Snow Day Delights, Retro Gaming Unveiled, and Next-Gen Console Rumors | Game Junction Podcast

Snow days aren't just for kids anymore! Join us as we share the trials and tribulations of being snowed in, from juggling remote work and school closures to the unexpected joys of childhood nostalgia. Our chat turns to gaming, where we revel in the latest updates, such as the My Arcade Super Retro Champ and an intriguing LEGO collaboration with Game Boy. We reminisce about the cultural impact of early Marvel movies, celebrating iconic portrayals and reflecting on how they paved the way for today’s superhero blockbusters.

This episode is packed with excitement as we explore the future of gaming consoles with updates and rumors on next-gen hardware. From Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo's competitive dynamics to the rise of handheld alternatives, there's plenty to discuss about the evolving gaming landscape. We touch on the success of mobile games like Pocket TCG and anticipate upcoming tech events that promise to shake things up in the industry. Plus, we dive into the nostalgia of beloved franchises like Mario Kart, and even touch on the intriguing rumors of a Mass Effect TV series.

Get ready for a deep dive into the nitty-gritty of gaming tech, including the buzz around Nintendo Switch 2 leaks and the power-packed NVIDIA RTX 50 series graphics cards. We also tackle the challenges faced by major players like Ubisoft in game development and Xbox's promising future in hardware innovation. Whether you're a retro gaming enthus

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Chapters

• 0:00 Winter Weather Chat on Game Junction
• 8:57 Retro Gaming Portable and Lego Collaboration
• 15:01 Affordable FPGA Gaming Console Announcement
• 26:58 Marvel Movies
• 38:44 Gaming Updates and Rumors
• 48:39 Nostalgia for Mario Kart and More
• 1:01:04 Future of Gaming Consoles Discussion
• 1:11:24 Prime Gaming and Pocket TCG News
• 1:20:22 Borderlands 4 and Xbox Developer Direct
• 1:25:48 Console Sales and PC Gaming Trends
• 1:37:38 Gaming Console Rest Mode Discussion
• 1:49:03 Importance of Battery Backups in Electronics
• 1:59:06 Nvidia RTX 50 Series Graphics Details
• 2:10:24 Nintendo Switch 2 Rumors and Leak
• 2:25:23 Ubisoft's Troubles With Game Development
• 2:36:30 Future of Xbox Hardware Development
• 2:41:14 Next-Gen Gaming Handhelds and Consoles

Transcript

Brandon Hurles: 0:00

I was waiting on you. Hey, mark said he was waiting on me. What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Game Junction Podcast episode 115. Sorry for making everybody wait. We were trying to get some last-minute promo out. But how's your week been, mark?

Mark Trobough: 0:13

Really crappy would be the G way to say it, not the PG-13. Really, really, really busy, so busy. I didn't even get the anime Junction podcast up in time. I'm super disappointed and you know I was very upset. But I told him I told him on the positive side that uh well, he wanted to get back an episode ahead, so they're probably looking back an episode ahead.

Brandon Hurles: 0:35

So that's the one. Uh, downside of doing like a live podcast is that you know really can't be ahead, so it's like if something comes up it's sucks.

Mark Trobough: 0:45

You know what I mean which stuff comes up if this was like on a Tuesday, it'd be, you know, much more of a pain. But like on a Friday, usually most people, you know, don't want to do a lot of stuff on Friday, so it's pretty easy to not have to work later. Yeah, random crap kind of come up, yeah, for sure it happens, just not that often.

Brandon Hurles: 1:07

I went shout out to GamerFreak said hey, over there on the Twitch. Also got Paul Jean said hey guys, hi Mark, and over on the YouTube.

Mark Trobough: 1:16

Welcome, welcome. I meant to ask how's it going over there? I know you all got a lot of snow and then you're getting a few more inches. What this weekend?

Brandon Hurles: 1:22

It's snowing right now.

Mark Trobough: 1:23

it's snowing like crazy right now it hasn't snowed here and well, well, it snowed like three times in the past week.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30

But that's what we're talking like a 10 minute dusting and that's it let's put it this way it was so bad that got snowed in, could not get my car out and I couldn't, didn't, didn't want this coming to work anyway, because it was just too bad but that's funny, because I couldn't get out I couldn't get out. I I was trying for 15 minutes and I could not get out, and so like I had worked from home all week you got.

Mark Trobough: 1:53

I saw some of that stuff, uh, about my parents at me. I was like, oh wow, like level three emergency. I'm like if that snowed here, like they'd just be like, you know, give yourself extra time to get to work, I'll see you when you get in yeah yeah, no, I mean getting like uh, getting like six inches, is not abnormal here.

