Nintendo Switch 2 Speculations, Warhammer News, and Fortnite Godzilla Invasion | Game Junction Podcast

What if the next Nintendo console isn't just a rumor, but a game-changer? Join us as we consider the possibilities surrounding the much-anticipated Nintendo Switch 2, and how it might stack up against the PS5 with advanced DLSS technology. We're also getting excited over the latest update from the Warhammer 40k universe and the buzz around Godzilla stomping into Fortnite. And with the Steam Autumn sale underway, there's no better time to grab those Warhammer titles you've been eyeing.

In a heartfelt segment, we reflect on Gearbox's compassionate gesture that allowed terminally ill fan Caleb McElpine a sneak peek into Borderlands 4, showcasing the tremendous support from the gaming community. With industry trends and changes on the horizon, we chat about the impact of game exclusivity on sales, the challenges of modern game development, and how industry giants like Sony and Microsoft are adapting their strategies. Plus, we take a closer look at the bustling landscape of Chinese and Korean game studios making waves with their traditional gaming approaches.

Lastly, we tackle the controversies in gaming, from Ubisoft's eyebrow-raising EULA practices to the ongoing debate over censorship and privacy issues. We share our thoughts on upcoming releases, touch on the nostalgia of retro gaming with our favorite SNES classics, and ponder the future of the Pokémon Trading Card Game with a new trading feature on the horizon. Whether it's analyzing hardware capabilities or sharing insights

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Chapters

• 0:00 Winter Updates in Gaming
• 9:31 Borderlands 4 Release and Gaming Updates
• 18:08 Xbox App on Android Delayed
• 30:15 Debating Switch 2 Hardware Capabilities
• 35:23 Game Requirements, Tournaments, and New Releases
• 45:49 Monetization Practices in Gaming
• 55:46 Gaming Industry Trends and Criticisms
• 1:01:33 Criticism in Gaming and Movies
• 1:07:02 Critique of Book and Film Adaptations
• 1:17:17 Game Development Update and Witcher 4
• 1:22:30 Criticism and Pre-Ordering in Gaming
• 1:33:36 Impact of Game Exclusivity on Sales
• 1:38:14 Censorship and Retro Gaming Favorites
• 1:49:12 Ubisoft Game EULA and Nintendo Timeline
• 1:56:03 Nintendo Switch Rumors and Release
• 2:03:12 Ubisoft Criticisms and Game Updates
• 2:10:29 Gaming Gear and Retro Game Finds
• 2:20:40 Gaming Industry Clones and Leaks
• 2:26:08 Nintendo and Pokemon Trading Card Game

Transcript

Mark Trobough: 0:00

Hey everybody, how's it going? How's it going, Brandon? What's up?

Brandon Hurles: 0:04

Not much, man. What's going on with you?

Mark Trobough: 0:06

Not going doing, doing pretty good. This is episode 111. Yeah, if you're in the Game, junkie podcast 1-1-1.

Brandon Hurles: 0:13

We only get one time to ever do that.

Mark Trobough: 0:15

Yeah, right Now, you gotta wait until 2-2-2.

Brandon Hurles: 0:18

I know right. Yeah, I thought it was kind of cool, I was thinking about it there. Yeah, How's your week been man.

Mark Trobough: 0:26

It's pretty nice Thanks to the Thanksgiving. Everything's pretty slow, busy for a few days, have a nice little Thanksgiving, slow down on the week.

Brandon Hurles: 0:33

I know you're excited about that snow. Funny enough it was snowing. It was just snowing a few hours ago Again.

Mark Trobough: 0:43

For me.

Brandon Hurles: 0:44

No for you.

Mark Trobough: 0:48

For hours ago again. For me, no, for you.

Mark Trobough: 0:49

For me it's not much, but it hasn't snowed since, like tuesday, I think, for us, but they're still like just a bare minimum, but I was driving and it was snowing so it wasn't too bad the last two nights though, oh my god, I think it got down to low teens, but we had wind chills near zero the last two nights, with like a good, like 10-15 mile an hour wind. So you're like, within like a minute, you're like my hands hurt, like I need to put them in a pocket.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10

Get inside dude, it was cold this morning. Oh my god, I was leaving for work. It was so cold. I was like ah. I'm not a fan.

Mark Trobough: 1:19

I can do without it unfortunately, if too far south, not getting that lake effect snow.

Brandon Hurles: 1:25

Yeah, I'd pass on all the snow. I'm not going to lie, though. I do like a white Christmas, but I'm like other than that the day after we can go away now.

Mark Trobough: 1:39

I had a white Thanksgiving.

Brandon Hurles: 1:42

There's that too. You can have a white Thanksgiving. How was your Thanksgiving, man? I know you probably didn't do much of white thanksgiving. Yeah, well, I mean, there's that too, you can white white thanksgiving. So how was your thanksgiving man?

Mark Trobough: 1:47

I mean, I know you probably didn't do much, but no, had a turkey, some stuffing mashed potatoes, some some pumpkin pie. It was good, just pretty much relaxed and chilled the whole day for the most part hey, that's what you know.

Brandon Hurles: 1:59

It's cool about thanksgiving it's I always like in the evening just relaxing after having some turkey and stuff like that. You get tired. Man has that stuff in it that makes you tired. It's always like a chill.

Mark Trobough: 2:11

You know what I mean in the evening yeah, just a just a tad, just a just a wee little bit, just a just a little bit yeah, but no, we got some good stuff coming up.

Mark Trobough: 2:22

Got some Pokemon, the trading card game, some news, some Godzilla and in Fortnite news, well, we got some good stuff coming up. Got some pokemon, the trading card game, some news, uh, some godzilla and in fortnite news, well, we had some more switch rumors, uh, you know, drop and stuff like that, and then just a whole host of, uh, much smaller intermediate stuff to talk about sweet.

Mark Trobough: 2:38

Yeah, let's go dive into it yeah, so we had some, uh, warhammer 40k news about the new patch that's adding the dark angels chapter, uh, you know, some new operations, new enemies and stuff like that, uh, which is great news. I've heard a lot about this. I've watched this game but I've not actually gotten around to actually play the game. But from what I've seen and some like the some of the live streams recordings, it looks absolutely amazing. I've never heard anything bad about this. So it's nice to. It's nice to see they're they're getting more content with this game.

Brandon Hurles: 3:10

Yeah, for sure I think I comment on on X. You're not following X. Just definitely give it any junction cast and any junction to follow there. But you, you tagged me in something.

Brandon Hurles: 3:20

I said we should stream this because I have been wanting to play should. I really have been wanting to play it. So it's like, oh, there's an excuse to play it, you know. So I think people would enjoy it and I think I would enjoy it. So I'm not like a Warhammer guy for the tabletop, you know what I mean. I just don't want to play tabletop anymore. But the game itself looks really good and I watched somebody stream. I jumped into it and was looking at it and I was like man, this really looks fun, kind of like, um, hell divers to how I still haven't played that yet but I want to. Um, I've kind of been waiting to grab like the physical for like 20, 25 bucks or something like that, cause there's just so many games right now. It's like, ah, it definitely want to play both of those. They've both been on my radar, for sure. Warhammer, again, hoping to find a deal on it, but I think if we stream it it'll be an excuse to grab it.

Mark Trobough: 4:11

Yeah, well, I'll say this right now, because now through December 4th, for the PC audience over on Steam they have their Autumn sale, which nicely lines up with Black Friday. So Space Marine 2 is 20% off, it's $47.99 right now. Is there a physical for it? It's Steam, it's digital. You want the physical. It's probably going to be full price.

Brandon Hurles: 4:32

I'm going to look it up while you're talking.

Mark Trobough: 4:36

My local GameStop was doing a bunch of sales but it was mainly for used games and stuff like that. Most of the actual physical stuff was full price. That I could tell.

Brandon Hurles: 4:44

I have to look because I guarantee Okay.

Mark Trobough: 4:49

so right now, on Amazon it's $50 physical. You're saving like $10.

Brandon Hurles: 4:51

Walmart $50 physical.

Mark Trobough: 4:54

I assume that's going to end pretty quickly.

Brandon Hurles: 4:56

It's probably Black Friday, it's just the first Google search Target.

Mark Trobough: 4:59

It's $40 right now, physical Well because also normally the Monday after Cyber Monday.

Brandon Hurles: 5:05

Yeah, that's true.

Mark Trobough: 5:07

The physical stores do it for like a day, though some stuff gets extended, but the online some of these sales, kind of like with Steam, they do it for more than one day, just because they're not limited with a certain stock or they just have like a whole warehouse of stuff that they can kind of sell.

Brandon Hurles: 5:20

I will say the. Target deal that's really good $40, but it looks like on G2A you can get or hold on. I'm misunderstanding. There's an Ultra and Gold Edition too, so there's a little bit more obviously, but it looks like there's definitely some deals out there. Greenman Gaming is $52.19 for PC, InstantGamingcom $45.38. So there's definitely some deals. If you're interested in grabbing it, there's some deals. $40. Whether it's physical or it's online.

Mark Trobough: 5:54

Usually these Steam sales are like that's the time where you usually go and buy a bunch of games. Especially if they're older games, you can save a lot of money. Like Subnautica is 67% off. It takes two 75% off. The Forest is 80% off. I'm now just kind of going through and seeing what was on there. Like Cult of the Lamb is 50% off. Like you can get really good, long as they're not like brand new games, you're going to get a smaller discount, but for some of these older games you can save a lot of money.

Brandon Hurles: 6:25

Space Marine 2 came out this year correct, just like yes, once I go or something. Okay, I thought so, yeah, definitely definitely want to check it out. Um, I think, probably because it is sometimes so interested in would want to grab a physical. But yeah, I mean it looks great like and the guy I saw streaming it was streaming on ps5 looks awesome. Man, really good Talk about it.

Mark Trobough: 6:44

I guess this game did come out earlier this year, but uh, like, and the guy I saw streaming it was streaming on ps5 looks awesome, man, really could you talk about it? I guess this game did come out earlier this year, but uh, uh, you didn't chronicles 100 heroes. On steam it's 50 off, so it's 25 instead of 50. Oh, nice, cool. So, like you, I guess, depending on how quickly they came out, of the size of the games, you can still like I mean, 25 is a, you know, still a decent amount of money, but like for a game that's normally $50?. Dragon.

Brandon Hurles: 7:05

Age just came out and I saw it for $15 on Gamefly. I got to tweet about it.

Mark Trobough: 7:11

Just saying Because nobody wants the game, resale value is not there at all.

Brandon Hurles: 7:16

If you're selling off a brand new game, there's a problem. That's a whole other story.

Mark Trobough: 7:21

Some of the ones I did and didn't have, like Meta Force, 25% off. These are all Steam numbers by sure. Red Dead Redemption 2 is 67%, cyberpunk is 55%, hogwarts Legacy is 70% off, Ghost of Tsushima is 20% off, rust is 40% off, helldivers is 20% off, so you can save some money. Obviously, some older, more niche games might have bigger discounts, but if you're in the market and you have games you want to play next year holiday season, this is the time to stack up. Obviously, they don't do this. They do this a couple times a year probably once a quarter.

Mark Trobough: 7:58

This is a time you find a game that you've been wanting to buy. It's not a high priority, but you can do only like 40, 50 bucks and then you can get it like half off. You're more likely to kind of go and pick it up oh, definitely yeah, take advantage of steam sales like dragon quest 3, it's still full price.

Mark Trobough: 8:11

It's just too too new of a game you can't expect. It just came out on steam the veil guard still $60, so that's not that they probably should have discounted that totally off topic sort of, but I just got a tweet for Final Fantasy 1 through 6 collection.

Brandon Hurles: 8:25

It's $35.99 at Woot. Keep in mind this is like a $70 game because it was like a. It has a small print run, so it's not a standard price. I paid, I think, $75 on Switch. I don't know how much you paid, but Close to full price, if not full price on it, I don't remember.

Brandon Hurles: 8:43

It could be quite a bit for it. And, uh, on woots, which is owned by Amazon, 35 99. So definitely, definitely grab that. I can't recommend that enough. He has six games in there remastered, so it's a really cool collection. So if you are watching this live, that's a for you, yeah. But I mean, I guess, enough about that? Fine Geez, what's that I said? Fine Geez, I don't try to be like that, it's just, there's a lot of games you can talk about. No, for sure.

Mark Trobough: 9:16

Like forever. For sure, I didn't know anything about this game, but Avatar Frontiers of Brandora is getting a new story pack DLC.

Brandon Hurles: 9:26

You didn't know about this game, the Ubisoft game.

Mark Trobough: 9:30

Avatar. I didn't care for the movies or the movie. I only watched the first movie. Me neither.

Brandon Hurles: 9:35

But when I watched this gameplay keep in mind this came out a little bit before Ubisoft was really going in the gutter this legitimately looked really good to me. I think it reviewed about average, which I don't really care about, but it looks fun and I am not at all a fan of the first movie. I didn't watch the second movie but I did not like the movie Doesn't mean the IP itself is necessarily bad based on one piece of work.

Mark Trobough: 10:05

I'll say this like the movie, cause it was really popular. It did something very popular. Technology behind the movie was really new. I thought the storytelling was pretty mean James Cameron being behind.

Brandon Hurles: 10:14

it was cool Cause, like I'm a fan of his work, it's not like the actual storytelling did anything unexpected or new.

Mark Trobough: 10:19

It was just shot in a very, you know, unique way just shot in a very, you know, unique way.

Brandon Hurles: 10:23

Yeah, yeah, it was unique. It was definitely kind of one of a kind for the, especially when it came out, and you know I'll give it that that definitely did a lot of cool technology stuff behind the scenes. I just didn't care for the movie itself. I didn't like the way that it was stylized. So I was kind of like instantly drawn away from the movie to begin with, because I just didn't like the way that it looks.

Mark Trobough: 10:44

It's a standard story. It's like oh, my main character, he's here with the military. Oh no, you're going to send you in. You fall in love. Oh no, maybe you're the bad guys and we're going to fight back. It's a very generic story that you've heard a million times.

Brandon Hurles: 10:57

Yeah, sure, I had a friend that absolutely loved this game, so that was I was one of the main reasons. It kind of came on my radar and I still want to grab it if I find it For like 20 bucks. I it's actually like 30. I'm at Walmart right now. It just like it looks pretty fun. I'm yeah, I'm saying looks like an amazing game or anything, but it looks fun. So for the people that are fans, this is pretty cool. I think it's neat. It's Ubisoft, so kindisoft to be expected, with additional content, whether it's paid or not. I'm not sure I'm going to assume it is Because it's Ubisoft, but it definitely looks neat and it's first and third person, so that's kind of cool.

Mark Trobough: 11:40

No, 100%. We've got some news. This isn't new. They've done this a lot before. They've done this before, but Gearbox flew out a terminally ill fan to come out and play Borderlands 4, essentially get his own personal early access and stuff like that which we've known they've done before. I'm pretty sure they did it for two, because there's actually a character in two based off of one of the fans of the series that was terminated and didn't make it to the launch of the game. Yeah, there's an achievement for it. He doesn't always spawn, but he spawns within Sanctuary and stuff like that. So this is one of the at least in recent memory, one of the few good things that Gearbox actually does.

Brandon Hurles: 12:19

Yeah, I mean shout out His name is Caleb McElpine. And shout out, His name is Caleb McElpine. It looks like took to the borderlands. Three subreddits reveals late stage four terminal cancer diagnosis after being given about seven months to live or less than two years of chemotherapy. So there's a progression of the cancer. Shout out to this guy, definitely.

Mark Trobough: 12:40

Yeah it got like over like 19,000 uploads on just the subreddit.

Brandon Hurles: 12:45

I mean it's definitely cool. I wish a lot of other companies would take notice of this, because there's definitely, like you know, borderlands is a massive series and I was shocked the day that they announced it. Whether it'll be good, I don't know. It wasn't like we've discussed a lot. The past two games have a bad record for that. Yeah, three hasn't been excellent gameplay, terrible story, terrible execution, if you ask me. But yeah, man, I hope this guy pulls through. It was good on them for doing this.

Mark Trobough: 13:19

Well, they did say terminally ill, so it's more than likely, yeah, but they're still well, hopefully he's still, hopefully it'd be nice because it did say that they were saying hopefully he gets to see the release, and you know there's always the chance that it could turn around.

Brandon Hurles: 13:36

So hopefully it does. That's never good, so, but it is cool and it is cool that it also is cool to see that they're far enough along to be able to show somebody stuff. So that means there's some progress there and obviously they had been working on before they went and threw out a logo, essentially for the trailer, cause it was pretty much. You know, there wasn't any, there was no substance there for the trailer, but we knew they were working on it. Um, but it's cool that they're at least far enough along. It gives you some hope that we don't have to wait forever. For is it supposed to be next year?

Brandon Hurles: 14:10

we talked about for sure, but I can't remember if it's a 2025 or 2026, but yeah, it looks like he said so. I am a die hard Borderlands fan and don't know if I'll be around for Borderlands 4. Is there anyone that knows how to get in touch with with gearbox see if there's a way to play the game early? Long shot, but I thought I would try. Thanks for your help. I had over 19,000 sub uploads on reddit's the studio, so they would do everything they can to make something happened. Thankfully, last week McElpine was able to visit Gearbox's Texas headquarters to play Borderlands 4. Gearbox said Caleb is cool, a legit gamer who knows Borderlands inside and out. I'm glad he got a chance to play. I'm praying he makes it to when we are done. Thanks, internet, for signal boosting Caleb's story. We're deeply thankful to the Borderlands community for rallying around Caleb after he shared his story several weeks ago. His courage, strength and determination are an inspiration to us all. Our team was honored to host them last week our studio.

Mark Trobough: 15:13

So any word on yet 2025 no, it was just a broad release. They just said 2025, but there were rumors that would be sometime late spring, early summer, the rumors of the of the window.

Brandon Hurles: 15:26

But so the only official, they've been working on this for a while, then I mean they had to have been like at least like three years at least, right.

Mark Trobough: 15:35

If it's coming out next year, it's four. Came out a while ago. It came out in what 2020, 2019.

Brandon Hurles: 15:39

Yeah, it could have been one of those, didn't it come out before that.

Mark Trobough: 15:43

It came out pre COVID, so I'm pretty sure it came out 2019. Okay, well, it feels like you came out in like 2017.

Brandon Hurles: 15:49

Um, you can, totally be right.

Mark Trobough: 15:52

Yeah, no, September 13th 2019.

Brandon Hurles: 15:54

Okay, yeah, so it's.

Mark Trobough: 15:56

They're probably working on it right away, then I would assume yeah, I mean some of some other games, but those very obviously had, you know, less of a focus, probably some of their smaller studios. Else we're working on those so realistically. This game's been in development probably for at least a good three, four years. At this point I would. I would say so. I mean borderlands, uh three had dlc that came out throughout 2020 and stuff like that. So you're thinking probably by 2021.

Brandon Hurles: 16:19

It went full-on development I don't know why it feels like came out so much earlier than that to me, but for some reason maybe it's because the releases have been kind of so. There's been so much space between them compared to some series.

Mark Trobough: 16:32

Yeah, like on average probably about five years between major titles.

Brandon Hurles: 16:36

Which is a good chunk of time for such a big series. There have been Tales of the Borderlands, stuff like that. Two of those.

