes sense to me it doesn't make sense.

Brandon Hurles: 2:12:16

This is one. This was, I think, the most important image here. I was looking through them and and it just kind of shows, you know sort of the deal, what's going on.

Mark Trobough: 2:12:25

It looks like a a a.

Brandon Hurles: 2:12:28

It's like a japanese game, like any other games I've played before yeah, I mean, my problem with the game is unfortunately I cannot get the screenshot of the one saved where I wanted to show his face. But I they've completely, completely, like 180, shifted the art style for this game, so now they're going for a realism sort of deal, with the sort of aesthetic of the of sora and the character.

Mark Trobough: 2:12:52

Like you see what I'm talking about, mark yeah, I don't know if that's gonna work the way they think it's like a realism thing and I'm like this does not.

Brandon Hurles: 2:12:59

This is not kingdom hearts. I don't like that. I don't want to real. I don't want a realism thing for kingdom, I just don't. I mean, you already, like semi, tried to do a three, like they didn't go this far, where it's like a complete. He's like does not even look like the same character. To me it's like you could tell it's him obviously, but it just does the art. I was so significantly different. I don't think it looks good.

Mark Trobough: 2:13:23

I don't like yeah, the game I was trying to think of. It reminds me like scarletlet Nexus as far as the graphics. Yeah, that game came out. What? Four or five years ago?

Brandon Hurles: 2:13:35

Yeah, it was like a launch title for PS5, right?

Mark Trobough: 2:13:38

No, not PS5. It came out before PS5, I thought oh really.

Brandon Hurles: 2:13:41

It's on.

Mark Trobough: 2:13:42

PS4. It has a PS5 version, but it's also on the PS4.

Brandon Hurles: 2:13:49

Okay version, but it's also on the ps4.

Mark Trobough: 2:13:49

okay, well, maybe I was just thinking the ps5 version, at least launch window or whatever or something like that. I think. When did it come out?

Brandon Hurles: 2:13:54

maybe it was 2021 I don't know, it came out.

Mark Trobough: 2:13:56

It came out in 2021, so I guess it was it came out. It came out on the 4 and the 5.

Brandon Hurles: 2:13:59

I played it on on pc first, so okay, so it wasn't launched at all then, but uh when launched?

Brandon Hurles: 2:14:05

no, but it launched on both simultaneously, which means it's a ps4 era game but, uh said, they said we've seen how excited you are and we are truly grateful from the bottom of our hearts. Uh, we're equally excited and can't wait to share more about kingdom hearts 4 when the time is right. Until then, we appreciate your patience. Thank you for the continued support. I mean I obviously I want this to be good. I just I think that three I don't want to say it's a bad game, but it's a very like very mid game. It's just like very mediocre. Uh, it's just like one of my least favorites in the entire series. Personally, I think a lot of other people felt like it was pretty much a letdown because that game was in development for a very long time, you know, like 15 years or something.

Mark Trobough: 2:14:51

Yeah, was this the one you were thinking of?

Brandon Hurles: 2:14:52

Yeah, that's the one. I was the low quality image. Yeah, the images are like ridiculous to the low quality. I was like what the hell?

Mark Trobough: 2:15:00

It looks like you took a picture on a mobile phone. Yeah, it does.

Brandon Hurles: 2:15:03

It really does look like that. That's what I say in. The one was the only one good picture. But you look at the art style and it's like you're going for a realism thing. It's you know what it reminds me of. It reminds me of they're doing a. They're trying to make it like a Final Fantasy direction, like they did it for, like Final Fantasy 15 and 16, like where they went for the realism approach and it worked for Final Fantasy. But that doesn't mean you need to do it in this other series. That is a series that has Disney characters in it. For the love of God, why?

Mark Trobough: 2:15:35

I think there's either need to be done with Kingdom Hearts or it needs like a reset. It's like a mess. At this point it's taken them like 20, over almost 25 years, to tell this story Like that's forever.