Brandon Hurles: 2:11

So yeah it was. It was crazy, we got, we got a lot, but now now what sucks is that the roads that obviously you know like parts like country and like in town is fine and stuff like that, but some roads don't get plowed or salted at all and then it's just turned to straight ice. So yeah, like where I'm at all, the roads are just straight ice, and which sucks there's a we're getting snow on top of it again, so now it's just me. Well, actually that would be.

Mark Trobough: 2:41

If you got enough snow, like if you got a few inches, it probably better, because then you have some traction. Because what they do a lot of it, especially out here in the mountain west a lot of them will just, uh, they'll dump, uh, or they use salt, but because it's super cold, a lot of times it gets below 15 and then you have like 30, 40, 50 mile an hour winds on top of it. The salt's just ineffective in those kind of conditions. Yeah, uh, so they'll, they'll dump a lot of sand, especially in town, which, uh, not necessarily for the eye, doesn't necessarily prevent ice, though sometimes it's so cold it doesn't really snow. Uh, and I know this is not it has nothing to do with video games, I don't want to talk about this but the sand will help with traction to some degree.

Brandon Hurles: 3:17

So they use a lot of sand out here yeah, yeah, no, it makes sense like uh, I even tried doing the, the whole cat litter trick and everything to get some traction there with the tires and I couldn't do it. It just didn't work. I mean, I always keep a bag of that cheap cat litter for that reason every winter, because usually it comes in handy.

Mark Trobough: 3:37

but I couldn't get out, but then the kid didn't have school the entire week, so obviously yeah, I figured, if you're getting like four or five, six inches, it's pretty much shuts down. That happened.

Brandon Hurles: 3:48

We were, you know how, ours yeah, you know how that school is? They, they cancel school for everything. So like all the way to the end of the week was canceling and stuff and I'm like, oh my.

Mark Trobough: 3:58

God, that was of the I assume the y'all's holiday break, so it's just a whole extra extra week off of school yeah, and I'm like trying to work from home, kids home.

Brandon Hurles: 4:08

This is impossible, this is not working out on the.

Mark Trobough: 4:11

Now you're on the other side of the snow day, we're like this is great, bugging your parents. Now you're like, oh yeah, I know, we loved it back then.

Brandon Hurles: 4:18

But man, if you, if you have to end up working from home, it'd be different if it was just like uh, you know, you, you, you have to be on the job. So like there is no like remote work possible, that'd be a little bit different. But they're like nope, nope, you're working remote. So, yeah, you gotta get that stuff.

Mark Trobough: 4:34

Back then it's like, uh, you might go out and shovel, but it's like you get all the kids in the neighborhood it's like, all right, we're gonna go shoveling or we're going to play outside all day in the snow. So yeah, a lot of good memories with that.

Brandon Hurles: 4:47

And obviously not do with video games. But anyway, it's still talking about the week that. Did you see the snow angel challenge stuff?

Brandon Hurles: 4:55

I did not know Okay. So it was like must've been a pretty centralized thing like here in Ohio. But essentially you, you the challenges, you go outside for guys, that's in your boxers. You go out and jump in and do a snow angel real quick in the snow and try to jump back in real quick. So recorded that I didn't do it in my boxers because my daughter was the one recording me. So when I was still cold as hell, went out and did that and then she went out and did I recorded her doing it was. It was hilarious, just really really funny.

Mark Trobough: 5:32

Um I put it on here it's on facebook.

Brandon Hurles: 5:35

I shared on the game junction page too, just because I thought it was so funny, but I shared it there and on my uh, brandon hurl's account on facebook. So if you guys want to check that out, it's pretty hilarious.

Mark Trobough: 5:47

Yeah, over here acting like it's. You know, 15 degrees is cold.

Brandon Hurles: 5:53

I'm thinking well, get out of here. What are you talking about? Tell me, when you've hopped in the snow, when's the last time you just laid in the snow and rolled in it?

Mark Trobough: 6:04

I don't have the clothing for that anymore, bro I don't do. The challenge is no clothes that's a challenge, so why would I do it?

Brandon Hurles: 6:11

like oh, if I did that it was when it actually we actually do get to know. It's like okay it's four inches.

Mark Trobough: 6:17

No, I live in an apartment complex so it's already a problem there. And then it's like oh yeah, it's like 20 mile an hour wind, so you got like a windshield. That's like five degrees outside.

Brandon Hurles: 6:23

You're gonna have like freeze to death in like minutes I don't know, if you have kids, you do stupid things. Sometimes made her laugh so I was like I was worth it, whatever you know no, 15 is not bad, but you have to add like 30 mile an hour winds on top of that 15.

Mark Trobough: 6:47

So you uh, we also had wind chill and you know the snow's cold man so just just remember uh, it's not the, uh, it's not the heat that gets you, it's the humidity. I saw a meme like that.

Brandon Hurles: 7:03

I couldn't, couldn't stop myself I saw a lot of memes where you know, I don't hear anybody complaining about when it's, you know 95 degrees out and you know all that stuff, and I'm thinking I, I would rather than then that's what I say.