Mark Trobough: 16:43

Well, the first one didn't work. On the second one they did and it got awful.

Brandon Hurles: 16:47

Yeah, it was rough.

Mark Trobough: 16:48

That's why I don't have a lot of faith After three in New Tales. The writing is terrible.

Brandon Hurles: 16:54

Yeah, I'm hoping that this is not that way. But yeah, I mean, I'm with you for sure.

Mark Trobough: 17:02

Let me tab out. We had some news for dark sector is now they say free on steam for the next 72 hours. This was posted yesterday, two days ago, so you're pretty much through today okay.

Brandon Hurles: 17:15

So if you are watching live, definitely go grab that. I I grabbed it, haven't played it. I had it on the 360, um, and I cannot remember for the life of me how the game was. I can't remember if I liked it or didn't like it. So, yeah, I mean if you're watching live, obviously, if you're listening to the audio podcast, it's going to already be over, unfortunately, but that is a good reason to watch a live podcast or on YouTube or Twitch. Small plug there.

Mark Trobough: 17:42

Yeah, because, as of right now, it's free, it's free through November 30th at 10am. I don't know what time zone that is. That's just what it's saying, so it might be local time yeah, yeah, so definitely it is a $10 game, so it's not like it's the worst in the world, but free game is free game that's what I was saying.

Brandon Hurles: 18:04

Man got to build up a steam library.

Mark Trobough: 18:07

Yeah, right. Also, there was a court order that was delaying Microsoft's plans to add the Xbox games onto the their app on Android. Yeah, Interesting. Did you know a whole lot about this, or?

Brandon Hurles: 18:23

I didn't. I didn't until I saw the article. Um, it looks like so. Sarah bond said a temporary administrative stay recently granted was granted by the courts. Uh has delayed the functionality still. Bond added that they're ready to launch with the feature as soon as they have the legal go ahead. Um, she said specifically that. Let me see. Xbox went to offer players more choice on how and where they play, including being able to play and buy games directly from the Xbox app. I recently shared our ambition to unlock these features first with the Google Play Store on Android devices in the US, while other app stores adapt to meet consumer demand due to a temporary administrative stay recently granted by the US. While other app stores adapt to meet consumer demand due to a temporary administrative stay recently granted by the court. So we are currently unable to launch these features as planned. Our team has the functionality built and ready to go live as soon as the court makes a final decision. We are eager to launch and give more choice and flexibility to players. Why are you laughing at me?

Mark Trobough: 19:22

I'm not.

Brandon Hurles: 19:23

You're laughing at something. It wasn't you okay, whatever you say. What's your thoughts on that?

Mark Trobough: 19:34

I. I can see why there's something there, but I I assume long term this is probably going to get approved I don't, I guess.

Brandon Hurles: 19:41

see, I don't quite understand. I'm confused. What's delaying it?

Mark Trobough: 19:45

It says Exactly what was going on and why it was being delayed with court order.

Brandon Hurles: 19:52

It looks like Microsoft announces plans following a recent decision by a US judge that forces Google to open up its Play Store to competitors for three years Per the Rolling, the latest victory in Epic Games' long-running antitrust battle against Google. Google will have carry third-party Android app stores in the Play Store or grant third-party app stores full access to Google Play's catalogs of apps.

Mark Trobough: 20:20

So more than likely this is an extension of that other, because lawsuits usually they can reach far and wide compared to just the immediate person or the company that it impacts. Yeah, that makes sense.

Brandon Hurles: 20:32

It's interesting, I guess. Yeah, not much else to say on that.

Mark Trobough: 20:38

I don't have an Android so it doesn't really affect me, but I mean, something tells me, long-term this is going to be a problem. Oh, you're a big Xbox, get out of here.

Brandon Hurles: 20:43

We just stringed Age of Empires. It's an.

Mark Trobough: 20:47

Xbox game. I said I don't have an Android. I don't have an Android either. I missed that part, so it doesn't affect me. I don't know where you're getting that from. I don't know. Bro's just saying random stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 20:59

That's what I do.

Mark Trobough: 21:05

But I mean talking and sticking with the Xbox stuff. We had more game pass stuff. There was only two games that were concerned, confirmed for next month at the end of the year. That was both overthrown and the Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Brandon Hurles: 21:20

Okay, first one comes out on the 5th, the second one comes out on the 9th let me ask you, because this is coming up real soon Is this something you're going to play, because I'm pretty dang hyped for it.

Mark Trobough: 21:31

I love Indiana Jones. I've not paid attention to it at all just because of the tracker group. The Indiana Jones IP as a whole has had a terrible tracker.

Brandon Hurles: 21:40

What if I come back and say this is really good and it's better than Dial of Destiny. This is legitimately good.

Mark Trobough: 21:47

I need to bother to watch Dial of Destiny after watching Crystal Skull Look.

Brandon Hurles: 21:51

I didn't either. I didn't like Crystal Skull either. I didn't watch Dial of Destiny either. But I will say I've got a little hope based on what I've seen of the game. It looks good. It legitimately looks good.

Mark Trobough: 22:05

Regardless, because even if it's a game I would play, it's not going to be a high priority. It's still going to be a. We'll wait and see what the actual reviews are like for this game.

Brandon Hurles: 22:16

I'm playing it on streaming so if you want to check it out then, and maybe it might interest you that way we can talk about it.

Mark Trobough: 22:22

We'll see when it comes but it is just, you know, just a little. I mean it doesn't surprise me, it comes to game pass.

Brandon Hurles: 22:32

I mean they yeah, this is from a studio that microsoft owns, so that's not surprising at all which is good for you. I mean, I assume this is going to be able to run on the xbox one, but there's, you know, I'm just guessing I mean, if it comes to their pc version of the game, pass it, it won't be a problem. Yeah, yeah, and which I don't know. If it does, I'm going to assume it does, because they're pretty good Xbox, pretty good about the day one, pc stuff versus PlayStation, for instance.

Mark Trobough: 22:55

Well, PlayStation didn't have like a direct. They don't like own it like Microsoft does with like windows. Like you remember, you remember, yeah, I remember, Microsoft owns the, you know, the windows operating system and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 23:06

So they have a little bit more.

Mark Trobough: 23:06

Yeah, I guess available, accessibility and stuff like that Sure. Yeah. And they've been doing this a lot longer than Sony has. For Sony, you know, kind of does it like after the fact.

Brandon Hurles: 23:16

That's what I'm saying. They're they're pretty good with the PC stuff, which is good. I mean, you're right with Microsoft for sure. But I still don't see why we're not at the point where there's a day-in-day on PC and console for PlayStation. It feels like if you're going to do it, do it when the hype is there. You know what I mean. I think the way that they're looking at it is oh, we can get two hypes, we can get a hype for this console and we can get a hype for PC, which is not really the case, If you ask me, with the hype for the console, because the game is actually coming out for the first time, it feels like that's the main hype.

Brandon Hurles: 23:52

The PC hype is not really there, because there's very few people. I see oh, the PC version of Spider-Man two comes out today. I'm so excited. Yeah, I don't see that ever. But when the game is coming out for the first time, that's when the hype is there. I feel like we're going to get there. I think they want to do day-in-day. I think they've got to get that PC studio right, though. I just don't think they've gotten there yet. You know what I mean.

Mark Trobough: 24:20

Unlike a lot of these third-party studios who've just been doing this forever at this point. Yeah, between console and PC releases.

Brandon Hurles: 24:30

I mean, sony has really kind of missed out on garnering that PC audience too, I feel like. But I think we're pretty close to that day-in-day for PlayStation. I think they want to do it and I think they get that. But I also think maybe in their mind they were first thinking, oh, we can get two different hype days for this, and I just don't think that's it. I mean, do you see that? Do you see that hype for the PC drop of one of these games? I've already been out for six months a year.

Mark Trobough: 24:52

I just I mean, it's always there, but the problem is the the core people that were going to play it already got it on the console. Yeah, so you the the it's somewhat there, but it's very obviously tempered because it's not a brand new release.

Brandon Hurles: 25:03

Otherwise, Exactly If it had been first day with a first release for it.

Mark Trobough: 25:07

It would have made far more of a splash.

Brandon Hurles: 25:09

Yeah, I agree, I'm with you on that. I think it would sell more on PC if it was done that way. I feel like there's a lot of people probably who also will buy the console version. They would potentially buy the PC version instead, which doesn't matter as long as they got the sale. But I just think that they're going to get more people if they do it day-to-day. I just think that's important because Microsoft does it well.

Mark Trobough: 25:32

You just have the overall hype for the game Once it's been out for a while.

Brandon Hurles: 25:35

The hype for a game coming out on PC just isn't there and like you said, a lot of people who are PC gamers still own a console, and it's for that reason, it's for the exclusives, it's for the non-PC stuff. A lot of people that are really into this, like me and you. We own console and PC for what we care about. And I just think that a lot of people are like oh, I'm so excited for God of War. They would have bought that on PS5 at that point.

Mark Trobough: 26:03

Yeah, and it's just one of those. It's just yeah, there are people that would have bought it otherwise, but it's like I want to play this game, but I don't want to wait a year to get it. Exactly, I might eventually get it on PC like you use down the road when it's on an actual sale and stuff like that, Cause you paid full price for it once you.

Brandon Hurles: 26:20

That just doesn't make any sense, right For sure. I mean, like Stella blades, an example here of, like a recent sort of recent example of how we're waiting, you know, so long for that Everybody did want to play it and had a console plotted on that Right.

Mark Trobough: 26:34

Wanting to shill out another twice the same amount of money again for that you already own and have played is a big ask for some people, and I feel like one of their probably thinking like their thinking there is.

Brandon Hurles: 26:47

First of all, they may have thought you know, this won't hit, first of all because nobody knew the cellway was going to be as big as it was. And also, I think the other thing was that maybe they think I'm just trying to get in their heads thinking about this. Maybe they think, oh, they'll buy this again for the mods. That's the one thing that's going to carry the game is the mods for that game?

Mark Trobough: 27:12

And hopefully when the second game comes out, it'll be day and day. But I don't know what kind of deal they have with Sony as far as exclusivity, because I'm pretty sure Sony doesn doesn't own shift up but shift, but they're the publisher.

Brandon Hurles: 27:26

it's like yeah, they licensed it, is that right I was gonna pull it up.

Mark Trobough: 27:32

I don't think that they own shift up, that's yeah, uh, it's a public company at a soul, because they've only made two games stellar blade and then goddess of victory and DK, which is a mobile game. Uh, but as far as it looks like they don't, they're not. They're, they're a independent company. They're not running by anything. It's shift up. Is the the actual corporation?

Brandon Hurles: 27:56

right? Yeah, I didn't think they owned up. Uh, my guess is, because it was a brand new IP, that was a one game deal. That's just my guess, but I could be wrong. It could be like a three game deal. I'm just going to guess, so that it was probably that, just because of it was such new IP, they were a mobile developer before. They didn't have any track record of like super success, so that's just my guess. For their, you know, I guess, playstation's safety.

Mark Trobough: 28:24

Yeah and they just they needed a you know, a boost in my health. Like it's not not easy first time releasing an actual game. I mean you're a developer you know, in november of 23, it was revealed that shift up signed a contract to become sony's first korean second party developer. Uh, yeah, and then, and then 88% of the company, of the employees there were developers.

Mark Trobough: 28:51

So, they're a second-party developer, which is a. This is coming from Wikipedia. A second-party developer is a colloquial term used by, you know, the games media to describe studios that take development contracts from a platform holder and develop games exclusively for that platform. But no, these are not owned. They've signed a contract. For how long? Essentially, if they were published on everything, they'd be what we consider a third party. First party is their own, third party is they do their own thing. So they partnered with them to publish this game, probably because of the financial, the risks and stuff like that for a new game, a studio nobody's heard of before. So they needed that backing. But we don't know how, the intricacies of that contract and stuff like that and penalties for breaking it. So I would assume probably, whatever the sequel is, it'll come out, but assuming they continue to make money and the studio gets bigger financially these are all financial successes you could probably eventually see them becoming a third-party studio potentially.

Brandon Hurles: 29:59

Yeah, I could see that.

Mark Trobough: 30:00

It would become a first-party. One of the two is going to happen eventually. I could see that for sure. I mean, sony is a big company. There's a lot of money there.

Brandon Hurles: 30:08

Yeah, there is.

Mark Trobough: 30:10

I can see that we would prefer to see them as a third party independent studio that they've kind of made a name for themselves. I want to see this on the Switch 2.

Brandon Hurles: 30:17

Stellar Blade 2?, switch 2? That could happen. For sure I don't think.

Mark Trobough: 30:21

Switch 2 is going to have the hardware for it. I don't think the Switch 2 is going to be able to play Stellar Blade at the same quality that the. Ps5 does.

Brandon Hurles: 30:30

No, I mean you're going to be close. You're talking about like a handheld hybrid console, but I think with DLSS, yeah, you're going to be able to run Stellar Blade 2.

Mark Trobough: 30:42

I think you're putting too much faith into what DLSS is no, I'm not, I've seen it in person, but your core hardware has to be able to run the game. It will to get that upgrade it'll be able to run.

Brandon Hurles: 30:52

It's still only one. You don't see the crazy stuff until you have a PS5 pro with it.

Mark Trobough: 30:56

Anyway, like you're looking at 30 frames, but even playing it, it's more than 30 frames it's not even.

Brandon Hurles: 31:03

It's not even what's the word I'm looking for. It drops down into the late 20s. I've seen captures going way forward.

Mark Trobough: 31:12

I've not seen that on my PlayStation it doesn't.

Brandon Hurles: 31:15

You can't. When you drop down like 27 frames, you're not going to be able to tell the difference between 27 and 30 that much, but it definitely does. I've seen where the captures have had it drop. It's not a steady 30. With PS5 Pro it's a steady 60.

Mark Trobough: 31:30

But it goes from 27 all the way to like 48.

Brandon Hurles: 31:33

You get more than 30 frames on that game, no you are most of the time, but I've seen it drop down to that. Go watch Digital Foundry's capture with it.

Mark Trobough: 31:43

You can see. I played the whole game. I digital foundries capture with it. You can see. I played the whole game. I never had it. I know because if it drops below 30, you can't see the difference between 27 and 30.

Brandon Hurles: 31:50

Three frames. You don't see that Like you're playing the game, you're in it. You probably don't see that.

Mark Trobough: 31:59

But I will say, like I've been playing it at a steady 60.

Brandon Hurles: 32:06

And, like it's great, you're putting too much stock into the pro, I'm putting too much stock into everything.

Mark Trobough: 32:11

I think the Switch is going to be more powerful, but it's still going to fall short of what some of these games are still going to be hardware wise.

Brandon Hurles: 32:19

It's going to be at a PS4 Pro and then I think, with DLSS you're looking close to PS5 closer to PS4 than PS4 Pro.

Mark Trobough: 32:25

See that then. I think with DLSS you're looking close to PS5. I'd say closer to PS4 than the PS4 Pro.

Brandon Hurles: 32:27

See, that doesn't make sense because it's already close enough to PS4.

Mark Trobough: 32:30

The problem is, if it's still equivalent to the size of the Switch, there's no way you can put the hardware that you need into it In the dock.

Brandon Hurles: 32:39

Possible.

Mark Trobough: 32:41

It's possible, right? I doubt it, though it's possible, right. I doubt it, though.

Brandon Hurles: 32:44

I don't know, I don't know any more than you do, I'm just guessing. I think we're looking at PS4 Pro territory.

Mark Trobough: 32:52

I think they could make it the hardware equivalent.

Brandon Hurles: 32:54

Maybe Witcher 3, for God's sake.

Mark Trobough: 32:57

It plays at a significantly lesser quality.

Brandon Hurles: 32:59

I played it and loved it though I mean in handheld mode. You don't notice that as much.

Mark Trobough: 33:06

You've got a smaller screen, but it still doesn't play to the same quality as.

Brandon Hurles: 33:09

No, it doesn't.

Mark Trobough: 33:10

I played it on a PC, so there's a significant drop-off from a PC.

Brandon Hurles: 33:14

No, for sure.

Mark Trobough: 33:14

I mean, you're looking at a handheld console and I'll say this the problem is the hardware the Switch 2 would need to contend with with the other gaming handhelds out there, Require the price tag to be at a minimum $700, $800.

Brandon Hurles: 33:28

Well, I think Nintendo's notorious for not losing money on their hardware right, so that's the one thing they can't afford to. Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

Mark Trobough: 33:39

I think the Switch shows they can live off first-party titles all day.

Brandon Hurles: 33:42

It's got probably the best first-party titles all day. Yeah, I mean, it's got probably the best first-party catalog ever, which is insane because we've seen every month this year at least one first-party game came out and we're at the end of the life cycle. You look back at the DS and 3DS. That was not the case. You know what I mean. They learned and the Wii U obviously was like a big example of how, if you go four or five months between first party releases, that's a problem. That's not good for your hardware.

Mark Trobough: 34:08

Um which still, the other consoles can live without it because they are their third party games.

Brandon Hurles: 34:13

Yeah, yeah, but for the wii u, I mean, that was like a whole different story.

Mark Trobough: 34:17

For that, I mean, when you don't have any third party games coming out, it's an issue well, the switch and the third, the third-party's essentially not, the major third-party's essentially not exist on the Switch.

Brandon Hurles: 34:28

Well, you say major. What do you mean by major, Outside the games that are?

Mark Trobough: 34:31

like 5 to 10 years old, like to be fair.

Brandon Hurles: 34:34

They get. I mean Dragon Quest was getting a 3, 8, 2, 3.

Mark Trobough: 34:38

Games for the most part.

Brandon Hurles: 34:39

I mean you look at like, if you're talking Call of Duty, obviously not. If you're talking Madden, obviously not. But if you look at like, I mean I don't even know what the word is, because if you ask me, Dragon Quest 3, HD, 2D, look at it, Japan sells obviously a big game.

Mark Trobough: 34:54

It's a big third-party title. Let's be fair, that's a remake of an old game.

Brandon Hurles: 35:00

But it's got a lot of games.

Mark Trobough: 35:01

It's got a lot of games. It's not a graphically heavy game. The way it's designed and you weren't going to expect this you would expect a game like that to run just fine.

Brandon Hurles: 35:11

I'm actually going to pull a couple things real quick while I'm thinking of it, so you can go ahead and move on.

Mark Trobough: 35:15

I just want to show these no you're good, we did get some.

Mark Trobough: 35:19

This is a game I don't care for Brandon might Marvel, a game I don't care for Brandon might Marvel rivals. The PC requirements were revealed for this game and stuff like that, you know, as far as the OS, the RAM drug stacks, the storage, which I'm pretty sure SSD is the recommended. Obviously, this game comes out on the 6th. Oh, this was so. It's recommended to have Windows 10, have a i5 1040 for the processor or a Ryzen 5 5600X, 16 gigs of RAM, graphics at 2600 Super, a RX 5700 XT or a Intel Arc A750, directx 12, which is pretty standard. It's a broadband internet, you know standard thing 70 gigs. So it's a fairly large game and obviously it recommends it in SSD. Some of the stuff drops down. If you're looking for like the minimum stats and stuff like that Goes down to like an i5 6600K or a Ryzen 5 1600X Still needs 16 gigs of RAM, a GTX 1060 and RX 580 or the Intel A380 still requires DirectX 12, not the Shocker, it's still 70. It still requires broadband and you can use an HHD for this.