Brandon Hurles: 2:15:47

I mean, you can say the same thing about Final Fantasy, though, right? Except they kind of reset and it is a little different.

Mark Trobough: 2:15:55

Final Fantasy games don't really connect for the most part. Yeah, most Final Fantasy is like a standalone story.

Brandon Hurles: 2:16:05

Some people would say, like with the name Final Fantasy, you would have been done with the first game, you, because it was the final fantasy, you know. But I mean, it is one of those things where it does seem like they're going in the direction of of final fantasy with the art style and I don't understand why.

Brandon Hurles: 2:16:22

I just can't comprehend why they would want to do that with this series different who knows I don't, who knows I don't know and it was like heavily, you know, people critique that heavily. When they did that with Final Fantasy, especially with Final Fantasy XV, where they brought in the car and stuff that you drive around Like, people were like, okay, this is going for a way too realistic approach and Final Fantasy XV is one of the lowest in the series. People don't, I don't, I certainly don't love that game at all. I think it's like a 6 out of 10 Final Fantasy XV. But it seems like that's the exact direction they're going with the art style. It's just disappointing.

Mark Trobough: 2:17:00

Yeah, I saw someone comment under this IG article. They say Square and Nomoda literally can't stop themselves from announcing games too early. It's been over three years and only they've got to show for their blurry screenshots On a game they've been dealing with for like 10 years.

Brandon Hurles: 2:17:16

That was three, but this game I mean, how long has it been since three came out? Actually Probably like six years or something like that I can pull it back up. I can't remember. I did have a pull up 2018, maybe three came out in 2019, so it's been like 26 years so I mean that's you know we're going on the approach of kingdom hearts 3 you look at this.

Mark Trobough: 2:17:39

If you just look at the, I'm assuming this is just the mainline games. Kingdom hearts 1 2002. Kingdom hearts 2005. Kingdom hearts 3 came out in 2019. That's what I said it was like 14 years. It's crazy. Let's do a bunch of spinoffs and then you had like 10 games in between that.

Brandon Hurles: 2:17:58

That's where it got so confusing, like oh 1, 2 and 2.5 remix.

Mark Trobough: 2:18:03

They came out within like a year of each other.

Brandon Hurles: 2:18:06

What 5, 6 years before 3 came out. I just can't understand what, what the the the deal is. Because this is such a big series for for Square Enix, I'm going to call it.

Mark Trobough: 2:18:15

Kingdom Hearts four is going to come out in 20. It's not. It's not coming out before 2030. It's next gen hardware. So GTA six first, another five years, just because of the track they have with these games.

Brandon Hurles: 2:18:27

I mean I wouldn't, I'd believe it. I mean, honestly, like I have no faith in that, I don't understand, because Square Enix is such a big company, such a profitable, huge company.

Mark Trobough: 2:18:36

I don't know what they're thinking.

Brandon Hurles: 2:18:37

The big theory is that what is the deal with the time span on these games? I just can't understand. Why is it taking?

Mark Trobough: 2:18:44

25, 30 years to get four mainline games out. That's my problem. Like these, these spin-offs are great, but like they shouldn't. Why do you need this many?

Brandon Hurles: 2:18:53

and here's like two saddest part. One of the spin-offs is my favorite game of the series, so like and, and and, my second favorite what other major ip has this kind of timeline problem? It's a problem, it's a real problem.

Mark Trobough: 2:19:07

Uh, I don't know the only, the only timeline that's kind of quasi convoluted, that's japanese is the the near timeline, because of it's the spinoff of the dragon guard which is the dragon guard timeline. It's kind of the mess. The near timeline's kind of clean final fantasy is pretty convoluted. Yeah, I mean at the final fantasy they're. They're usually their own thing. There's like what what? Three Dragon Guard games and that's like a mess of a timeline, Cause there's so many spinoff endings that are all technically canon.

Brandon Hurles: 2:19:33

Yeah.