Mark Trobough: 7:21

I get both sides of it. I get both the 95. In the summer, though, it's a dry heat, so it's durable.

Brandon Hurles: 7:28

Yeah, you get that dry heat.

Mark Trobough: 7:30

Then I also get that negative 10, negative 20 in February.

Brandon Hurles: 7:33

But when you get that, 95, humid heat is unbearable. I think it's both.

Mark Trobough: 7:38

I've experienced 90s 100s in a dry and humid environment and it's far worse when it's humid outside.

Brandon Hurles: 7:44

Yeah, way worse when it's humid outside. Yeah, way worse when it's human, like, uh, we. It was 108 when we went to um arizona last year, but obviously it's dry heat, so it's just a different type of horrible yeah, more harder to tell when you're dehydrated, but it's more tolerable on the outside.

Mark Trobough: 7:59

You're not just drenched in sweat.

Brandon Hurles: 8:00

I was like I was both like kind of surprised how hot it was um, because it didn't well, it felt hot. It felt hot, but it was just like it's such a different heat than what I'm used to. You know what I mean, so it was just a way different thing.

Mark Trobough: 8:14

So then it gets down to seven. You're like I'm cold and you put a sweatshirt on, even though it's like 70 degrees outside, no doubt.

Brandon Hurles: 8:21

All right we'll get a dive into what we got going on this week. So a lot happened this week. It's been a pretty crazy week with gaming and pop culture. We threw some stuff together here with the notes and there's been a lot of stuff.

Mark Trobough: 8:36

Yeah, because you had CES just happen this past week.

Brandon Hurles: 8:39

Yeah, ces big thing. Obviously, I mean, if you're in the gaming sphere at all, there's no way that you didn't see at least some of the stuff that came out just just today alone, not not even counting the whole week, um, but yeah, there's just been a ton of stuff. So we're gonna go over some of that. I guess we're gonna get started with the, uh, the small news. I thought this was pretty cool. This is something I'm gonna grab. I'm pretty excited about, um, so, four years later so we knew about this for a while I was kind of wondering. I thought it was just a scrapped project at this point.

Brandon Hurles: 9:10

But, um, the my arcades, uh, super retro champ, is coming out. So it's a. It's a, I say portable, it's not like you can put it in your pocket, but it is a portable system that plays both sega genesis and super nintendo and it has a built-in screen. So I'm like that's really really cool because, like, first of all, we both love Super Nintendo, I love Sega Genesis too and I've got the EverDrive. So like that's perfect for me because I can throw the EverDrives in there and play literally the entire catalogs for both those systems. There is already one of these out that plays just nes games, which I still haven't gotten yet. I need to get it. It's been on my list forever since it came out to to grab, because it's like that's, you know, one of the better ways for me to play. And, yes, I like having the, the little portability if I want to lay down or something and play, or if I just want to have some a little. You know, don't want to mess with the crt or whatever, it's a good way to play.

Mark Trobough: 10:06

I just have to say just because you said it, it immediately popped in my head was it Super Nintendo, sega Genesis. When I was dead broke, I couldn't picture this alright, biggie, get out of here you wish you had a rap career you said that and it immediately popped in my head.

Brandon Hurles: 10:24

I wonder too that went through their head making this. You did a 2 in 1. They did just an NES one of this, but then did a Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis one, which is really cool for the NES one. They could have did Master System 2, do two 8-bit consoles, the Sega and the Nintendo, and they didn't do that, unfortunately. I think it's pretty cool. They're keeping it at a cheap price point. It was originally going to be because it was only supposed to play Super Nintendo. If I remember correctly, now they added on that it's going to play Sega Genesis as well. So it was supposed to be like $110, I think, but I think now they're targeting at $150, which I think it's very fair price in today's market. I think that's a super fair price for that. Um, now I have a portable unit like that that plays two different systems. I think that's really really cool, um so yeah, that's something I'll get a more.

Mark Trobough: 11:16

Uh, it's got a more robust stand in the og switch.

Brandon Hurles: 11:19

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It was like the stand, and they did it right on this one. I I don't know what Nintendo was thinking with that. That switch stand, bro. I really, really, really don't.

Mark Trobough: 11:27

They obviously weren't thinking no, they weren't. That's why they fixed it when he had the OLED model come out Like, oh, an actual, proper stand. Yeah, the one doesn't fix the problem with the charging port at the bottom.

Brandon Hurles: 11:40

This which was one reason I held off on the nes one. I'm still going to grab it, but it uses software emulation for this. So it takes the rom from your cartridge and then emulates it on the device. So it's not fpga, it's not playing it directly from the cartridge, it's just taking that rom and then running it through software and playing it. So you're not going to have like one-to-one accuracy. There might be be a little hiccup here or there in some games. Things like that. Most people, 99% of people won't care. If you're a weirdo like me, I do care about stuff like that. I still plan on grabbing this. I still think it's cool and I think the price point's a good price point for it. It makes sense.