Brandon Hurles: 36:39

But the SSD is very obviously, you know, recommended for sure, are you planning on playing this one at all?

Mark Trobough: 36:46

As a 0% chance. I play this game. I'm not a Marvels fan and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 36:52

For me it just has to do with it. It's a arena shooter. It's just not my type of game. It's basically a Overwatch clone, essentially. Yeah, Just not interested much myself A la Concord. I might watch a friend's gameplay or something. They stream it, but I'm overall not interested.

Mark Trobough: 37:10

It's just the type of game that I was like. I don't care for the IP and I just don't care for the style of game.

Brandon Hurles: 37:15

Oh, quit it. You're a big Marvel fan. You love Doctor Strange. Talk about him, okay, whatever this guy says.

Mark Trobough: 37:29

You know whatever, but we did have some sparkling zero, some drama. There was apparently a tournament that had some problems. Apparently there was a roster imbalance and what they say gameplay exploits. This is still a fairly early game In the grand finale. The grand finals for this game are happening next month, which is shockingly close to when this game launched. I'm surprised how quickly this stuff was moving, which means there's still problems. People are still trying to figure out the actual game and stuff like that. As far as balancing bug fixes, exploits Not a lot of time if you're putting a tournament together to figure out what is and isn't tournament legal as far as certain characters and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 38:14

Yeah, I'm excited to see what people do with it, because I'm always interested to see how. Just like you know, I'm by no means great at the game. I'm always interested to see how people are doing certain things.

Mark Trobough: 38:27

You know what I mean, so I like to watch that People find things to exploit and stuff like that with you know characters. Obviously it's not going to be a balanced game at launch.

Brandon Hurles: 38:39

I mean I was watching which they actually travel around the conventions to get the competitors and stuff like that, which is really cool. But the Tetris World Championships, a game that I'm not good at, I don't necessarily love. I have a soft spot for Tetris because I played it so much as a kid Obviously original Game Boy, nes so I played this game multiple times over on different consoles. But I'm not necessarily a puzzle fan. But to watch these people do the things that they do like that kid that actually basically busted Tetris and people had no idea that you could actually finish Tetris that's amazing to me.

Brandon Hurles: 39:13

I love to see people who are good at things and how they do it. You know what I mean, because I could never compete in that ever. I would not survive Sparking Zero for five minutes. You know what I mean. I would be done completely. They would wipe me into the floor. But I'm always interested to see how people do these things, so I always think it's really cool. I'll watch playbacks and stuff like that. If this is live or something, I'll definitely check it out, for sure You're always laughing at me.

Brandon Hurles: 39:44

What did I do now? Yeah?

Mark Trobough: 39:46

just trying to keep it happy and stuff like that yeah, I think it's cool, for sure. I didn't know a whole lot about this, but apparently the game that I've never heard of called Baby Steps was delayed to next year, which I mean might not really be all that. I mean you say next year, but like what 2024 has, like what five weeks left in this point. Yeah, pretty much to say next year is kind of somewhat disingenuous, unless it's like a six month delay.

Brandon Hurles: 40:14

So do you remember when this game was announced in place in one of the PlayStation showcases?

Mark Trobough: 40:20

Never heard of this game before in my life.

Brandon Hurles: 40:22

We, I mean, I think you watched it anyway, but it was earlier this year.

Mark Trobough: 40:26

I would have completely forgotten about it.

Brandon Hurles: 40:27

But this game is really bizarre in that you have to control their legs like their lifelike. So it's kind of like that game Fall Flat I don't know if you've ever seen that Human Fall Flat, it's called. Where you like, control every single limb. So, like like, your controller is controlling every single limb when you're walking or moving, so you have to keep them bound.

Brandon Hurles: 40:46

Yeah, this game is very bizarre. Go back if you can real quick look on YouTube and just look at like five seconds of this game playing. It is hilarious it is not again. Baby Steps.

Mark Trobough: 41:01

Oh, I thought we were talking about the other one.

Brandon Hurles: 41:03

No, I mean that that's the same sort of concept, but yeah, if you just look at this, you gotta control their legs, so like you're controlling each leg separately, and it's just incredibly bizarre, very unique concept, but not something I would ever be interested in. I played Human Fall Flat. I was terrible at it, not good at it whatsoever Um, not good whatsoever. It's just a bizarre game. It's got a bizarre name, um, so I'm kind of interested to see somebody play it or something, but I just don't think it's. It's going to be something I'm I'm going to be playing, unless it ends up being like a PlayStation plus game and I can try it out or something. Um, but did you get to check out any of it?

Mark Trobough: 41:43

Yeah, it just looks weird, super weird.

Brandon Hurles: 41:46

Right, it's very, you know, I think of it. It feels like a very Japanese game, although I don't think it is Um it just like feels very Japanese to me.

Mark Trobough: 41:56

Sorry, this is the same studio that made the game. Uh, getting over it, which is like a very one of those. It, it, which is like a very one of those. It's like a rage game Essentially.

Brandon Hurles: 42:03

Really, I haven't heard of that one.

Mark Trobough: 42:05

You ever seen that game One dude, that it's like a dude in a pot and he's got like a hammer. You have to climb up and if you mess up you can fall massively back down.

Brandon Hurles: 42:13

No, I've never seen that before.

Mark Trobough: 42:15

I have to look at it, getting over it, that can. It's like a rage inducing game.

Brandon Hurles: 42:21

Is this something you would play?

Mark Trobough: 42:24

I have no idea.

Brandon Hurles: 42:25

Probably not. This looks very much like Baby Steps. This is bizarre too.

Mark Trobough: 42:31

This is weird. It's too weird for me, to be honest.

Brandon Hurles: 42:35

I was like this is like it's by a studio called Crazy Games.

Mark Trobough: 42:40

It's like a game a streamer would play and nobody else. This is exactly what this feels like.

Brandon Hurles: 42:44

Yeah, this is bizarre. It's designed toer would play and nobody else.

Mark Trobough: 42:45

That's exactly what this feels like. Yeah, this is bizarre. It's designed to be streamed and nothing else.

Brandon Hurles: 42:48

Both these games look really weird. You can see their whole track record with what they're doing.

Mark Trobough: 42:53

They make weird niche games. Yeah apparently they're oddly difficult.

Brandon Hurles: 42:59

Yeah, very weird, that's funny.

Mark Trobough: 43:04

Just a little bit. We were just talking about this before we went live, though apparently there was a petition to stop why you gotta say it like that, mark because I don't take it seriously okay to stop the live service elements in Hogwarts Legacy 2.

Mark Trobough: 43:22

So this is not yes. There's like 8800 people that have signed this that don't want live service elements in Hogwarts Legacy 2. So this is not yes. There's like 8,800 people that have signed this that don't want live service elements in this game. I think it's going to make a difference. The only way you don't get live service in games is to not buy the game and give them money. Yeah, there's every incentive to put this stuff in the game because it only has. You only see the financial potential upsides.

Brandon Hurles: 43:50

This one's weird because it's Again. We were talking about it earlier. This is a game I want to play. I was also waiting on a deal on that and I never ended up grabbing it. I actually saw it go out for $20 and I forget why I didn't do it. So I still want to play this, because I am a big Harry Potter fan. You're not necessarily no.

Mark Trobough: 44:08

I mean, the game was fine, I didn't have a problem with it. I just I just wasn't a Harry Potter fan, so it didn't grab me like it did other people, which makes sense.

Brandon Hurles: 44:15

I mean it kind of it feels like a game for the fans, right Like doesn't it feel like that sort of game.

Brandon Hurles: 44:22

So to me it's obviously trying to capture that Harry Potter audience that's already there and established. So that's what it felt like to me and I haven't played it yet, but based on what I've seen sort of the community, what people have said, that's what it feels like. So if you're not a fan, you're probably not going to go into it having a good time unless you understand stuff or you kind of get the references or kind of get what's going on. So to me that makes sense, that you don't like it because you're not a fan of Harry Potter. Yeah, for me. I don't know, does this have any DEI crap or was this just one of those things where it kind of felt like it even had a game of the year last year all the drama wasn't about the game.

Mark Trobough: 45:01

It was about the author of Harry Potter.

Brandon Hurles: 45:04

Oh yes, jk Rowling yeah, all the drama wasn't about the game. It was about the author of Harry Potter, jk Rowling all the drama was because of the old JK Rowling.

Mark Trobough: 45:10

None of the drama was actually about the game itself yeah, I remember everything that happened.

Brandon Hurles: 45:18

I mean, look, you should be able to state your opinions.

Mark Trobough: 45:20

I'll put that it felt like a disingenuous argument and it was on her part that they used her as a as a criticism of the game, not actual, legit criticisms of the game itself.

Brandon Hurles: 45:32

It very much felt like they really took that and and tried to ruin a big audience that's already there for the franchise Cause I mean she, I mean whether you like Harry Potter or not, holy crap, massive pop culture impact Like huge. I mean those movies, if you remember they were massive.

Mark Trobough: 45:49

And the game was largely successful. It wasn't a buggy, broken mess. It was a decent game. At launch. I just wasn't a big fan of the IP. So yeah, I had a decent time with you. Know how much I played of it, which I think was between six and ten hours, is how much play time I put into the game.

Brandon Hurles: 46:05

So you still played quite a bit. I mean enough to get the gist of the game. I'm surprised you bought it. To be honest with you being that you're not a fan.

Mark Trobough: 46:12

To be fair, it was more of the. I don't care for this game, but I'll buy it out of spite. Yeah okay, I gotcha Like if there was no drama around it and it would have sold well regardless, I probably wouldn't have picked it up. But because I just wanted to, I was irritated about it and what the criticisms were about gets into the culture war stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 46:30

I don't care what anybody says about anything, but I'm a fan of JK Rowling herself. I've always liked her. She's always spoken like a very intelligent person to me. It's not like I know a ton about her or anything, but the stuff that.

Mark Trobough: 46:47

I've seen. Yeah, I mean she's not an idiot.

Brandon Hurles: 46:48

I don't agree with everything she says, but I don't know anything else she says that I would even agree or disagree on. I don't know, I don't pay attention that much, but she's always felt like a very intelligent person, she's always spoken like a very intelligent person, so I've always appreciated that with the amount of books she's written and they're they're fairly well-written books like she's.

Mark Trobough: 47:07

She's not an idiot. She just has opinions that I don't agree with all the time everybody's got.

Brandon Hurles: 47:12

There's a lot of stuff I don't agree with.

Mark Trobough: 47:14

You know what I mean, but it was like two sides of an aisle that I don't agree with fight each other like there's like the stupid, but whatever yeah, no, for sure, um, but no, I, I think that this is happening anyway.

Brandon Hurles: 47:26

To me it feels like, yeah, this is, it was a successful game. It did well.

Mark Trobough: 47:30

It was in a game of the year, you know nomination, you know so for the live service comes down to if this is single player, it shouldn't be there. But 100. This isn't on the studio, this is on warner brothers who's? Yeah, 100, that's where this is coming down from.

Brandon Hurles: 47:45

For sure, for sure. I think it's going to happen.

Mark Trobough: 47:48

It doesn't give you a leg up and you can technically ignore it. It's not the worst thing, but I agree it shouldn't be there at all, and there's only two ways to make sure it's not in a future game. Either you don't engage at all with the live service aspect of it and make it look like people don't want it and not financially viable. Those are the only two options. But to be fair, I think most people aren't going to care, or not going to pay attention just because of how pervasive People won't care right.

Mark Trobough: 48:15

Live service is just so pervasive at this point it's wholesale irrelevant for most people. They're just not going to pay attention.

Brandon Hurles: 48:22

Everybody knows how we feel about live service, right? So I don't have to restate that again. But hopefully my hope is that this isn't required to be connected to the internet, because to me it feels like again I haven't played one, but you can correct me if I'm wrong it doesn't feel like a game that would be have that requirement or be a game single, but it's a single player game if it's a single player game, it shouldn't, but it's not like it would be the first game that's like single player requires internet connection right, yeah, and my guess is that it?

Mark Trobough: 48:53

probably will I guess the only other way is maybe they go the assassin's creed route where they just uh, it's just stuff that you can buy, right game, yeah, which still shouldn't be there.

Brandon Hurles: 49:04

I mean it shouldn't, but to be fair, I just bought two DLC packs. I mean, is it?

Mark Trobough: 49:10

DLC's different than buying in-game cosmetics for a single-player game.

Brandon Hurles: 49:16

Yeah, I mean, but that's basically what I just did for selling, because it's for outfits essentially. You get a couple other things, the pre-order, the pre-order.

Mark Trobough: 49:24

I'll say this all the outfits in the base game you can buy. You just have to collect or do certain things that I slightly get. It's a collab, crossover outfits and stuff like that. It's not story. I mean, it's not egregious at $10 but you are just getting some costumes. But it doesn't affect the game, doesn't change the game. It's a, it's a crossover with a different IP.

Mark Trobough: 49:48

I mean, that thing could be said for like hey, they want extra money if you're gonna connect a different IP to this game. Yeah, as like kind of like a promotion, like I get that. There's probably stuff behind the scenes that they want to do it, but they were, you know.

Brandon Hurles: 50:00

They want some monetary kickback and stuff like that yeah, and the same could be the case for Hogwarts, like you see, I mean they can do the same thing. You know $10. But I mean Ubisoft is far more egregious with it.

Mark Trobough: 50:09

Stuff that should be in the base game, that you shouldn't have to pay for, yeah, and it's like 10 bucks for a single skin, yeah, 20 bucks for a single skin money that you to make the game easier and faster. That kind of stuff is really egregious.

Brandon Hurles: 50:25

I don't like that.

Mark Trobough: 50:28

There's a hard level. If it's going to be a single-player game, they're going to add a what's the bar?

Brandon Hurles: 50:35

The more you play a game, the more experience you get, the more awards you know what I'm thinking of, I know what you're talking about, but I can't think of what it's called.

Mark Trobough: 50:43

Yeah, because it's like a baseline free, and then the premium for the nicer stuff that you can get as you play the game. It encourages you to log in daily and stuff like that. Let me ask you what it's called.

Brandon Hurles: 50:53

Are you okay with either, because I mean it's one or the other, obviously in 2024. Are you okay with a higher price for a deluxe edition or gold edition or having the optional you know what I mean Like either having it before or you're able to get it during and just get the base game because you're essentially I mean those are always, like you know $8,000, sometimes $120. I was just we were just looking at Warhammer and for the gold edition it was 90 bucks and that was at a sale price. So are you okay with that before spending more money before, or?

Mark Trobough: 51:31

no, usually cosmetics, but it's like stuff that I'm like I could just be earnable.

Brandon Hurles: 51:37

Not always there is actual, like additional level or different things. Again that does. Yeah, I'm not a fan of that. Okay, so which one would you rather have?

Mark Trobough: 51:47

it's a fairly standard thing at this point in the industry and it's obviously it's not going away because people like buy it. We're in three generations of this now.

Mark Trobough: 51:56

I mean they were doing this PS3 and 360, so yeah, I mean to be fair, like if I want the stuff that's there, I might. If it's bundled or after I've played the game I might come back to it, but I'm not gonna buy it before. Like I'm not gonna buy, spend extra money in a game I've never played. I I might absolutely hate who cares. They're gonna give me extra levels or something like that?

Brandon Hurles: 52:13

what about a collector's edition? Are you okay with that if it comes with additional physical stuff, like, are you okay with 150 getting?

Mark Trobough: 52:20

something for your money, not just, you know, extra in-game stuff. That's wholesale irrelevant. If you're actually getting extra physical, you're paying for that physical stuff. That's a little different. Okay, so I would say base game and then maybe something physical like a statue or something else, but if you're getting something physical, you keep that, regardless of the game itself, the game quality.

Brandon Hurles: 52:41

Sure, yeah, that makes sense.

Mark Trobough: 52:44

But if it's just extra stuff in game, I'm just like that shouldn't even be an option, you should just have to. You know when you buy the game that stuff's there, that you can either get or earn, and more often than not it's kind of irrelevant. It gives you a small boost, but after you know you know a few hours in game it doesn't really matter. At that point the the advantage is kind of worn off.

Brandon Hurles: 53:04

No, I get it. I'm pretty much with you, because what it feels like is this was all stuff that you could have put in the game, but we're going to charge you $40 more for it, or $30, or $60.

Mark Trobough: 53:17

That's the other problem. It's usually fairly egregious on top of it with some of the pricing Like $1, two dollars, I'm like, okay, sure I get it because you put zero extra effort into what you're actually giving us, but when you want ten, twenty dollars more for like what A costume that you were making regardless you made before the release.

Mark Trobough: 53:35

Endgame levels and currency, which you someone spent five minutes clicking a button on a you know on some Word document, not a Word document, but you know some code to just bump you up, which was no extra effort, to be fair.

Brandon Hurles: 53:47

No, I'm with you. I think that's absolute BS, especially when it's like oh, you definitely made this before the game came out, so why are you doing this? Oh, we can do it, we can get away with this, we're going to do it. People buy it. That's the problem. People will never not buy. If they're like, really into the ip or it's just something they're really excited about, they're going to go for that bigger edition. More than likely those sell, obviously because they continue to do it over and, over and over again yeah, but I mean, that's just me critical of the actual people buying.

Mark Trobough: 54:19

I was like, why are you, why are you spending money on it? Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 54:21

I'm with you.

Mark Trobough: 54:24

I guess I don't know if you had anybody else there. We had a section disc over here on Twitch popping by. Appreciate everything. Yeah, appreciate you, you're doing pretty good. We were doing pretty good as well. Yep, just give a quick shout out. Don't think there's anybody on the YouTube side.

Brandon Hurles: 54:38

Nobody on the YouTube side. We did get an escalated friend before we went live said Hello, can you guys tell me what the best Pokemon spinoff game is? I want to play something other than the standard RPG. That's a great question. I'll let you go first, because I know what I'm going to say. What was the question? Again, Sorry. He wants to know about the best Pokemon spinoff game other than the RPG, he said. He said I want to play something other than the standard Pokemon RPG.

Mark Trobough: 55:05

I've only ever played the Red Rescue Team or something like that, which is probably one of the early ones, from what I've heard. The actual Ranger games by far are probably the best games.

Brandon Hurles: 55:14

From what I've heard, I love the Ranger games, love them.

Mark Trobough: 55:18

Obviously, they're out of print for the DS, so you're going to have to probably spend extra money on a used copy and stuff like that. But everything I've heard about those games and I would like to get around to playing them one day eventually those everything I've heard those are like the best ones. If you had to like pick one of the two or three games they've made I don't know which one's the best- people really like those games yeah, I think they've got like kind of a cult following to them.

Brandon Hurles: 55:46

It was such a unique concept that it makes sense that people really enjoyed it. If you were to explain the concept to somebody you'd be like I don't want to play that, but when you play it you get it. You have to play it with that touchscreen to get it Legitimately. I would say that as well. But also another mention that people don't talk about that often Pokemon Conquest it's a strategy RPG like sort of Age of Empires, esque or what's what's other big strategy RPG I'm thinking of?

Mark Trobough: 56:21

I can't think of it right now.