Mark Trobough: 2:19:33

Because near is a spinoff of one of the endings of what Either one or two I can't remember, maybe it's three. Or but that the Dragon Guard timeline is in its own like a story explanation. It was like seven hours or something like like four to seven hours on YouTube.

Brandon Hurles: 2:19:47

I was, it was, it was a long time. Well, that's what I said I had to the last two games that came out. I had to go back and watch the timeline of the the games because I was like you know, I couldn't remember. I just cannot, I can't.

Mark Trobough: 2:20:03

I don't know games, they just they get so convoluted the uh uh, the, not the, not the tales game, but the the legends of the hero is it are you talking about trials or? Yeah, I think it's trials or trade.

Brandon Hurles: 2:20:15

You're talking about trails, right?

Mark Trobough: 2:20:17

sorry, I'm trying to find the game real quick. I gotta scroll through. So like legend of heroes trails in the sky, like that is a convoluted timeline but at least it's it makes sense and there's like they're all in the same time, these games go together and you can play them kind of like standalone. You can this game kind of do standalone but they all kind of tie together, like that's usually the problem you deal with is it's just like here's 10 games.

Brandon Hurles: 2:20:37

They're all in the same timeline but they are kind of quasi standalone pretty much, or this makes sense if you played this game like it's the same way you kind of say about all those big jrpg series that are long running, since you know, like the early console days I mean, I think kingdom hearts is probably one of the more convoluted ones as far as like the game, scheming is the worst part. If they would have named these a little. You know that. For any.

Mark Trobough: 2:21:02

Just we could have had the xbox 720. They wouldn't give it to us, they had to go xbox one like.

Brandon Hurles: 2:21:08

Like that makes sense the mortal kombat that naming scheme makes more sense than some of these games. It's, it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. Uh. But we've also got the. This was a. This is obviously a big one. I think it's the last thing that we got for tonight. Uh, super mario brothers world got announced as the sequel movie to Super Mario Brothers. That's pretty cool. That obviously means that they're obviously going in the naming scheming of the 2D games.

Mark Trobough: 2:21:36

I like that Is this going to actually turn Super Mario World into a movie. Take that game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:21:44

That'd be kind of neat.

Mark Trobough: 2:21:46

Super Mario World is an actual game. So if you're going to call it that, make it retire into the end of that and that game to some degree. My other you got all you got all the koopa kids on top of bowser and in the peach and stuff like that. Like I could see that they and them taking that game and doing what they do with the with the first movie they could they could.

Mark Trobough: 2:22:03

Obviously they're going to change it up because that game is kind of quasi open world. It's got. It's got different paths to actually beat the game yeah but they could. They could use different sections and there's there's very different environments in that game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:22:14

They could add to the story as mario and yoshi travel on and they got to go through all the koopalings and stuff like that yeah, it says uh, it's not clear who would be returning for the sequel, but a super mario world uh movie follows the same premise as the game. We expect pratt day and black to reprise their roles. Uh will be released on april 3rd to 2026, so I mean less than a year away, and that I mean that's pretty good timing. Um, obviously the first movie is fantastic, so I I do have full faith that the movie is probably going to be good, I'm sure. Um, but yeah, I mean I would love to see him follow like sort of the premise of the game. That would be cool. And also, you have to think too, they've got the super mario world uh amusement park now. So, yeah, that's the other thing with the name scheme for the thing, it kind of ties into two different things. You know what I mean, like ties into two other things. So look at that. I mean that's just classic.

Mark Trobough: 2:23:10

I saw this video on one of the on the on the tweet and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 2:23:14

Oh my God, this is like old animation. If you don't love this, you're not a Mario fan. I'm saying you actually watch the cartoon? I do, I loved it. Yeah, super Mario Bros 3 cartoon.

Mark Trobough: 2:23:27

Did this use it? Yeah, is this what it came from, or is this different?

Brandon Hurles: 2:23:31

I think that's not what this is from I think this is from Super Mario Bros Super Show. Okay, this is from Super Mario World. So I've got packages of the DVDs that have a bunch of the different episodes on it. So it's got Super Mario Bros 3, 3 show, super mario world and, uh, I got super mario, super mario bros super show, which had also live action thrown into it with animation, which is that the live?