Brandon Hurles: 56:23

Right now, yeah anyway, it's a strategy RPG. So it's you know you move the player in the squares, type of deal. Oh yeah, I guess Is Mario Rabbids a strategy, Exactly yes, that's the same deal, so it was like an expensive game. Now it's 100 plus. Now that's insane. It was one of the last DS games to ever come out, so it came out 3DS was already out for a while.

Mark Trobough: 56:51

Oh yeah, I guess then that makes sense.

Brandon Hurles: 56:52

So it didn't sell, people didn't buy it.

Mark Trobough: 56:54

But there just weren't a lot of copies of it. Right, right.

Brandon Hurles: 56:56

Not a lot in circulation, so we got some news.

Mark Trobough: 57:00

It was announced. They say after 31 years, shu. We got some news. It was announced after 31 years, shuhei Yoshida if I didn't completely butcher his name is departing from PlayStation. He's been the face of PlayStation for a really long time. Let's go.

Brandon Hurles: 57:18

He's not the head of?

Mark Trobough: 57:20

I don't think he's. Is he the head of PlayStation or, like Japan?

Brandon Hurles: 57:23

I think he's the head of PlayStation Japan. I think he's the head of PlayStation Japan, I think.

Mark Trobough: 57:27

I have to double check. I want to double check just to make sure.

Brandon Hurles: 57:32

While you're doing that, I did want to shout out and let everybody know that might be watching or listening. Me and Mark will be live. This is our third year in a row covering the Game Awards on December 10th or December 12th or December 12th, I'm sorry, so I definitely just wanted to shout that out because I know we haven't talked about it a lot, but this is kind of a thing that we do, so definitely come by and check out the announcements, see what we have to say on that.

Mark Trobough: 57:57

We'll be live on YouTube, twitch and probably TikTok as well okay, so from uh, from 2008 2019, he was the president of the sony interactive uh entertainment worldwide studios, uh, and then he's currently the head of the independent developer initiative at at sony oh okay, so essentially, uh, sony interactive, so not like the overall head, but pretty high up there in sony, primarily dealing with the PlayStation side. That's cool. So he's going. I know he's been the head of it, so if there's any criticisms he would have taken like the criticisms branches off some controllers.

Brandon Hurles: 58:38

Just wanted you to say something.

Mark Trobough: 58:41

But to be fair, I'm like that's good To be fair. I think Sony shouldn't have moved. I don't know how much he had when Sony moved their headquarters or the Sony Interactive and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 58:53

They failed in making the Western studio their primary studio.

Mark Trobough: 58:58

The worst thing Sony ever did Was move their headquarters to California.

Brandon Hurles: 59:00

That's what I'm saying, 100%.

Mark Trobough: 59:04

If you want, to Criticisms with the studio it started when they moved their headquarters out of Japan 100%. I, if you want to bad, bad decisions, criticisms with the studio. It started when they moved, moved their headquarters at Japan 100%. I agree with that not initially, but you've seen it like 20 years later 30 years ago it was they become more westernized compared to the east.

Mark Trobough: 59:21

as far as, like you know, if you care about DEI and games and stuff like that because that's definitely more pervasive in the west compared to stuff that's coming up Like Japan's been kind of back and forth, depends on who owns them or the studio, but especially stuff out of Korea and China, where that stuff's very obviously not there.

Brandon Hurles: 59:37

You mean China?

Mark Trobough: 59:40

Sorry, west Taiwan, my bad.

Brandon Hurles: 59:42

I thought you were talking about China.

Mark Trobough: 59:44

Cause, a hundred percent. You. You've seen the there's the chinese studios and korean studios have started to come up because, uh, their games have been essentially explicitly not, not, not explicitly, but it's very obvious. They don't care about uh, di esg initiatives, yeah, to promote their business they're. They're making, you want to say games for gamers, the games that what 20 years ago games in the west looks like like around the 360 era, as far as you know, games essentially using sex to sell their games. You know a lot of instances, not not every, but on a lot of them you know attractive characters, not you know ambiguous blobs going both ways.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:24

Yeah, no, I'm with you or at least they're there.

Mark Trobough: 1:00:28

Female characters are attractive, like the west always makes attractive male characters, but I mean when you look at who runs these companies, it makes wholesale sense. The males look attractive, the females look like self inserts. I think it's legit criticism, 100% they do what was the best either?

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:48

Asian video game release recently.

Mark Trobough: 1:00:53

If you see that's, I don't know, it's kind of up in the air Because the First Descendants, it's an okay game, decent game, but you have to like that style of game to really like it, really like Stellar Blade. Obviously we have some of the Dragon Age remakes, but there's some criticisms and sneaking in with some japanese games. As far as the going and poke, uh, the pokemon's had the same issue from male, female to, you know, type a, type b or some, right, yeah, like that. Yeah, see, I mean you've seen it to trickle in, uh, but I probably it'd be the shift up for stellar blade and then, uh, uhmeth Wukong I can't remember the actual name of the studio is Dragon Age in there at all for you?

Brandon Hurles: 1:01:33

I?

Mark Trobough: 1:01:34

haven't played Dragon Age recently to really be able to say one way or the other. The last Dragon Age I played was like Dragon Age X or something like that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:01:40

I'm sorry, dragon Quest. I apologize, I meant the new Dragon Quest no, sorry, you said Dragon Age Dragon. Quest like X Ned, sorry, you said.

Mark Trobough: 1:01:47

Dragon Age, Dragon Quest X or X, the World Tree one was the one I played and that was like five years ago.

Brandon Hurles: 1:01:52

What about the new one? I haven't played it. You haven't played it at all. I thought you talked about it.

Mark Trobough: 1:02:00

Are you talking about the HD 3D remake? Yeah, but I mean, that's why I brought up the whole criticisms with the Type A, Type B.

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:07

Oh yeah, they did do that. I forgot about that, yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:02:10

The original was, like you know, male, female and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:14

Which is unfortunate.

Mark Trobough: 1:02:15

I mean the rest of the game as a whole isn't a problem, but I mean it's not like some of the Western influence isn't there.

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:21

Right, yeah, no, I get it for sure.

Mark Trobough: 1:02:24

I get it for sure. And then there's other major, was it like it's not Sega, but there's other Japanese studios that you know have gone full on DEI and some of their initiatives and stuff like that, which is unfortunate.

Mark Trobough: 1:02:35

Criticism all day because it's wholesale irrelevant, that in fact, a big portion of your audience says they don't like it. Yet you keep going that way. So I was like that's fine. You start to see some of these other studios just having absolute bombs and they start losing millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in some of these games. Eventually something's going to break.

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:54

Something's going to break. Something's going to happen eventually, because people are going to get tired of it.

Mark Trobough: 1:02:57

It's usually going to mean studios start closing because, hey, you bombed on two games, we lost $200 million on you. We're just gonna pull the cord. You're doing something wrong. It's usually what happens.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:08

Concord.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:11

It's amazing.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:12

Yeah, love that game.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:16

We had some other stuff here. This is in result of the new Lord of the Rings movie. I didn't know this because I wasn't super heavy into all the lore, but there is some criticisms. And I didn't know this because I wasn't super heavy into like all the lore, but there is some criticisms the closer we get to this new, the new movie and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:34

Yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:36

Because apparently, the main character for this new, for the new movie whose name is Hera Hammerhand, which is, I believe it's she's the daughter of uh helm hammer hand, the dude who creates homes deep and like the, the, the cause. This is a story that takes place on that.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:57

Uh, a lot of people go into it, cause apparently there was an article from screen rant saying uh, a character ignored by Tolkien you know the character he created to starring in her own film, who is Harry Hammerhand, which is funny because Tolkien created this character. Some of the other stuff is as people dig more into it, the closer the movie comes out. She's actually in one of the books I don't remember which one it is that the story takes place in. She goes unnamed in the book and she spoke a single sentence in the book, I think she's. She goes unnamed in the books and she's spoke a single sentence in the book, which means she is she's because with a lot of these, a lot of these stories are not the main books.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:35

Yeah, apparently, with some of these side stories and the more histories, if you're inconsequential to the major events, kind of like you do now with modern history, you're just not named for the most part.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:46

It feels like the. Star Wars effect right.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:50

In this story. She had no impact and she was essentially insignificant.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:53

So Tolkien didn't name her because she had no impact in the overall story of what this movie is supposed to be taking place on, because they do that sort of thing. And also, I don't know if you remember I mean, we obviously weren't alive yet, but I don't know if you know about the star wars toys from back in the day. They would make a character. They went on so long with making the action figures that they would make a character that would have like a split second showing in the movie. Like you barely saw the character. Um, so they would like do that right, like make these figures for toys that literally nobody knew the name of the character because you saw them for a quick frame, like it would be stuff like that. And then obviously you saw now what they've done with the different series and movies for like characters that may not have mattered or weren't even there at all. You know Rogue One, for instance, which I like, but just an example, like those characters weren't even there to begin with. They made them up later on.

Mark Trobough: 1:05:49

So it's like that sort of thing is what it feels like yeah, because I don't know if this story is in the Summerillion or one of the other books. I was trying to like figure that out for sure because he's relevant to the story. I'm just trying to figure out, like, what book he was out of. Uh, I'm just trying to figure out what book he was out of. The only reference I found was a comment three years ago on one of the Tolkien subreddits where they said he was referenced in Appendix A, annals of the Kings and Rulers. What's it? Part 2? The House of the Eorl? I can't pronounce that word. Yeah, I see what you're doing there, for whatever reason.

Brandon Hurles: 1:06:46

I thought it was a.

Mark Trobough: 1:06:46

Temerilian, but obviously there's a lot of Books that he published Around Lord of the Rings that expand upon the history Outside of just, you know, the Hobbit and the actual Lord of the Rings books.

Brandon Hurles: 1:06:56

I don't. Why are you showing off your controllers? I'm just being an idiot.

Mark Trobough: 1:06:59

I'm just so confused. But as you get closer and people start, you know, criticizing it more because some people say, oh, it looks like it's the whole girl boss. I don't know. The movie still might be good but it's not like. Especially with Amazon, there's a good track record with some of these adaptations and I would be as much to say, the adaptations started to go bad around the Hobbit movies yeah, a book that's like a third the size of the Fellowship.

Mark Trobough: 1:07:26

It's crazy to when he wrote the lord of the rings, it was supposed to be one, one book as a whole. Yeah, uh, but the really long book publishers kind of said no, so he broke it up into three different books. Um, yeah, but I mean, obviously there's people criticisms like all right, why you focus on this, a character that essentially was unnamed in the books, because it you know, some people are starting to point out like you're changing things that don't need to necessarily be changed. You can still tell the story. Why are you just adding characters that were never there or irrelevant, or didn't do these things in the original books, or essentially acting differently?

Brandon Hurles: 1:08:00

I wish I knew why they were doing it. Maybe we'll understand the movie. I guess we probably won't. It'll probably just be like a thrown in thing, Like we in the movie. I guess we probably won't.

Mark Trobough: 1:08:07

It'll probably just be like a thrown in thing Like we need a new character here, and I'll leave the some of the more legit criticisms because I've I like the original movies and I've read a decent amount of the Lord of the Rings. I'm still in the process of reading the books. I read the Hobbit Wow, you haven't read the books.

Brandon Hurles: 1:08:22

I'm shocked because you're the reason that I even bought the books. You're the reason that I even got in the Lord of the Rings at all.

Mark Trobough: 1:08:29

You showed me the movies. The movies are really good and it's the right way to do an adaptation.

Brandon Hurles: 1:08:33

You showed me the books Cause, like I remember when I watched fellowship the ring, I didn't even know there were books. You showed me and you're the reason I read them.

Mark Trobough: 1:08:42

Books are like from the fifties, like they in the 50s, like they're they're old books they're very good, though they still hold up very well oh 100, but I mean it's.

Mark Trobough: 1:08:49

You know, people like to like to criticize and I I guess ultimately I'll I'll leave legit criticisms of the people that actually know the ins and outs, because, like when it comes to summer aliens or some of these other books or or the tolkien's letters and stuff like that, if you actually look into a lot of stuff that either Tolkien did or his son ended up publishing, there's a lot of reference material as far as the world of Middle-earth. Essentially, some of it's easier to read than others.

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:17

Yeah, for sure I agree.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:20

I'll leave some of these other people's criticisms and be like I'll have to take your word for it, because I've not read this book, so I don't know how much of this is wholesale relevant.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:27

Right, yeah, wherefore, because I've not read this book, so I don't know how much of this is wholesale relevant, right, yeah, yeah, but I mean, yeah, that's you know. Then again, any kind of drama is always going to be a thing, but you know, some of it's legit. You'd like there to be no drama, but that would require people to actually, you know, honor the source material or give people what they want right for sure uh, yeah, and I brought this up.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:48

I think I tagged it into you. Either I tagged you or something else, but this was more like a quick thing. It's been 35 years ago today. Same day it was posted by Toei Animation over on X, where Vegeta broke his scatter after reading Goku's power level then they say the 35 anniversary. I'm pretty sure this is the Japanese original airing for the 35th anniversary, not the ocean dub version, where this scene became infamous and then it was redubbed by Funimation.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:18

Yes, because it's not the Funimation dub, where this was infamous. It was the original ocean dub that this scene became infamous in.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:24

For sure For good reason, just a neat little history.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:27

just because I saw it today, I was like oh, wow this happened today exactly 35 years ago.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:34

I love when Toei They've been tweeting some really cool stuff here recently and the Dragon. Ball account. Really fun stuff, really good artwork, really good different facts. So you should definitely follow them over on X because it's cool stuff to see If you're a Dragon Ball fan or a fan of any of their properties. Really interesting stuff. Who in the company would have thought of that? Like, oh hey, this was this particular episode that was so impactful. It's 35 years old today I mean obviously someone, but it's very interesting.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:07

No, no, yeah, Sorry, I was trying to read something about that. I was trying to pull something up real quick, okay, before we move on to the next thing, okay, never mind. There was a poll that had come out recently that Nintendo ranks third amongst newly graduate. There was a poll that had come out recently, uh, that Nintendo ranks third amongst uh new, newly graduate, uh, uh, college students looking for jobs. Nintendo is the third most popular uh destination, wow, where new, new employees want to work, and they've gotten a fairly high, uh, I believe it was above an 80, somewhere between 80 to 95%, uh, essentially a retention rate for the company.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:48

Yeah, I mean you work there. We know you work there for the rest of your life. People that work there, they don't ever leave and they work there for life.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:52

Some of that's obviously part of just the—.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:55

Traditional Japanese culture, I mean.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:58

Yeah, but that's not always hard and fast, especially probably with some of the younger generations who are more likely to leave. Because obviously a lot of people in the us like job hunt, job jumping. For you know, yeah, it's become very regular because you know the culture of you know, working there for 30 years, getting a uh that's long gone here uh, it's not a.

Mark Trobough: 1:12:17

It's not a, it's not retirement, but there's an actual word for pension. No, like pension or severance, essentially, uh, which would be you know the the whole reason to work there for 30-40 years. It's still impressive that people want to work there, because there's a lot of companies that people work and might have a decently high retention rate, but the whole what's it? Like these old black companies where they have a bad reputation and stuff like that. So people might work there because they think it's good long-term financially. But I really want to work there.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:49

Yeah, so there was a quote here. It says of course, nintendo's comprehensive benefits play a role in role to this. They have a high rate of paid vacation utilization, offer strong support for parenting, have a unique point system for employees that we can use for games, books, travel and more. They also have a deep understanding of diversity, have introduced a partnership system that allows employees, the same-sex partners, to be treated as if they were married. Among other progressive and practical initiatives Interesting.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:19

Yeah, so what I was looking for between April of 22 and March of 23, they had a 1.9% turnover rate.

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:26

That's unheard of which, if you don't know what that is. That's essentially an ungodly low rate for people leaving your company, I mean and it makes sense, Like you work at Nintendo, that's like a one-of-a-kind thing, right, Like that does not happen to everybody.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:40

The idea is that it just shows they take care of their employees.

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:43

Which is great. I mean, that's good to hear.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:44

Nintendo their first party games are really good, so they're retaining good quality that could probably go elsewhere, to other studios that potentially make a lot more money.

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:53

I mean that's great to hear that we know. I mean because they don't have the traditional crunch that these other studios have too. They don't usually announce a game until they're.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:03

It's just like oh, here's a game that come out in three to six months, like they don't even most of the games. If you ask me, zelda is a way to get it out. It's almost done Do you agree? You avoid the outside pressure of people wanting to play your game. Plus, the game is essentially finished by the time you're ready to talk about it, so you don't have to go for sure, I mean, I wish everybody would adapt that Cause, then you don't have the crunch, cause you're not crunching for anyone.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:32

Nobody knows about it, you know infamously.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:35

Cyberpunk is one of the worst games that they essentially announced before they were like properly starting development, or they announced when they were early on in development. Yeah, and not only does it, you know, like a decade you a crunch to to get it done in a reasonable time, but what you announced might not be there. There's there's outside pressure, there's investor and pressure to get this game out. If you just don't say anything about a game until you're essentially ready to announce it, which means you're just finishing up, you know onesies and twosies here for the game I think they learned from actually two games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:15:05

both in the same franchise, met Metroid Dread, which had you know ungodly, that game was announced for the DS. For God's sakes.

Mark Trobough: 1:15:12

And then, Metroid Prime 4. Next, I'm sure there was a break and then it fully restarted. There's no way that game was in constant development.

Brandon Hurles: 1:15:19

For sure. I mean, obviously they probably restarted it twice, it wasn't?

Mark Trobough: 1:15:22

a butchered product. So there was very obviously it started development and then they stopped for whatever reason.

Brandon Hurles: 1:15:27

Thankfully, metroid dread came out as a fantastic game you know, 10 out of 10 platformer for sure. But yeah, I mean I think they learned twice over from the same franchise, because Metroid prime four I mean same deal, like we know that it got restarted. They announced that, so it's, you know, been in development twice, um, yeah, so I mean those are both ones that they obviously had to have learned from and they've corrected themselves since Metroid dread, I mean Metroid prime four, uh, there's nothing else I can think of where it was like, uh, besides, like tears of the King, that it was very obviously coming, um, but to me it didn't feel like a thing, a crunch thing either.

Mark Trobough: 1:16:08

It felt like, oh, they had been working on this right after the first one, because I mean, if there was any game that you would imagine would be crunch, would be their main game, like zelda right, right which sells a lot of games and they just, they'll just delay it or be like hey, this is not coming out and no aspects.

Brandon Hurles: 1:16:21

Do any of these games feel like there was a crunch? Because you feel you can tell in these games like they're like hey, we just need another two years.

Mark Trobough: 1:16:27

So we're just going to take another two years and be like well, we'll tell you when the game's ready to come out.

Brandon Hurles: 1:16:31

Yep, no peer pressure on having to put stuff out.

Mark Trobough: 1:16:35

Oh, to be fair, I think the game needed more time, but, based off the timetable, I can't remember if we talked about this before, but they were like this is gonna be a launch title, so right. That's probably one of the few times where they they obviously like hey, you have this long to make a game right, but they're probably more realistic about it as well as like, hey, this is be a launch title, so you're getting a little bit more time, but you're only getting this much more time. You're not going to get another bump on this. This game has to be ready to go when the Switch launches, because it's going to be a launch title.

Brandon Hurles: 1:17:14

Yeah, I totally get that for sure I get it.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:17

There's crunch. That is unacceptable. But and we've talked about this before to some level you can't just work on a product forever. You have to have a deadline on the game so your budget doesn't go over. You know it needs to be delivered. You can't go over budget. So by to some degree there is going to be a crunch. But you know proper time management and just proper management of your company can mitigate a lot of that problem. Oh yeah, you know knowing, you know having like, hey, this needs to be done by here, this needs to be done by here. You have a decent be done by here. You have a decent amount of time. This is. You know you might have to crunch here or there, but with proper managed time you minimize the amount of crunch.

Brandon Hurles: 1:17:52

I agree. I mean, yeah, you obviously got a deadline. You have to. You know you're working with money here, so but yeah, I mean like the crunch, for instance, with Cyberpunk, which was the one that massively put it out there that that existed, which is like a year long, and the game obviously didn't need crunch.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:06

It needed like another two, three years in the oven, realistically 100%.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:09

I mean now, it's an excellent game, but that doesn't take away that it launched for crap.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:13

It took them like two years after they launched it to not just be a buggy mess.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:16

Right, yeah, which is not okay. I played off PC, which was like the least second, from what I understand, of all of them. My problem with it was I had the game just crash on me several times. Other than that, it was a pretty good experience, but I had it just crash and I lost all my progress. I'm like okay, this makes me not want to play this game anymore.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:41

Because I played it and beat it at launch. There's a good game here, but even on PC I may have had one or two crashes, but there was a lot around the edge. The core game here is good, as much as I thought the game was too short, but a lot of the performance, the NPCs, how certain things acted in the world. You can tell this game's not finished.

Brandon Hurles: 1:19:04

You can tell that it had problems. Kudos to them for fixing it, but it shouldn't have been released that way. It's still not okay.

Mark Trobough: 1:19:11

No, they should have delayed it, Just been like hey, this game needs another two years.

Brandon Hurles: 1:19:14

I mean, if it came out in 2022, then that would have been great.

Mark Trobough: 1:19:18

I mean, it would have been better, that game came out that game almost had essentially like by the time it even came out. So you're sitting there like who actually thought this game was.

Brandon Hurles: 1:19:27

Ready.

Mark Trobough: 1:19:28

And the other problem was when they initially announced it. They were still working on the Witcher 3 when that game was announced. Right, right, right. I think, we talked about it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:19:34

They announced the year Witcher 3 came out.

Mark Trobough: 1:19:36

But that means that game is in early development. They're still big. These are not small DLCs. For the Witcher 3 they were working right.

Mark Trobough: 1:19:43

So while they probably started to move over and were early on production, you think for a lot of games like a lot of these games are going to get you know about a year's worth of dlc. You know two, three dlcs or something like that. So you got to think, hey, a game is announced when they're done with this project. There's probably a little bit of uh, of r&r that needs to be done. People need to take, you know, a little bit of rest after the game before they come back and start working on another project.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:03

Yeah, so most games you're thinking at least a year and then that's assuming your pre-production is good and then you need to go into full production and if it's not a sequel to new ip, everything has to be built from the ground up. That's assuming there's no issues, no delays and stuff like that. Or you're trying to put you're spending time on stuff you want to have in the game. Because I think we went back and looked there was probably close to like about a legit three to four years worth of actual development done right game? Yeah, because it came out what December 2020 yes, which are three came out in what 2016, 2017 sounds about you're thinking, you know, realistically, the game went to full development probably around 2018, after the Witcher 3 DLC was fully done.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:41

So you know what's 18, 19, 20, 20 series. The game had, like you know, at best three to four years of development, which is just not enough time for what they were trying to do.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:51

Exactly. I just wanted to do this transition real quick Cause we didn't put this in the notes but it was one of the big topics for this week and completely forgot about. So I apologize. But the Witcher four was announced to officially be in production. They said it would be better, bigger. And was announced to officially be in production. They said it would be better, bigger and greater than the Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077.

Brandon Hurles: 1:21:11

They said they don't want to go back to those problems. In an actual quote here, they said next game we do will not be smaller and it will not be worse. It will be better and bigger and greater than the Witcher 3. And they continued we don't want to go back. Even if there will be some sweaty moments, maybe even some bad stuff happening, I think that we will try everything we can to make it even more than what we have achieved in the past years. So they're saying it's going to be a bigger game than anything they've done essentially. So we did get this this week earlier this week, like Monday or something. So I mean that's good to hear. I mean obviously we're both Witcher fans. What's your thoughts on this?

Mark Trobough: 1:21:55

We'll wait and see, because on top of that there was some maybe minor, but there was some at the very least, badly held PR when it comes to the Witcher 4. Okay, because an article done by over by that park place this is later down as you brought it up and stuff like that where they and there was an article where IGN says hey, the Witcher four is entered full scare production. There was a user by the name of at Raven rainfall where she said I'm not excited for it over the Witcher series, it's one of my favorite game series. He Witcher series, it's one of my favorite game series. Cd Projekt Red is too deep in the whole DEI, esg, ds. And then one of the directors or one of the senior designers essentially made a comment under that of the laughing with the hand and then a clown emoji after the fact.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:42

That doesn't sound good yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:22:44

Comes out and is like you know, like, oh, why are you saying this? Obviously, he came out and said immediate allegations, along with the misinterpreting. Just wow, clapping I mean I get, but then why bother to engage with it all? Right.

Mark Trobough: 1:22:57

Because he later, kind of CMS, says I'm sorry, I'm not going to engage with this conversation. You know over, you know a bunch of other stuff, but it's like why bother make the comment at all right and regardless of whether you know you're playing on it being there or not, it's just another example of you know people in your industry not knowing how to handle pr.

Game Junction: 1:23:15

If you don't like the criticisms, just ignore. Who are these better off hiring?

Mark Trobough: 1:23:17

anything than saying something because you think it's it's uh, in bad faith. And then it, you know, potentially it just takes one person on youtube to find this, and then it, you know, it blows up. And then everyone immediately is just now looking for something to criticize your game over.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:32

How long do you think it'll be before these companies learn not to do that? I mean, is this like that's an extra two thing?

Mark Trobough: 1:23:39

Financially, they have to figure out what does and doesn't work. Pr probably would help, and then, if you don't want it there at all, you have to essentially get people out of these head departments.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:50

I mean either that that it won't be there, the hell divers to PR stuff, right when they were literally putting people down. The guy was do you remember that whole deal?

Mark Trobough: 1:23:58

Yeah, like that's. That's the problem. It's just like you don't know how to have people run social media Right right, you're better off not even going after any criticism You're better off just ignoring it, because if you ignore it whether it's legit or it's just bad faith criticisms if you don't say anything, no one's going to know, no one's going to see anything, it's just going to fade into obscurity when you say something it's going to be interpreted a certain way and that's going to blow it up.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:22

And then you know. You know the internet does what it does best.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:24

Yeah, for sure.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:28

I'm with you, and there I mean, obviously it's not the first time like CD Projekt Red, for a while now you know they've received awards for. You know their, you know DEI and stuff like that. What was the exact award? Innovative approach to diversity, equity and inclusion in business. So there's to be fair, that's like a standard thing in the industry, but it's stuff that people are going to be like well, this wasn't here when you made these old games, so what are you going to change?

Mark Trobough: 1:24:51

We're just in a world now where people are looking for this stuff because they've been burnt enough times that they don't want to see it. The whole Gamergate and Gamergate 2.0, stuff like that these people are going to be looking for it and they find one instance of something. It's going to be like I'm not buying your game. We're going to make as much noise as possible because essentially, it's a, it's an all or nothing when it comes to this and we get it like you don't want to talk about bad stuff. Bad stuff you know bad news sells like let's be fair that that's more people are going to click on something negative than positive. But there are a lot of people that don't want. They just they don't want to talk about this, but there are those people that that are going to because they don't want it there at all yeah, I mean.

Mark Trobough: 1:25:34

I mean, to be fair, they're probably still extremely early on the witcher 4. We're not going to see this game anytime soon. This game's probably going to come out on the back end of this decade uh, 2028 to 2030, realistically. So I'll just take the approach of we will wait and see on this game. But that's the approach I've long since taken on every game. There could be no DI in this game at all, but it could still be a terribly written game and an extremely buggy game. It could be a bad game. We have no idea. To be fair, the bulk of the people that worked on Witcher 1, 2, and 3 probably aren't there for this game. It's been a long time.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:08

man Witcher 1 came out a long time ago.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:12

Yeah, you're talking about the same thing with Mass Effect 4, regardless of whether there's DEI stuff there at all the people that made these- first three games for Mass Effect 4, the bulk, very, very few of them, probably if any of them are still there for 4. So, regardless of that, you have no idea what you're going to get for a game. Cause, it's not the same. You know heads, it's not the same. You know writers, directors, animators, you know it's going to be different.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:34

You got different people Just by the by the nature of of how you know business works. It's 2025. How many people that were there when you got there are now working now?

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:47

Right, I mean, that makes sense. It's not specific to the game. It's going to be less than like 5% of people for sure.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:51

Yeah, names and faces change, so you know, regardless of what you want to say for stuff that you're looking to criticize, the game's not going to be the same because it's not made by the same people.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:00

Right, that makes sense.

Mark Trobough: 1:27:02

It's a good way look at it because I mean it's true, so for sure but I think everybody nobody should pre-order things unless you're absolutely sure you're going to play this game day one. You want to play it, I think, regardless of the game outside Nintendo, just because they've not had a bad track record. But even then I don't really pre-order the game, I buy it at launch. But just by principle I don't pre-order games. You should always just be like a wait-and-see approach, like yeah, I want this to be good, but let me wait and see just to make sure there's no problems. At the very least, all of not Skyrim but Bethesda is this just a buggy mess at launch? Do I need to wait three months for you to patch some stuff up?

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:41

Right, yeah, I mean, which is?

Mark Trobough: 1:27:42

I think that alone is the industry has a very bad reputation of making buggy games. Get it out now, we'll patch it in a year.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:52

That's what they do, they do and they still sell. You can't get enough people to care about it. Regardless of what we do, the majority they don't care. It's the hype, right, it's the FOMO. But to be fair.

Mark Trobough: 1:28:12

If your core audience is loud enough and obnoxious enough, the normies are going to see it. They're going to tell their friends don't buy this game. These normies, as you want to call them, the people that aren't super into the games industry and stuff like that that we are paying attention to everything. They're still on social media. You still see them when you go to work. That word's still going to spread Because, to be fair, most of the games they're playing it's like Call of Duty or it's like a sports game or something like that, where it's just the yearly version of the game, and they're playing the multiplayer where it's kind of irrelevant. I agree.

Mark Trobough: 1:28:44

For sure of irrelevant, I agree for sure, but it's just uh, want to give a shout out, obviously, section disc that he came back around the twitch we also had gamer freak, you know, just stopping by and stuff like that. Sweet, I guess was asking something you're gonna play day one. I don't know if it's, I guess whether it was Mass Effect 4 or Witcher 4 for either one for me as much as I want to, it's gonna be yeah, it's one to.

Brandon Hurles: 1:29:06

It's going to be generally it's a wait and see. It's one of those things where it's like, yeah, I want to, but I mean I have to see when the time comes, because I don't know, I might just wait For one, the patches, as you said, for Bethesda always has to happen.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:19

To be fair, Skyrim was a really buggy game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:29:22

It was a mess. I mean, and look like most their releases are I played Skyrim like a year after it came out.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:28

I love the game. It's just the technical problems with the engine and where it was at when it came out was like a buggy mess.

Brandon Hurles: 1:29:35

What? 15 years later, At least it feels like it's not been that long 15 years later and 10 releases later, it still feels like there's still some issues when you play. It's like it's still a little bit, but still got a bug. That's the problem.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:47

Like they've released this game how many times? And people are like this. Community has the charm of their games. Oh my gosh, there's the skyrim unofficial patch that fixes so many bugs. They've never bothered to patch any of those bugs. Yeah, that's, that's crazy. The community's already essentially done all the work for you, right, some of these bug mods, and you don't even bother to look at it and be like, hey, we should implement this stuff into our game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:09

Sonic the Hedgehog. So I don't know. I can't remember the guy's name off the top of my head for some reason. I knew who he was, but he did ports for and I believe I'm accurate on this Sonic 1, 2, and 3 on mobile and fixed a bunch. Fixed some issues that the games have Because it's such a fast-paced game that there's some minor issues. They hired that guy who did these mods for these games to be transferred there and he made Sonic Mania one of the best-selling Sonic games ever.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:39

I get it. Skyrim's made you a lot of money. You've released it how many times? And you couldn't either just find the money to pay some of these bug fix mods, At the very least just compensate them for it.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:50

I mean hire them or just pay them to use the mod. The work's already done for you. You don't even have to do anything, just implement the source code. I'm sure there's some extra work compared to a mod to actually make sure it actually fixes, but a lot of people have already done all this work. You can just find a way to implement this into your game. It makes no sense.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:07

To me, it's like get in touch with these people that care about your game Like they need to, I don't know be more self-aware. Maybe they don't care. Yeah, maybe they don't care.

Mark Trobough: 1:31:20

Nobody's going to put more work, effort into a game and nobody's going to care more about a game than people that mod to fix your game and the people that that are the most critical of your game because most people that are they don't want they're the ones that that if people didn't care about your game, they wouldn't talk about it Right, exactly.

Mark Trobough: 1:31:37

I'm sure there's some people that talk about the games and talk about the negative stuff and most people that those and that the post wouldn't get traction if people didn't care about an IP.

Mark Trobough: 1:31:48

Yeah, we all say it's fun to rip on Bethesda because their games are buggy, because they all are in jazz. But most people when they criticize it, it's because they care about this game. They want it to do well and it to be a fun game. This isn't bad. Most of this is not bad faith criticisms, I agree. I'm like sure you can always find bad faith stuff out there, but the bulk of some criticisms is usually not in bad faith. It's because they want to see this game do well. They love the game for what it is yeah and they don't like.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:15

You know they're criticizing stuff they don't. They don't like about it that you're doing and they want you to know. But some people just take it as you know criticism and they just immediately yeah you know, snap back and attack. When that's not the right way to handle criticism, you take it as okay. How much of this is good faith, how much is this bad faith? And try to figure out. Okay, what. What are people legit? Have legit concerns for for sure, take the take. Just to be fair, it's fairly easy to find a good faith and a bad faith argument. Usually in just the general length of a poster of legit criticism 100. You can usually tell if somebody played a game based off of did they write?

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:49

three paragraphs.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:50

Oh, that's right, you can read the game and tell really quickly did they actually play the game or not?

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:54

For sure, I'm with you.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:57

They put a lot of time into your game and they have legit criticisms. It's worth hearing them out to be like, okay, maybe this does need changed. Is this just a one-off or is there other criticisms kind of similar to this? You know there's a legit way to take and process that information 100%.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:14

I agree with you.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:14

But some people just want to be like nope, my way's the right way. You all are dumb and stupid. I'm going to go on social media and call you dumb or stupid and then be shocked when my next game, you know, loses money and doesn't sell as much. And I'm just going to continue to criticize you more. Like that's going to fix the problem.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:27

Yeah, it's not the way to handle it.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:31

Regardless of whether you even care, like some people just don't know how to deal with, with social media and proper like interactions. There's a reason why we call certain speak PR speak, because you're not trying to say something that's going to, you know, invoke a lot of criticisms from one way or the other. You're not trying to attack people or you're not trying to promise something that you might not be able to deliver. You're just trying to be middle of the road, be like we're aware and we will look into it, because that works, because it's the proper way to handle it. You're not going to inflame anything one way or the other. Yeah, people are going to criticize it because they don't like it, but it doesn't really go any further than that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:34:05

I'm with you. Yeah, I agree with you, for sure, 100%.

Mark Trobough: 1:34:09

Like the game we're going to play tomorrow no Man's Sky was notorious for fixing the problem and like, hey, the best thing you can do is just not say anything at all. Sometimes Just be like, hey, we're going to work on this and then we're just not going to say anything, because sometimes saying something is just not. It's whatever you say, it's not the right time, or nothing you say is going to fix the problem. Actually, you know, fixing a problem or making the changes your actions are going to speak louder than your actual words are sometimes but if you say the wrong things.

Mark Trobough: 1:34:40

People are going to take that and it's going to blow up. It's just more ammunition for people to throw back at you.

Brandon Hurles: 1:34:47

People are going to inspect every word you say when you put out a public statement. So you should be very aware that people are going to inspect everything that you put out and it's going to make headlines because of what you said.

Mark Trobough: 1:34:58

That's why everybody posts the same PR BS that we just talked about. It doesn't give you any ammunition. One way or the other, these people know it will be used 100%. But we also got some good news as well as somewhat of a discussion on certain games.

Mark Trobough: 1:35:19

So Space Marines 2, essentially in three months, has hit 5 million players, 5 million sales, which is really good for a game for a game, but yeah but some people were also taking the time to come out and criticize this because they're saying, uh, I believe this is the final fantasy seven remake, which is also the intergrade, so it's not like the most recent games, but it took, uh, what, seven or three years hit 7 million copies on those games and stuff like that, or three years to hit 7 million copies on those games and stuff like that. It's all two ways. The main thing people were criticizing this for is the fact that exclusives don't carry the weight that they used to back in the day. As far as trying to get to sell your console. Final Fantasy sold the 7 remakes sold 7 million copies, which is really good. But would it have sold far more if it wasn't an exclusive on the PlayStation, if it was on Xbox, if it was on the PC and stuff like that?

Mark Trobough: 1:36:16

It was all these that launched because, to be fair, this is a Square Enix game. It's not a Sony-owned IP. For the most part, it's been primarily attached to the Sony, but Square Enix is, it's its own company. So the main thing was is exclusivity just bad for games in general? As far as the overall sales, we talked about Sony and Microsoft at the very least teasing with the PC market at the very least, and in teasing maybe some of their first, some of their first party games going to the other console they did so just just a few months.

Brandon Hurles: 1:36:51

maybe some of their first party games going to the other console. They did so just a few months ago. We did talk about how Square Enix said that, yes, they are not leaving these games anymore exclusively to PlayStation, that they are going multi-platform, so they want to do that. They signed a deal, though, with Sony to release them for just PlayStation.

Mark Trobough: 1:37:07

They signed an actual deal, yeah, but to be fair, most of these contracts, you know, there's usually a stipulation to it's for a certain amount of years. You can break this contract, but there's usually some kind of penalty on top of it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:37:20

Yeah, they're not going to do that. Usually a lot of contracts.

Mark Trobough: 1:37:23

There's no contracts to ironclad. There's no, you have to do this. They're usually like hey, if you want out of this, that's fine, but you owe us X, y and Z to back out early.

Brandon Hurles: 1:37:33

I think the thing is because it is. It'll still remain to be their biggest platform for Final Fantasy for sure. There's no doubt about that. I can see why.

Mark Trobough: 1:37:41

Sony wants this, but, to be fair, it might benefit Sony, but it's probably hurting Square Enix. If this game had been launched on PC and Xbox, it probably would have sold two to three times as many copies, to be fair.