Mark Trobough: 2:23:58

action. I know what you're talking about, I think I think I pulled up the the right one, uh, here yeah, I had it tied in with like animation.

Brandon Hurles: 2:24:06

It was ridiculously bad, but it was like, yeah, this is it. It's the Super Mario Brothers Super Show. This is it, look.

Mark Trobough: 2:24:17

Oh, I talked about it through a bit Like it's so cheesy. This is like peak 90s, right here.

Brandon Hurles: 2:24:25

Yeah, but there's, oh, my god.

Mark Trobough: 2:24:37

They just have the background.

Brandon Hurles: 2:24:38

I mean there's just something charming about those other animated shows and stuff that I just thought and same with the Zelda cartoon, not the CD-i stuff. The cartoon just thought. And same with the zelda cartoon, not the cdi stuff. The cartoon I thought was also really good too. And do you, do you remember captain n at all? I don't think so, I don't know. So if you look up captain n and captain n was like a nintendo animated show that tied in all the nintendo ips together into one show, uh, but it was. It was an animated show back in the day, uh, where they brought in all. They're like here, let's bring in all our series into this one show and like even like, uh, mega man was in it. Um, I think, no, I've never.

Mark Trobough: 2:25:19

I've never seen this before yeah, captain captain, if you're uh, I assume this is like what you're what you're talking about yeah yeah, captain n and the new super mario world yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 2:25:30

So I mean this, this is a classic cartoon too, that tied in a bunch of nintendo series and stuff. So yeah, uh, anyway, I mean kind of getting off topic on that a little bit, but I I'm looking forward to it. I think I agree with you. If it like follows the premise of the game, that would be really cool. But even if it does like it's own thing and it's more of just like a name scheming thing, I'm sure it'll be good you can get the DVD for 70 bucks two discs it's a little overpriced, but yeah, pretty overpriced.

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:01

But I mean it's not on blue gray or nothing, so you know if this is right, 2007,.

Mark Trobough: 2:26:10

I'm surprised it was printed as soon as then.

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:12

Yeah, I am too. Actually I am, because it's still got the classic DVD clamshell where you had to open it up on the side and flip it. Yeah, look at those prices. I don't like that.

Mark Trobough: 2:26:25

It's like, what a that's like anime pricing right there.

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:30

That's GPP it's ZB, it's different, a bunch of different stuff, but yeah but uh, no, I mean that that'll be definitely pretty cool, but do you think we got anything else this week, mark?

Mark Trobough: 2:26:44

no, I think we hit most of the stuff that I can I can think of, because obviously doom just dropped, so we're gonna see. I've we hit most of the stuff that I can think of Because obviously Doom just dropped, so we're going to see. I've heard a lot of good stuff about that. Stellar Blade comes out on the 11th. The Switch comes out a week before that. That game comes out, so June's going to be a really big month for sure. A lot of stuff dropping in June.

Brandon Hurles: 2:27:03

Yeah, so definitely give us a follow on social media. Stay updated on everything. Yeah, yeah, so definitely give us a follow on social media. Stay updated on everything. And then we are live every Friday at 8 pm, eastern Standard Time with the podcast, and then we're live every Friday at 8 pm as well with the weekly streaming that we do. I'm not sure if you're watching live, I'm not sure what we're streaming yet tomorrow. Do you have any idea or is there anything that you want to play?

Mark Trobough: 2:27:27

I think we have to.

Brandon Hurles: 2:27:29

We have to figure that out okay, yeah, I'm not sure yet, we hadn't talked about it. But, uh, I guess, to close out, if uh you scout pokemon cards, you are a loser. We'll see you all later, see you next week. Thanks for listening. Give us a follow, uh, or follow, subscribe, whatever, on any of the audio platforms. Helps us out a lot and have a good one, guys. Thanks, yeah, peace out everybody.