Brandon Hurles: 1:37:56

Yeah, I don't think Xbox would have made. That was a discussion when this came up, because they were talking about is Final Fantasy finally coming to Xbox? Again, I don't think Xbox would make that big of an impact for Final Fantasy, although it would make some sort of impact. I just don't think Final Fantasy on Xbox is a big thing, so I don't feel like it would have been. Oh, this actually sold 8 million copies. I don't feel that way. Anyway, I could be wrong. But PC is definitely the other big, Obviously Nintendo, but for what it was, it couldn't come out on Switch. I mean, that's very obvious. But yeah, they were talking about Switch 2, Xbox PC. Are these games coming over? And they're finally doing that with Final Fantasy XIV. It's now on everything, including mobile.

Mark Trobough: 1:38:40

So they are doing it, but the problem, I guess but we kind of talked about this earlier in the episode though, by the time these games come to PC or they eventually come to seven, the hype is gone. Like you, you, there's a lot of sales that you probably lost. They might be, they might trickle in, but you're not going to get the the same sales, you know, four years later on a PC, compared to what you probably would have gotten at launch when there was all the hype. Hype does matter for some of these games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:39:04

It does 100%, it's very important yeah, but yeah. But that's good on the 5 million players. We got a little small area.

Mark Trobough: 1:39:14

We got a question from GamerFreak. Okay Was asking favorite Super Nintendo game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:39:22

Gamerfreak was asking for something new to play that's retro asking for something new to play that's retro, I mean I can list in my top 10. Earthbound, link to the Past, super Metroid, f-zero would be probably. Those would all be in my top. Of course, the 11 out of 10 platformer that is Super Mario World is a very obvious choice there, but those would be some of my top.

Mark Trobough: 1:39:50

Yeah, because I think for that one specifically and we've talked about this before it's hands down Yoshi's Island on the SNES. It's my all-time favorite game for that console, but it's not like there's other games to varying degrees, because I like.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:04

Super Mario Kart on the.

Mark Trobough: 1:40:05

SNES, as much as that game is brutally difficult to play. It's not aged. Well, you know, all the other Mario games on the SNES are good. Yeah, obviously. You have the OG Zelda, you get Super Metroid, ghouls N' Ghosts, I guess technically, earth Defense Force is on there, though I've never played it on the SNES.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:23

I didn't even know that.

Mark Trobough: 1:40:25

No, I didn't either. I guess what you have? The OG, donkey Kong Country, which I did play. You know all the F-Zero games that are on that. Well, no, I take that back if you're able to. I hit, I hit a button and my screen did something that's not good it like full screened the page that I was on and I can't not make it full screen. Uh, oh, that's not good. It like full screened the page that I was on and I can't not make it full screen.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:50

Oh, that's not good.

Mark Trobough: 1:40:54

Give me a second.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:55

No worries, but yeah, I mean to add on that Chrono Trigger, super Mario RPG. There's so many good RPGs for that. I mean Final Fantasy four, for God's sakes. Okay, there we go. There's so many good JRPGs.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:13

I had to say Chrono Trigger before I hit one of the F keys and I had to figure out which one I was going. Chrono Trigger is an absolute great game on there, or just general RPG.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:25

Yeah, for sure.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:29

I guess you have some of the older Final Fantasies that we talked about, that they were re-releasing. You talk about the Secret of Mana games. Those are on the SNES but they've been since re-released and stuff like that. The Earthworm Gym is a really good game, for sure. Great platform, a very good game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:47

For sure. Great platform, a very unique game.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:50

Yeah, I guess, just because I can just ask it. As far as favorite Metroid game, for me it'd be Prime 2. It's my favorite Metroid game which is on the GameCube.

Brandon Hurles: 1:42:02

I guess, besides Hunters, if I was to do a 2D Metroid, I love having an affinity for the Samus Returns remake for the 3DS. I love that game. I feel like because it came out on the 3DS and not the Switch, it did not get the love it deserved, but an absolutely excellent game. If you ask me, it's one of those Metroid games that's like perfect. It has very minimal I mean, I can't think of anything off the top of my head issues, and then, of course, the God's Year, federation Force yeah, but this other one.

Mark Trobough: 1:42:41

This is an article that's old, but I saw it earlier this week kind of making the rounds on social media and stuff like that. This is an article back from January of this year from Bounding Into Comics. That was Bandai Namco. Their localization team essentially came out and said, yeah, they tell the Japanese devs like hey, you need to censor this. The exact quote was we tell them that the cleavage is a bit too exposed or the skirt's a bit too short, to where the overall censorship, or the localizer's telling from the source you need to change certain things.

Mark Trobough: 1:43:15

It feels like this has been an ongoing issue with localization in general, but stuff being made one way. This has been going on since the beginning of video games you have to change your original vision because we the handful of us don't like it. We, you have to change your original vision because we the handful of us, don't like it. We want to change it. I mean, and then the then the actual audience comes out and criticizes like why is this being changed?

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:35

this has happened forever. If you ever look at I mean like, for instance, covers for video games, you look at a japanese release and then the american release is covered up. Like this has been happening forever.

Mark Trobough: 1:43:46

To be fair, what was it? The 90s and 2000s? It was the conservative right that didn't like this, and now it's coming from the left. It feels like as far as the whole US ideological aisle.

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:58

It does. It feels like a shift.

Mark Trobough: 1:44:00

But at every single step. It doesn't matter. The core audience is kind of like we don't want this. Stop doing this. It's been like this for 40 years. As long as gaming's been a thing, people want to censor stuff. I was like we don't want this. Stop doing it. Why are you doing this? You're not the one buying the game. We are we're telling you we don't like this.

Brandon Hurles: 1:44:21

Why do?

Game Junction: 1:44:21

you not listen to the audience. We obviously got the ESRB.

Brandon Hurles: 1:44:22

That makes sense, because I mean does it though for the game? I mean some games need to be probably rated, sorry To be fair.

Mark Trobough: 1:44:30

There are games that A 12 year old shouldn't be playing For sure. But the game shouldn't even be censored. You just need to be like hey, this is for. This is not right. That way you're not having a mature Bloody, you know rated game. Being played by like an 8 year old.

Brandon Hurles: 1:44:45

If the game's T for teen or M like, why does it matter at that point? Why does it even matter, like who cares why?

Mark Trobough: 1:44:54

are you? I mean there is some level of regulation. It's kind of like with TV ratings and stuff like that. You know there's people saying, hey, this is inappropriate for certain ages.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:01

It needs to be a range, so like yeah, but if it's rated not for little kids, then why does it matter? Especially, if it's a rated M game, then you definitely shouldn't be censoring anything. Why does it matter?

Mark Trobough: 1:45:13

If it's rated, M yeah it's stupid why isn't this game. This is a mature rated game. If you're under the age of 17, you can't even play this game if you wanted to. You're not supposed to. So why are you complaining about kids? If you're complaining that your kids are going to play an M-rated game, you're just a bad parent.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:30

There's no way around it. Don't buy the game for them, don't let them get it, take it away. I mean something. Don't ruin it for everybody else.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:38

I guess at this point it doesn't matter who won the political aisle. Somebody wants to censor something and the audience is the one getting screwed at us.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:45

Stuff at the end of the day. Yeah, it's stupid, it's dumb.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:49

I think we all collectively say we don't like censorship.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:51

No, not a fan.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:52

It's one of the ideas like hey, if you don't like it, don't watch it, don't play it. It's as simple as that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:58

Yeah, no, I'm with you, I agree.

Mark Trobough: 1:46:02

We did get this with some, so I guess the Dragon Age was a little bit of news this week. So they made a post essentially saying laugh reacts will get you banned. We're not going to tolerate anyone that laugh reacting to a personal post of someone when it's not meant to be funny and you're only laughing because you're making fun of them or being a bigot, obviously laugh reacts is exclusive to their Facebook, but it's the same thing.

Mark Trobough: 1:46:26

If you've never been on Facebook. Regardless of what you say, it's one of the more popular social media sites out there. Essentially, the Lafayette is actually used for two things. One, because it's funny or you don't like what the person's saying. It's used as a there's no thumbs down. It's the only way to say we disagree. I'm sitting here like. This is just.

Brandon Hurles: 1:46:44

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life.

Mark Trobough: 1:46:47

Like this isn't going to fix your game. People have legit, People have criticisms over it. I'm like that's great. If you want to censor them, that's great, but that's not good PR.

Brandon Hurles: 1:46:55

It's not going to bring people to buy your game. It makes no sense to me at all.

Mark Trobough: 1:47:00

To be fair, this just brings more attention to this. If you knew this was going to get found out and was going to get blown up on social media, you'd have been better off either just banning people outright or just ignoring it until people forgot about your game. In another two to six months, no one's going to care about your game anymore. People are just going to ignore it. It's going to be your small little community that's going to be left. It's still irrelevant, because the game just came out. If you just didn't say something or just didn't do this, eventually these people are going to go away. Yep, because, to be fair, you know, people laugh, people do stuff like this part of it Cause, hey, I get a rise out of you. Let's, let's, let's dig harder, let's, let's put the knife and twist it even harder because you, you apparently don't like it, like a hundred percent. That's what people do. People do this kind of because they're trolling on you, but when you acknowledge it, it just means that their trolling's working.

Mark Trobough: 1:47:56

Yep, yeah, and then on this, at least on X, it's just people just laughing at the game. Laughing at these people and just being like this is stupid. You're asking for more people to come after you. You're keeping your game too relevant when your game's not doing well, when you'd be better off just letting a lot of this just slide away? People are going to find something else to latch on to.

Brandon Hurles: 1:48:18

For sure, I agree.

Mark Trobough: 1:48:21

It was a small thing that I saw, but it's just. Y'all can't stay out of the I don't want to say the news, because it's more smaller scale, but you can't keep any kind of negative press out of the news at this point Because even if it's something small like this, this game's relevant enough. Somebody's going to latch onto it. I guess, kind of like what we're doing here or some other people on YouTube that especially cover the drama and the anime and games industry. They're going to take that and it's going to spread to more people and more people are going to talk about it, more people are going to be critical of you and it keeps the negative press around longer, when you realistically don't want that happening For sure. At the very least, if you care about your core fanbase, just stop talking about it altogether.

Mark Trobough: 1:49:02

Yeah, nope, I'm with you but I guess here's the same thing with the with Assassin's Creed. This wasn't in this article that I saw something. Someone mentioned something about a. By the time this game comes out, the whole drama about Yasuke isn't going to be the top 10 criticisms of this drag of a whatever. I've already forgotten. What a shadows for dragon? Yeah, because they did come out and they said the EULA for this game wants Ubisoft to be able to monitor your RAM, for whatever reason. Yeah, it's dumb.

Mark Trobough: 1:49:40

Now they're just like no, we want to monitor certain things on your stuff. Obviously, we already know this. It's got a Denuvo anti-tamper DRM, which is a single-player game that doesn't do anything. It's just so stupid. And now you want access to people's. In the EULA you're saying, hey, we want access to your PC for any reason yeah, I don't support that first of all, this is irrelevant. Second of all, it's just more salt on the wound of people not wanting to buy your game, or more ammunition to people to criticize your game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:14

For sure, I agree.

Mark Trobough: 1:50:17

It wasn't something big, but it's just like man Ubisoft you just every week it's just some bad news about this game is coming out.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:24

I know.

Mark Trobough: 1:50:25

This game is. Most of this criticism is not even about the core game at this point. It's just stuff around the game that's like why is this here? Why are you asking for this stuff? And, to be fair, this could be in other games. But you're a big game. You get a lot of criticisms. You have a target on your back of people to just find things to criticize your game of. But then again, I think it's fair. Why do you need to monitor how much RAM my computer is using for your game, even if you're going to use it for future development? That's access you don't need for my game. If you can't figure this out on your own machines, that's your problem.

Brandon Hurles: 1:51:00

I'm with you.

Mark Trobough: 1:51:02

But the fact, even with the anti-cheat, you don't need kernel-level access to my computer for any reason. It's way too invasive it is. You shouldn't even be allowed to get that level of access for anti-cheater, a gamer or this kind of level stuff. This stuff should be blocked outright. Yeah, and if they want this level of access, regardless of it's on the box or on a store page, this information should be out there like hey, we, this is what we're going to do on your computer. That way you know if they're being super invasive and they don't need that kind of access.

Brandon Hurles: 1:51:36

Yeah, there should be no way to even do this. This should not be a thing that they're able to do, period.

Mark Trobough: 1:51:40

And, in fairness, yeah, they might not do anything negative with it, but who's to say?

Mark Trobough: 1:51:44

somebody doesn't hack your servers or there's a bad actor within your company that won't take advantage of it For sure. The likelihood within your company that doesn't take it won't take advantage of it for sure. The likelihood of it's really low and most people just most people aren't worth the time to go after on their computer. A hacker is not going to go after some random joe schmoe who has like ten thousand dollars to his name. You're not getting anything out of it. You're gonna run through a major corporation. That's that's where the power and money is at. Yeah, but it's just like, at the end of the day, why do you need this level of access? Like, why are you even asking for this? Why is this even a thing?

Brandon Hurles: 1:52:12

Yeah, it makes sense, but at the very least I'm.

Mark Trobough: 1:52:14

I'm good that a lot of this stuff's becoming more prevalent. You know, in the in the general zeitgeist is because this is more of a PC problem. But like hey, start looking more like has it? How many other games are asking for this stuff? Because, let's be fair, nobody's reading your terms of service, nobody's reading the eua like nobody's. They're just hitting, accept on this stuff and playing the game yeah, crazy uh, fun times.

Mark Trobough: 1:52:42

Uh, we, I, we, I did. I can't speak. We somewhat talked about this, I tagged it for you, but obviously, obviously, the Legends of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom. Surprisingly quick, the Nintendo actually came out and gave us an official timeline placement for this game. Yeah, which. I don't know if it's relevant, but you know people like to know and they want to know. So we did get officially from Nintendo that this is in the Hero Defeated timeline after A Link Between Worlds, but before the original Legends of Zelda game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:53:11

And it makes sense. We said it makes sense Looking at Ganon the pig monster.

Mark Trobough: 1:53:15

Ganon makes a lot of sense. This isn't a downfall to time, because this is what the only timeline this version of Ganon is in. Yes, is the hero defeated as far as the story goes, it's irrelevant. I guess it makes sense. Zelda doesn't know who Link is goes, it's irrelevant, I guess it makes sense. Zelda doesn't know who link is. So it's not necessarily tied to what we thought be.

Mark Trobough: 1:53:35

You know the, the new timeline, essentially that we're dealing with, uh, but and I don't think as far as the placement probably doesn't over overwhelm overall affect the overall story, uh, but it's, it's just interesting to know they're, they're still, they're not like completely disregarding the old timelines. Is what this is telling us, what they're doing with the, with the breath of the wild tears kingdom? We have no idea as far as the overall timeline placement, because we know that's kind of vague. It's just not officially a part of any of the other three. But this just kind of comes out and says zelda nintendo's still willing to, to put games in the other timeline. So that means we get another game in the in the child timeline, another game in the other timeline. So that means we get another game in the child timeline, another game in the adult timeline potentially? Yeah, I guess that brings hope if you want more sequels to some of those games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:54:17

I mean this makes sense. I mean, for a lot of people they're going to say it doesn't even matter, who cares.

Mark Trobough: 1:54:22

I mean for the most part, it doesn't. For us what I mean yeah, so if you're not sure, the official. So it goes Ocarina Timeline here defeated, and then it goes Link of the Past, link's Awakening, which we did get, the remake for which is Link's Awakening, oracle Ages and Seasons, which hopefully we get. Was that coming to NSO? I think they just came to NSO yeah, they're on NSO Talking about some of these remakes.

Brandon Hurles: 1:54:55

Yeah, I'm hoping. I think that those should be next. I really, really do.

Mark Trobough: 1:55:00

Then it goes Link Between Worlds, triforce Heroes it's Echoes of Wisdom. And then before, technically, before Zelda 1 and Zelda 2, it's the decline of the Hyrule Kingdom, if those matter. Because obviously before A Link to the Past you have the Imprisoning War. If you're super into the greater lore and stuff like that, the Imprisoning War and the decline of Hyrule was still there. So it's after Triforce Heroes, but it's before the decline of Hyrule. So the idea because I still haven't beat this game does this game lead into the decline of Hyrule? Is this like a, the precursor to that, or is it just? This is just where they decided to put the game at Right? Yeah, cause I think I feel like that would be an interesting thing to talk about. I don't know, it's been, it's been a few years. They want to start putting games closer to some of these major events and stuff like that it makes sense for sure sorry, I just wanted to shout out because Gamer Freak did redeem something.

Mark Trobough: 1:56:03

It's the Fuhoku Rari. Appreciate that. It's just for the podcast. That stuff's not going to pop on screen and stuff like that. Appreciate it. Sorry, I just wanted to put that out there real quick. It's only to say the podcast, that stuff's not going to pop on screen and stuff like that. Appreciate it. Sorry, I just wanted to put that out there real quick.

Mark Trobough: 1:56:15

It's only to say for the podcast. The rest of our streams that do that. That stuff is still good to pop on screen and stuff like that. Yeah, definitely, I guess. Did you have anything else to say about that?

Brandon Hurles: 1:56:28

No, I mean yeah, it makes sense to me. Yeah, I guess did you have anything else to say about that? No, I mean yeah, it makes sense to me.

Mark Trobough: 1:56:32

So yeah, so we did have some rumors for the Nintendo Switch. This is going to keep happening, obviously, until we get the Switch, because what they say, their fiscal year ends in March of 2025. So we know, by March of 2025, we're going to have an announcement for the Switch, and this was posted on Tom's Guide. But essentially, one of the major rumors was that the Switch will get announced in January with a March 2025 release. I could believe the January announcement.

Mark Trobough: 1:57:07

I don't know if I believe the March release. That's just too close, two months from an announcement to a release for a console, a game. I could see it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:57:15

I mean April would make more sense to me than March.

Mark Trobough: 1:57:19

When the Switch came out. It came out in March, but it was announced in the fall. It was a good six-month build-up which, to be fair, a console probably needs a good six-month PR build-up and stuff like that Obviously needs a good six month PR build up and stuff like that. Obviously, we've had rumors about they want 7 million units ready to go at launch, but you still need to deal with this. As far as the online, the in-store stuff with a lot of your retailers, as well as just the overall general marketing, it's the switch. It's going to make the rounds. Obviously, for those of us that are super into this stuff, we're going to right the average joe schmo probably needs more than two months if they want to, you know, think about buying this console.

Mark Trobough: 1:57:58

yeah, yeah there's a lot of people like, hey, I want to buy it, but, like two months, I might need two, more than two months to find you know, money to buy this console doesn't seem like enough time at all.

Brandon Hurles: 1:58:06

That's to me. That's, um it kind of dis Like. The spring makes sense, but the announcement only two months before I just I can't see Nintendo doing that.

Mark Trobough: 1:58:18

I could see this where like yeah, because we pretty much said, hey, if they didn't announce it before Thanksgiving, it's not coming. It's not getting announced this year After the new year. Yeah, they're just not. It doesn't make any sense to announce something in the middle of holiday season, where you want people to buy your products. As much as.

Mark Trobough: 1:58:33

Nintendo pretty much came out and said hey, they're internally nothing's changed. As far as from what they said I could believe a January announcement. But I mean, at that point you're looking late. Spring probably the earliest to get a release. They probably still want a good four to six months at the minimum from announcement a release. They should probably still want a good four to six months at the minimum from announcement to release.

Brandon Hurles: 1:58:53

Yeah, I'm with you.

Mark Trobough: 1:58:54

Because, to be fair, they're probably not shipping, they're not going to ship this to retailers until it's announced, and that's still going to take time to ship a lot of that stuff worldwide. Yeah, yeah for sure. Obviously, this stuff's in development, but Nintendo is probably holding on to this, onto this because they know the moment they start shipping stuff out and it gets to retailers somebody's going to get their hands on it and will have less than reputable ideas to get cloud on the internet. It's just going to happen.

Mark Trobough: 1:59:20

You can't control what retailers do, so the best that they can do is to have some kind of lock on the console. But if somebody gets their hands on it, they're going to be able to do something with it, especially if it's backwards compatible.

Mark Trobough: 1:59:32

Yeah, yeah I'm with the very least it's like hey, I've got this, this is what it looks like, this is the internals and you know all that fun stuff. So I 100, I could believe nintendo will probably even. But when, even when the announcement, they're gonna still, if it's like a six month wait, they're probably not gonna start shipping stuff till within a what a month of release to minimize people getting their hands on it early yeah, or people that work in some of these places getting their hands on it early. You, just you, have to.

Brandon Hurles: 1:59:58

Yeah, I mean, at this point we seem like Mario and Luigi Brothership, whatever games are at launch and stuff like that. People are taking pictures of the games before they were even out in their hands at home. Stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 2:00:09

I'll say this there is a way you could prevent these consoles from being used, but I don't think Nintendo would do it. The idea that to activate the console, to activate some of the stuff, it would require an internet connection when you initially start it up. It's the only way you could legit prevent stuff from getting it leaked early. I don't think that's the move. Microsoft tried this a decade ago with a console that most people are gonna have it plugged into the internet anyways right when they get it, and that got a lot of backlash because you got the console even if it's just for startup.

Mark Trobough: 2:00:41

You know, even certain games and stuff like that, still it's still legit criticism. So yeah, and you know, if you don't have that lock on there like oh, they could have like an internal battery lock on it, but that's easy to overcome if you know what you're doing with the hardware. To fool the hardware, to be like, oh no, you can unlock it. I think the move is just to give some time before and then ship it closer To ship as late as you possibly can to your retailers.

Brandon Hurles: 2:01:02

Which realistically could be a week before. I think that's enough time A week Because they're going to make sure these get there. Two to four weeks would be realistic, yeah, but I mean I think you can get it a little bit closer, because I mean shipping, you're looking at like two days. To be fair, if there's a problem maybe four days.

Mark Trobough: 2:01:22

The initial batch that gets shipped out is going to be 100% pre-orders, so unless somebody that works there pre-ordered it and they're just going to take their copy early, I mean that's what they did. Yeah, that's what would minimize some of the problems, but it's not going to be a net zero.

Brandon Hurles: 2:01:36

For sure, I'm with you.

Mark Trobough: 2:01:40

So it's just one of those. You just have to wait to ship it until you're as close as possible to launch yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 2:01:43

Yeah, definitely.

Mark Trobough: 2:01:45

If it wasn't backwards compatible, you could ship it early and then just not ship your games out till later, which would be you know another way to kind of deal with it, but yeah, yeah, for sure I think at this point we just have to. I don't know if it, if it didn't happen, they they handled it with the switch, with the, with the switch itself. They're probably gonna do the same thing they did with the switch too.

Mark Trobough: 2:02:05

So yep, I agree I just have something in the back of my nose that I can't get rid of, but at the end of the day, what is it? Sorry, I completely lost my train of thought.

Brandon Hurles: 2:02:22

Oh, you're good yeah.

Mark Trobough: 2:02:24

Oh hey, section Dis. I noticed it because Gamer Freak did it. We appreciate it using some of the community points and stuff like that. But for the podcast that stuff's just not going to air on screen and stuff like that. So I do apologize. It's good for every other stream. It's just not going to pop on for the podcast because it would affect with some of the recording stuff that we post up elsewhere. Appreciate it. Sorry that's not popping on screen but obviously when we stream tomorrow and stuff like that, we'll be back on screen. You'll be able to hear anything. So I just want to give the quick shout out for that stuff like that absolutely yeah, we already talked about the CD Projekt Red.

Mark Trobough: 2:03:08

Oh yeah, there was. I think I should put these together. There was some legit criticisms for ubisoft oh, if you thought they the other stuff was bad. Uh, allegedly ubisoft was trying to pressure steam to get rid of the concurrent player count. Uh that way, oh my god because obviously when their games do bad, the steam concurrent player count, people immediately go to like, oh, this looks terrible and we we can use the concurrent count to to realize how little people are buying and playing your game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:03:38

Yeah, 100 steam's not going to do this, but it's still a bad.

Mark Trobough: 2:03:42

Look that ubisoft reportedly even going after this but they even tried.

Brandon Hurles: 2:03:45

That's stupid. Yeah, I mean why crazy.

Mark Trobough: 2:03:49

Oh, because they went back, because the for this article on that park place, you can see the all-time player peak for a game For Twitch on Steam and stuff like that. So you have players right now, 24-hour peak and then the all-time peak Gotcha, yeah, this was great because it's got November dates through the 24th on here. This game on Steam peaked all time with less than 2,500 people and that was, I think, on the 24th of November. It hit its all-time peak right now. That's the stance right now from what the Steam DB was grabbed on this article posted on the 26th, so a few days earlier this week. It's like Wednesday or something like that. Interesting, oh, yeah, because this game launched on Steam on the 20th, 22nd, something like that. It launched about a week ago on Steam. So, yeah, okay, interesting, and those numbers for a Ubisoft game are atrocious. That means they made no money on it. They're losing money on this game For sure.

Brandon Hurles: 2:04:52

I mean it doesn't look like a game. But before we go quickly over to the big news, just get and show what we got for the week. I'll show real quick one of them I already streamed, which was Sandland. I wanted to pick this up. When I got a deal, I raved on how much I enjoyed the demo 20 bucks for Sandland so I was ecstatic about that because it still just came out this year. $20 is a steal on it. I'm really happy about that.

Brandon Hurles: 2:05:19

Also got now this one's a little weird because I don't know on the Switch too, but it came out for $20, and I really liked the series. So I was like, ah, should I get it again? I did. I love Star Ocean. This is should I get it again? I did. I love Star Ocean.

Brandon Hurles: 2:05:34

This is Second Story R. So this is like kind of the HD 2D thing that they did with Star Ocean, which is another JRPG series I absolutely love, like Ys. So I was pretty happy with it because I actually had not played the Second Story R yet. I have it on Switch, but I haven't played it yet and I was. I think I would. I think I'm going to play it on PlayStation first, but I'm definitely really excited about it and looking forward to checking that out. And then, for the second time, I got Stellar Blade here, had to rebuy it, very happy about it, but I am stuck at a major boss that I cannot beat. And it's one of the first times in a game in a very long time where I got so irritated I just quit the game. I was done.

Mark Trobough: 2:06:17

What boss was it? Do you know?

Brandon Hurles: 2:06:20

The girl that's in the beginning. I forget her name. You fight her again and she's got a robotic arm and wings.

Mark Trobough: 2:06:28

Is it the original, that monster-looking thing?

Brandon Hurles: 2:06:31

Yeah, she turns into a monster with a helmet. Is it the original, that monster-looking thing? Yeah, she turns into a monster with a helmet. She pulls the helmet down. Are you past the space elevator, then I'm in the sewer area, I'm in the sewers, so this is the very end of the sewers.

Mark Trobough: 2:06:44

The girl that you she's your teammate at the beginning. I cannot.

Brandon Hurles: 2:06:49

I tried probably about 20 times.

Mark Trobough: 2:06:53

She's one of the first real tricky bosses of the game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:06:56

I could not. It pissed me off. To be fair, it was. I'm like why did I rebuy this? I was just going to go and get stuck five hours later.

Mark Trobough: 2:07:06

That's one of the ones. You have to learn some of her moves and you have to be fully stocked up on uh, on like health and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 2:07:12

I am as stocked, as you can get on that and still what's weird about stellar blade is you can have like 12 of the item but still only a certain amount will ever show in your inventory in your bag you can keep, you can you have like your overall.

Mark Trobough: 2:07:26

You can keep collecting stuff over and over, but on your person you can only have so many. So, if you run out on your person and you go to a location, you can pull those out.

Brandon Hurles: 2:07:34

I would have had her beat if you could have more than one revive. And I was just telling you how. I only had to use a revive once on an enemy just recently.

Game Junction: 2:07:42

I can't bring out a revive. You can only revive once.

Mark Trobough: 2:07:49

I have like 10 way to be like hey, are there any upgrade stuff that I've missed so far that I can kind of work on? That would also require you doing every single side mission and exploring every nook and cranny as you go through the game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:08:00

I mean it's too late for me. I'm right at the end of the sewer, so there's no way to do any more side missions.

Mark Trobough: 2:08:05

Did you watch a?

Brandon Hurles: 2:08:06

No, I haven't watched a video yet no, I was just trying to do it naturally and just couldn't do it.

Mark Trobough: 2:08:11

I mean, I would say this the combat I'm not good at.

Brandon Hurles: 2:08:14

I like the game, but I'm not good at Souls combat period. I'm just not.

Mark Trobough: 2:08:18

I don't even really think it's really proper Souls.

Brandon Hurles: 2:08:21

The only thing that after a while oh dude, it's got the Souls hard and combat.

Mark Trobough: 2:08:24

You get used to the game, the combat, the game goes on.

Brandon Hurles: 2:08:28

obviously you can level up your weapon damage and stuff like that. Yeah, but so do the enemies.

Mark Trobough: 2:08:31

Most of the mobs become trivial after a while, but after a while the only thing that ever really gave me a struggle was the bosses, and I don't think there's a single boss in the game that I got through without dying, at least once or twice.

Brandon Hurles: 2:08:40

For the most part, yeah, I'll definitely pick it back up, because it was all that I was playing.

Mark Trobough: 2:08:46

To be fair, she's not the hardest boss in the game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:08:49

Yeah, that's great to know. See, that's what I don't want to know.

Mark Trobough: 2:08:51

I'm like why did I?

Brandon Hurles: 2:08:52

rebuy this why.

Mark Trobough: 2:08:53

You know that monster that kills. Taki at the beginning of the game yeah, because I don't know how much of it is in my livestream. You fight that boss very, very near the end of the game. It's like the last three bosses variant of that boss. Once you get to that boss, if that makes sense, I think that monster is like yeah.

Mark Trobough: 2:09:16

If not the hardest, one of the two hardest games Because, to be fair, the final boss of the game is also very challenging. But I think, yeah, that monster is probably even harder Because you have to play through the game enough to start learning attack patterns. Attack patterns in certain things are very important Knowing how to properly dodge where you can, because you do have limited healing, so you have to be able to learn. You have to know dodge in some of the counters for the different colors, know how to react to those, as well as just generally know what the monster is going to do.

Brandon Hurles: 2:09:48

That's really the only thing that reminded me of the Souls-like is you have to, you have to learn, you have to know how bosses attack you in the different stages. Um, you got to be able to dodge and then you've got to be able to what's the word? I'm thinking of attack them after they attack you, the yeah, the counter, like, because the one thing is like when the, when, the, when your sword hits blue, the monster goes blue, then your sword goes blue.

Mark Trobough: 2:10:08

You're able to counter, dodge and stuff like that to do damage, yeah, uh, well, some of those you can just uh dodge, some of those you can parry, uh, but just just knowing, like hey, when the, when the without, without like the, the color notice, and when the monster, when the, the boss comes at you, some stuff you just you're better off just dodging and slowly trying to dodge, dodge, do what damage where you can. But some bosses are more difficult than others. But it also comes down to if you've been trying to, I guess, say min-max, do as much as you can to continuously level up and find stuff where you can. For the most part, that also matters, because if you're ignoring some of the collectible stuff, that will level up your healing, level up your damage, level up the BP and stuff like that it just makes it harder to get through the game because you can.

Brandon Hurles: 2:10:57

It takes longer to do some of your more powerful attacks. That makes sense. I mean it does make sense.

Mark Trobough: 2:10:59

Yeah, I did the game on normal mode. But I had. I had all my my in-game gear from my first playthrough that was also on normal, so I some of the some of the content combat became super trivial on my second playthrough. It probably should have made it hard instead of normal. Yeah, but just generally knowing the ins and outs, how the combat works and then just slowly willing down.

Brandon Hurles: 2:11:18

So you get the best stuff rolls over on your second playthrough.

Mark Trobough: 2:11:22

Yeah, it's a new game plus.

Brandon Hurles: 2:11:24

Oh, okay. All right, gotcha.

Mark Trobough: 2:11:26

All the stuff you've leveled up, all the gear you have swaps over and you can continue to play on a normal playthrough or go to easy on a second playthrough if you're just trying to rush through the game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:11:34

Well, the last thing I got was this Xbox controller. I wanted to get it to match the other one I picked up the week before last, which was the clear one. So this is the Vapor Blue see-through one. The thing is about this controller. One of the things I really love that it's kind of underlooked on these specific ones are these grips that are on here that aren't on any other controller. They aren't on switch bro, they aren't on the PS five controller and they're really nice. It just feels really good. So I'll mostly use these for for PC and then obviously for the series X too. But I just thought they're honestly, I got it for like 35 bucks. They're pretty much brand new. They just came out. So I was like, yeah, I'll grab that deal. That's a really good deal. They're generally just good controllers, period. If you ask me, other than not having the PS5's haptics, they're the best controller. Do I use them the most? Not at all, but when I start doing more with PC I'll have more opportunities to use them and stuff too.

Mark Trobough: 2:12:30

So as I upgrade and all that stuff. Before we went down the whole Stellar Blade path. I meant to mention it because I was looking for it and I don't have it. I think I got rid of it quite a while ago. That's good. I used to have a Star Ocean, the Last Hope for the 360. And, for whatever reason, I got rid of it.

Brandon Hurles: 2:12:46

I do regret that Star Star Ocean's a really good series too, just like Ys.

Mark Trobough: 2:12:49

it's one that I recommend it had like 2 or 3 discs to it on the 360. It was one of those games it sure did unfortunately I never got more than like 10 hours into the game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:12:58

But yeah, I love the Star Ocean games.

Mark Trobough: 2:13:00

They're awesome especially the retro ones on the Super. Nintendo stuff yeah, that was like back when I wasn't playing that type of JRPG, from like the 2000s and 2010s. It wasn't until a few years ago that it got back into those games. I'm like that's not bad. The story's really good.

Brandon Hurles: 2:13:17

I would say that that game is by no means even in the top five of the Star Ocean games, but it's still a good game.

Mark Trobough: 2:13:23

It was the first game I technically had, yeah fair enough.

Brandon Hurles: 2:13:25

Did you pick up anything this week?

Mark Trobough: 2:13:28

I did so. The first thing was I finally came in the mail today. Like right before we started streaming, the Lollipop Chainsaw Repop came in the mail. That's sick. I think I mentioned to Brandon for those people who don't like it. The limited run logo was only on the back.

Brandon Hurles: 2:13:42

But it also came with like a little booklet.

Mark Trobough: 2:13:46

It's just character information. But a colored booklet is nice On top of the fact that the entire back art because you can kind of see it has like actual artwork.

Brandon Hurles: 2:13:54

Is that supposed to be reversible, or is it just artwork?

Mark Trobough: 2:13:57

it's just artwork, but that doesn't mean you can't make it reversible the only thing that sucks is. There's like a something that says hey, see important information in health, or something like that that probably has to legally be on there yeah, that's really cool man.

Brandon Hurles: 2:14:09

I'm glad that finally came up.

Mark Trobough: 2:14:12

Nothing big, it's just nice, but it's colored character information. Do you know if they ever patched the game? I never had this game when it was originally on the 360.

Brandon Hurles: 2:14:20

Well, I mean no For this new version. Remember it had issues when it launched.

Mark Trobough: 2:14:26

Oh well, I just got the game. I know you didn't play it, but do you know news-wise if that's been patched. I'm sure there were some performance issues. I thought that were announced, but hopefully they were patched out.

Brandon Hurles: 2:14:37

I want to play it. I loved Lollipop Chainsaw, so that's cool.

Mark Trobough: 2:14:41

Man Jealous, and I told you some of these were posted in our Discord, but my local GameStop, for whatever reason, had Mario Kart 64, for the 64 for like $30 that I bought Probably needs a little bit of refurbishing done on it, but the fact that it was there and for whatever reason, Was that the only 64 game? They had like two other ones there.

Brandon Hurles: 2:15:04

Mine hasn't gotten any cartridge-based games besides DS.

Mark Trobough: 2:15:08

They always have DS games, but Not even GBA.

Brandon Hurles: 2:15:11

They had a handful.

Mark Trobough: 2:15:12

They had like three or four SNES games, but they were games. I didn't care for Smaller games, that's cool, I mean major games.

Brandon Hurles: 2:15:18

Is yours a GameStop retro? Is it supposed to be one?

Mark Trobough: 2:15:24

They've been getting more retro games, like more PS3, 360, ds games now, like 64 and stuff like that, so they probably are. Yeah, I mean mean it's like the only game stop in, like I don't like a 200 mile, 150 mile radius or something like that. So okay, well, that's cool man, I either have to go to Cheyenne or Salt Lake. It's probably the next game stop, to be fair.

Mark Trobough: 2:15:42

So gotcha okay, cool stuff man but yeah, I was surprised it because I was like it's Black Friday, I didn't really care, but I was like it's like you know 11 o'clock, like I'll go see what they have, why not? I'm not getting up at 5 am. Did you get a good deal?

Brandon Hurles: 2:15:55

on it? Did you get a good deal on it?

Mark Trobough: 2:15:57

uh, technically, because this and the other ones that I got because they're all used, it was like the buy two, get one free. I mean, this was the most expensive uh used game that I bought, so it wasn't free, but I got two $10 games for free technically. So the other ones that I picked up, I kind of said screw it. They got a little more stuff than I'd seen there before. But Shadow of War, shadow of Mordor, these were the two free games that I got because they were both like $10 a piece.

Brandon Hurles: 2:16:22

Great games, it's $10, why not One of the best enemy battle systems ever, the Nemesis system phenomenal? I mean battle systems ever the Nemesis system Phenomenal.

Mark Trobough: 2:16:31

They're one of a kind it's Shadow of Mordor that came out first, right? Yeah, I have that one on PC and I've played it, but I didn't get super far into the game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:16:40

The battle system is just incredible. Still nothing else has used that battle system like it. Should they perfected it. The Nemesis system is phenomenal.

Mark Trobough: 2:16:50

These next two games, one that I'd seen before, the other I didn't, but they were both under $20. So a game that I technically have for the Vita, which is the Final Fantasy X and X-2. Nice, the HD remastered version. I was like I should probably go back and actually give these a proper shot, but I don't want to play on the.

Brandon Hurles: 2:17:08

Vita yeah.

Mark Trobough: 2:17:12

Fair enough, but I don't want to play it on the beta. Yeah, fair enough, and then, as well as the final fantasy, 15 as well. I hadn't played before but I was like, screw it, I'll buy these Final Fantasy games.

Brandon Hurles: 2:17:18

Eventually I'll get around to. I really want to see your reactions to remake and rebirth.

Mark Trobough: 2:17:26

I've got one of those two for free on my PS Plus. Oh yeah, because the first game I had was 16. I still haven't played it yet. I've now got what's that?

Brandon Hurles: 2:17:35

I still gotta play it too. I haven't played it yet I got 10, 10, 10, two and 15.

Mark Trobough: 2:17:39

And I've got the one through six and the the on the switch version.

Game Junction: 2:17:46

There you're building the last one this game has been there for.

Mark Trobough: 2:17:50

You made a comment. I've seen this game for like a year over a year and nobody ever bought it. This was like the second most expensive game. But the? Is it wrong to pick up girls in a dungeon? Infinite combat, combat. However you want to say, it's got a weird subtitle, show it. But I'd also just got back into rewatching this. I'm still like is it RPG?

Brandon Hurles: 2:18:08

so what's that? Is it an RPG? It?

Mark Trobough: 2:18:12

What's that? Is it an RPG? It's made by Mages and P-Cube. Probably to some degree it's supposed to be a retelling of the story. It says it's a dungeon crawler RPG, but it just goes over the story. It doesn't deviate too far from the story of the anime.

Brandon Hurles: 2:18:28

I wouldn't mind trying out the game though.

Mark Trobough: 2:18:30

It's not too bad. We talked about it in the last episode of the Anime Junction cast. I'm halfway through Season 2 right now.

Brandon Hurles: 2:18:37

Dang boy, You're getting far.

Mark Trobough: 2:18:40

It just means I wasn't doing other things.

Brandon Hurles: 2:18:42

Well, we got We'll kind of run through these, since we're getting kind of late we got Nintendo Switch Online plus an expansion pack, sega Genesis. So new Sega Genesis games. Finally, I was really excited to see this, just because, like I said, it's been a while with the Sega Genesis that we've gotten any games. I was kind of wondering, like what's kind of the point of them even having this, because they're not adding any games to it at all. But we got Toe Gym, earl um we got trying to remember what the. We got vector man and we got uh, mercs. So those are the three sega genesis games. Two of them are basically essential sega genesis games vector man and toe jam and earl um, definitely Earl, definitely at the top of essential games for the console.

Brandon Hurles: 2:19:36

Mercs is cool. I don't love it, I don't hate it, but it's cool, it's fun. It's not one I'm going to try to play through again because I beat it years ago, but it's kind of nifty. But we also got Donkey Kong Land. We got one last week which we mentioned, which was like a random out-of-nowhere drop. And then this week we got Donkey Kong Land 2 for the Game Boy, which is really interesting. Weird separate drops for some reason I'm not sure why they separated them by like a week or less than a week, I think. But that's cool. Five new games for Switch Online Looks like they're finally building stuff up, and I think they're doing it for a reason. I think they want to have a catalog of games for Switch 2 ready to go. They've already got all these games, so they're just going to add more at the launch of Switch 2. That's kind of my prediction with it.

Brandon Hurles: 2:20:30

No, yeah, I agree with you, yeah, so cool stuff we got, so this one is interesting. Mark, I want to hear your take on this. So Tencent plans to release Light of Motorom, which some say is a ripoff of Sony's Horizon games on the PS5. This game looks identical, I mean, to a t of horizon like how they can get away with this from it more than inspiration.

Mark Trobough: 2:20:57

I'm looking at it, I'm like is this the next horizon game it's not a one for one, but they're taking the same style of game, it looks I mean, it's not like, it's not the first time they've done this, uh, that they've ripped. They've I don't say they've ripped off, but they've got games similar to like uh, one of the more popular games is like a breath of wild yeah, yeah, but I, I would say that one with, with, um, why am I forgetting the name?

Brandon Hurles: 2:21:22

uh, it, it was still. I played at launch. It was still so different for breath of wild. But yes, it used like the glider mechanic and it semi looked, looks like Genshin Impact, impact but when that game first came out it kind of did the same thing. It was extremely similar but yeah, it definitely now. Now it's nothing like breath of the wild, but yeah it's one or two.

Mark Trobough: 2:21:44

First of all, I think the second Horizon game wasn't as good as the first one. Yeah, I like some of the changes they made to it. To be fair, yeah, you can do it, but the games industry has been doing this for forever. The problem is is it a good clone and does it push Horizon?

Brandon Hurles: 2:22:02

Visually it looks good.

Mark Trobough: 2:22:04

Does it look good? Does it play good? Does it push the genre forward? Does it compete heavily against Horizon to where they need to innovate and change to be competitive? Because to be fair there's no competition in a central area. Well, it's going to breed stagnation and less innovation, because you're the only game doing this.

Brandon Hurles: 2:22:24

Enemy designs look exactly the same, character looks the same. Everything looks like this. It looks like it could be a Horizon game. It looks like it could visually look that way.

Mark Trobough: 2:22:39

It looks potentially like the Horizon sequel that we should have gotten.

Brandon Hurles: 2:22:43

I'm just interested to see. I think I would try this out, just out of pure curiosity.

Mark Trobough: 2:22:50

It looks good. These aren't Chinese games from 20 years ago. They might still do a lot of the same thing as far as the clones go, but the industry does that as a whole. It's a matter of do they actually make a good clone game to the point where it stands on its own, or it can actually compete with the original IP?

Brandon Hurles: 2:23:07

I want to try this out out of pure curiosity, but it is definitely interesting stuff to say for sure.

Mark Trobough: 2:23:13

I saw that, but I'm like this could also be a good thing as far as pushing the industry forward or just challenging Horizon 2 to do better, even if you want to call it a rip off game.

Mark Trobough: 2:23:22

The industry does this all the time, but not every rip off game is a failure. To be fair, sometimes the rip off game can you know, do better than the original game. I just don't, I haven't seen. Sometimes the ripoff game can you know do better than the original game, fair enough, I just don't, I haven't seen enough of it. But I mean, yeah, you know, I guess I guess. Only time will tell.

Brandon Hurles: 2:23:38

For sure.

Mark Trobough: 2:23:39

What do we got next? Apparently, nintendo was also going after some of their, some of the Switch pirates. Like this is like an ongoing thing, cause I know you talked about it. One of the things they had gone after was the modded hardware for the, for the mig switch and stuff like that. Yeah, it started been you know getting the eye like it's just say what you want about it. It's just anything that that's related to the switch, switch emulation and switch games they're obviously going after because it's like their current console yeah, it makes sense.

Brandon Hurles: 2:24:09

I mean, like I, I don't agree with doing that. They're not necessarily going after.

Mark Trobough: 2:24:12

GameCube or SNES stuff or 64 stuff, because well, those aren't current consoles so it's not realistically impacting their sales for the most part.

Brandon Hurles: 2:24:21

For sure, I agree with you.

Mark Trobough: 2:24:24

Yeah, because I think we've talked about this before, like say what you want about it. Like Nintendo has a legal right and probably legal obligation to protect their ip, especially for current consoles if it's a current console.

Brandon Hurles: 2:24:34

It was like for the wii, u slash we.

Mark Trobough: 2:24:36

Or like the ds, like well, those consoles are out of print, like they're not making games anymore, right?

Game Junction: 2:24:40

that's not making money off those. That's not so tired they went after those like dolphin emulator.

Mark Trobough: 2:24:45

I had a little bit more of an issue, but this is uh, oh, this is. I have less of a problem because it's current console and that people are trying to get around some stuff In that aspect. Fair enough, I understand. I'm not going to criticize you for that because this could potentially affect their bottom line for current games, current consoles. I mean, you've seen people go after current games. It's a very potential problem. Nintendo's not as big as Microsoft or Sony because they're not strictly in the games industry. Nintendo needs the Switch to sell. Well, that's where all the revenue comes from. Of course, by nature, they're going to be a little bit more aggressive.

Brandon Hurles: 2:25:21

Yeah, for sure I agree. What do we have next? Was it some Game? Awards rumors. Yeah, oh, sorry.

Mark Trobough: 2:25:34

Leaks for some games that we could hear at the Game Awards. What was some of the stuff they were talking about? Was it another God of War game, rise of Ronin DLC, split fiction, release date and stuff like that, yeah. Some of the stuff potentially leaked. Obviously, we're not going to know until the actual game awards.

Brandon Hurles: 2:25:55

Since we're covering this, I would be interested to see. It also says Dune Awakening release day and more news on the Perceiver and two Chinese games. Whatever that means, just two Chinese games. We're getting those. The post leaves room for the latter to potentially be an upcoming PlayStation event ahead. I'd definitely be interested to see. I feel like there's going to be more than that. I mean, god of War obviously is huge. If they announce that, it's a big deal.

Mark Trobough: 2:26:27

I would be surprised if a game that big was announced here. To be fair, you wouldn't be surprised, I would be.

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:30

This feels like a game that so was announced here, to be fair.

Mark Trobough: 2:26:32

You wouldn't be surprised. I would be. This feels like a game that so many would want to announce. On the other end, I mean, they announced Breath of the Wild.

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:36

There they announced. What Didn't they announce?

Mark Trobough: 2:26:38

the Samurai game? Yeah, or is it just a more depth look?

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:44

At the very least they showed the trailer.

Mark Trobough: 2:26:47

I think they announced it there, though it feels like Nintendo. That's something they want to do on their own, but they showed it for the first time, it was revealed.

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:52

I mean, it was showed there for the first time for sure. I do know that 100%. I think it was the full announcement, but we got the first trailer, the first thing at all for it for there, for sure. And didn't they announce Metroid Prime 4 at the Game Awards?

Mark Trobough: 2:27:12

No, we never got anything about Prime 4 at the Game Awards. Where was it announced? Because we saw the logo somewhere On a Direct. Was it E3? No, at that point it would have been a Direct. I guess technically E3 was around, but Nintendo was doing their Directs at that point when was it announced?

Brandon Hurles: 2:27:22

2017?

Mark Trobough: 2:27:24

I think 17 it was originally, and then in the January February of 19,. They said hey, we're restarting Switching studios, restarting development Gotcha.

Brandon Hurles: 2:27:33

Okay. I'd be interested to see what they announce. I'm looking forward to the announcements. I always do it To be fair when Nintendo was doing this.

Mark Trobough: 2:27:40

This was years ago, like 16, 15 or something like that. At this point, it just feels like Nintendo themselves are going to want to do everything in-house. At this point we might see a Nintendo game that we've already had been announced at the Game Awards, but an initial announcement at the Game Awards. I don't see Nintendo doing that. They're direct, springing enough traffic on the road, they don't need to.

Brandon Hurles: 2:28:01

To close out here we've got some Pokemon TCG Pocket News. If you're playing that, I know me and Mark are heavily into it. A little bit of stuff on it One the trading is coming in January, which I'm looking forward to, because I have so many doubles it's not even fun.

Mark Trobough: 2:28:17

I have a regular Charizard and an EX Charizard.

Brandon Hurles: 2:28:20

I pulled it today.

Mark Trobough: 2:28:22

And I can't use it because I'm missing Charmeleon.

Brandon Hurles: 2:28:25

I got another one today which is so frustrating. We gotta trade man.

Mark Trobough: 2:28:31

I've almost got completion because I'm like a 2-0-6 out of the 2-26.

Brandon Hurles: 2:28:36

I just hit 2-0-1 today.

Mark Trobough: 2:28:39

Yeah. So I was like how do I have all these cards? I can't have a. How do I pull two different Charizards before a Charmeleon? Yeah, that's wild.

Game Junction: 2:28:47

Actually, to be fair, I think I did too. I pulled a handful of.

Mark Trobough: 2:28:49

EX cards and I still can't get Charmeleons and some other cards.

Brandon Hurles: 2:28:52

This is so frustrating. So many EX cards, it's not even funny.

Mark Trobough: 2:28:55

I'm exclusively pulling the Charizard pack now because I want a Charmeleon.

Brandon Hurles: 2:29:01

I pulled it in a Pikachu today.

Mark Trobough: 2:29:04

I assume it's one of those cards you can probably pull in all three, but obviously there's exclusives to each pack. Yeah, for sure, but I think those are the ones that scroll at the top that you can be like okay, these cards for sure only open in this pack.

Brandon Hurles: 2:29:15

Yeah, that makes sense. Looks like new cards will be added before the end of 2024. And I guess the thing we don't know is if the previous set will roll over or it won't Like you'll still continue to be able to pull from it, or if it's done during a period of time.

Game Junction: 2:29:33

So you get a period of time to pull and then you can't.

Mark Trobough: 2:29:38

I would think so Because, to be fair, even with their actual physical cards, they're still releasing multiples. They still print multiples at the same time. Yeah, not forever, once they go to the next ones, but usually they tend to print a lot of the same, like Scarlet. They go to the next ones, but usually they're they. They tend to print a lot of like the same, like scarlet and violet. For the most part, you can essentially get all the the packs versions pretty, pretty readily available. It wouldn't make sense if they stop printing those. Well, there's just so many people that want to collect the cards that then can't like why it makes sense to introduce a new pack after like every three months. Yeah, like what they do with their cards, but to to eventually like this apex. Eventually they're probably going to stop letting you pull, but like three months that's just not enough time to pull all the cards.

Brandon Hurles: 2:30:16

I agree. And there's 250 cards. So there's a lot of cards, that's a lot of pulls you have to do, and plus you've got to repeat over and, over and over again.

Mark Trobough: 2:30:23

You can get the bulk of them fairly easily, but if you want all of them it takes some dedication of opening packs.

Brandon Hurles: 2:30:27

I mean I'm at 201, and I've been pulling every single day since it's launched. So you have over 1,000 cards. I have 600 and some, and you know I'm not that far from you. But what that says is you pulled over 1,000, I'm at like 650, and I've got 201, you've got how many?

Mark Trobough: 2:30:47

Uh, I mean, I can pull it up right now and double check I, I can pull it up right now and double check.

Brandon Hurles: 2:30:51

I mean that says you said like 210 or something. So that says to me oh, I gotta pull another 400 cards just to get 4 more that.

Mark Trobough: 2:30:58

I need to be where you are. That's crazy to me. It's like what the EX ones, and then like the specialty art ones, are like the harder ones to pull.

Brandon Hurles: 2:31:06

Yeah but it's just like wild to me that, like I'm only you know that many away from you and you pulled 400 more cards than I have, which is crazy. I mean that's a lot 400 cards just for me to get that many spaces closer to you For the genetic apex.

Mark Trobough: 2:31:25

I've got 203 of the 226, and 24 of those are star cards.

Brandon Hurles: 2:31:31

What's a star card?

Mark Trobough: 2:31:34

I believe those are the.

Brandon Hurles: 2:31:36

The ones you can buy.

Mark Trobough: 2:31:38

No, let me double check. I think that's like the specialty cards, like the EX1s, the special art stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 2:31:46

I'm not even sure what that is.

Mark Trobough: 2:31:48

It's all the cards that have got stars. You can't see it too well. Is it like the Mewtwo got stars? You can't see it too well.

Brandon Hurles: 2:31:52

Is it like the Mewtwo that zooms into it and does the whole? Yeah, it's like one of those, if you look at the it has a whole scene. I can't show the top screen.

Mark Trobough: 2:31:59

If you look at the bottom left of the card, under the Illustrator and the Weakness, you'll see the rarity.

Brandon Hurles: 2:32:06

The star is.

Mark Trobough: 2:32:06

You're talking about stuff like that so it's only like a handful of them, but like it's like the ones like a bulbasaur with like the actual special art and stuff. Right, yeah, uh, not just like a regular bulbasaur, but like the special. Like there's like three different evs but like no, there's like four different evs cards, but the one has like the full art that covers the entire card.

Brandon Hurles: 2:32:26

That makes sense and you know certain certain.

Mark Trobough: 2:32:28

Yeah, and like the x cards and stuff like that. Those are like the star rarities.

Brandon Hurles: 2:32:31

Okay, that makes sense. So, yeah, I mean there'll be interesting to see. I'm looking forward to the next set coming out, so we'll definitely be talking about that. I'm sure.

Mark Trobough: 2:32:40

Get as close as you can, but when that new pack comes out, probably focus on that to get the bulk, and then, when you're struggling to pull stuff back and forth with packs, to get some of those rare runs. Plus, obviously, you've got the Wonder Picks and sometimes it's like oh hey, there's like one or two cards here that I can try to pull, so let me see if I can't potentially grab one of those.

Brandon Hurles: 2:32:57

Sometimes I forget about the Wonder Picks, but yeah, I pulled one today. I sent you that it was one of the top cards I won. It wasn't an EX card or anything like that, it was just I finally pulled it today After trying, that was what I was going after from the beginning it's a Gardevoir.

Mark Trobough: 2:33:14

It's actually a really good card because when the Gardevoir is in play. Whatever the main Pokemon is, you can just give it an extra Psychic power-up. You're able to get that card pretty early, that's really cool.

Brandon Hurles: 2:33:28

Have you pulled it, yet yeah, I haven't.

Mark Trobough: 2:33:31

I pulled it like a week or so ago, heck. Yeah, because the Psychic deck is like the primary deck, because that's where I've got. I've got two of them U2 EX1s and those are pretty decent, heck yeah, do you have anything else for us, mark?

Brandon Hurles: 2:33:47

We did run a little later today, but we ended up talking about it.

Mark Trobough: 2:33:51

Brandon's over here thinking like, hey, we don't have enough news to talk about.

Brandon Hurles: 2:33:56

Yeah, I mean, I legitimately thought that. Yeah, well, we appreciate everybody watching and listening. If you are listening on any of the audio platforms, if you could give us either a follow, subscribe or a like on whatever platform each one's different it definitely helps us out a lot If you're watching on YouTube or Twitch, giving a like, dropping comments, letting us know what you thought of the episode All that stuff helps out a lot as well. Every Saturday, we stream live at 8 pm Eastern Standard Time, playing a different game every single week. Then we've got Anime Junction cast every Sunday. Do we have a time? It just drops on Sunday this past and then we've got Anime Junction cast every Sunday.

Mark Trobough: 2:34:32

Do we have a time, or it just drops on Sunday? No Sunday, I mean this past one came out late, but I lost power all Sunday so I couldn't finish getting it together and publishing, so it came out on Tuesday a little later, unfortunately. But yeah, outside of extenuating circumstances it'll come out Sunday, usually probably later in the afternoon. Cool.

Brandon Hurles: 2:34:51

So, yeah, we got that. And then, obviously, the podcast is live every week at 8pm Eastern Standard Time as well. So, yeah, we got a lot coming up. Game Awards gonna be fun. That'll be cool. Looking forward to that. When do you have the date for that, the 12th?

Mark Trobough: 2:35:01

12th, okay, so yeah, it's like what about two weeks out? Yeah?

Brandon Hurles: 2:35:04

it's like not even two weeks. I don't think.

Mark Trobough: 2:35:06

So that's just under two weeks, cause two weeks from now it'll be the 13th. So yeah, it's Thursday. Yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 2:35:11

So, looking forward to that, that'll be fun. That's something we've done every year and something you know we enjoy doing. So, uh, yep Again. Appreciate everybody watching, listening, and we will be back again next week. I'll see y'all later. Have a.