Mark Trobough: 12:22

Yeah, but I guess, thinking about the talking about the, uh, your old nintendo consoles, uh, well, we didn't get anything official as far as like what we, what can? You can expect it to look like price tag, anything official other than that it's coming. Uh, in october of 2025 we're gonna lego game boy collaboration coming yeah, I thought that was pretty cool.

Brandon Hurles: 12:41

I mean, they've done the nes, they've done the atari 2600, they've done, yeah, nes, they've done the Atari 2600, they've done.

Mark Trobough: 12:46

Yeah, you're probably looking at something like about Xbox 360, I would assume.

Brandon Hurles: 12:49

Yeah, I'm guessing it's. These are like the high-end collectible ones, Like the NES one. I still didn't get Like, I still want it. It's just the price point was like. Just couldn't justify the price point. Well, Legos are expensive, Legos are an expensive brand. But for Game Boy, even if the price point's up there, I'll make an exception, because Game Boy means a little bit more to me than the NES does. I love the NES.

Mark Trobough: 13:15

I actually had a Game Boy.

Brandon Hurles: 13:17

I didn't have an NES growing up, so I love the NES, don't get me wrong, but the Game Boy, I feel like this is going to do something special, kind of like the nes did, where it had like the rolling tv thing and was playing um super mario brothers like on the the tv and stuff like that. This is probably going to do something unique um. So to me, this, this appeals to me even more than the uh, the nes did. So I definitely want to grab this. But this was not the uh expected nintendo news people were wanting this week, so that's where I saw it lumped in it's one of those things where it's like cool, but uh, this is not.

Brandon Hurles: 13:53

This is not the uh console that we were waiting for it feels like over, like the past.

Mark Trobough: 13:57

What year, like month or so. It's like every time you get like this is great, but like this is not always happening. It's and it was just. They just keep teasing you and teasing you and teasing you. They want to drag out this announcement as long as possible because they know everyone's waiting for it. So every time they come out and say something, it's like this is cool, but it's not the one thing that I want. Announce that then you can announce this and I'll be happy with all of it.

Brandon Hurles: 14:20

But I was a little shocked to see that it's kind of cool, though it's a pretty good idea, I like it.

Mark Trobough: 14:26

I guess shocking, but not surprising, considering that this is not the first time they've teamed up with LEGO.

Brandon Hurles: 14:31

So hopefully you get you know for all kinds of stuff now, because you've obviously got the Mario, but you've got Animal Crossing. Now You've got obviously they did the big Mario block. Question block set. Question block set.

Mark Trobough: 14:42

You know so hopefully, at least as far as like this specific little collector stuff with the, with the nes and now the game boy. Hopefully they start getting you, uh, because I don't think they've done anything else other than the, the nes no so you know, eventually you get like all the retro consoles. So you get the 64, you get the gamecube game boy color game like I just want all the consoles lego, lego form I almost bought it.

Brandon Hurles: 15:01

the only reason I didn't buy this was because it sold out and was a good deal. I think it's normally $150 and it went down to like $60. But Mega Bloks did the Xbox 360. Do you remember that they did that last year?

Mark Trobough: 15:16

And it dropped down in price.

Brandon Hurles: 15:18

I went to go get it and it sold out. I couldn't grab it in enough time. So I was a little bummed about that Because, again, I didn't grab it in enough time. So I was a little bummed about that because again I didn't grab that because of the price point. I just didn't like the price point but I was like 60 bucks for that. The novelty of it. I love the Xbox 360. That's really cool. But yeah, I think it's Megabox that did it or one of the other block companies put that together. But it was really cool because it came with like a little mini case for Halo and like the controller and everything like it was really neat.

Brandon Hurles: 15:49

But yeah, and then we've got. This is a brand new news as of, I think. When was this? Yesterday or the day before?

Mark Trobough: 16:00

January 8th, so it was two days ago.

Brandon Hurles: 16:04

Taki Udon on X said the world's first affordable FPGA gaming console inspired by the PlayStation 1 supports PS1 games, memory cards and controllers, analog and digital output, nfc, wi-fi and Bluetooth. It's Mr FPGA compatible and disk support is not pictured. So there's an extra component you can buy to play original disks on it too, but it is FPGA so most people aren't going to care about playing the disks that they play that disk the exact same way FPGA is going to play, the same way that disk would play, so most people aren't going to care. I will for my physical games. When I get that extra, I get that extra thing. But this came kind of came out of nowhere, because like, when you think of these fpga consoles like this, you think of analog. Really, like it's the, the only kind of the only one that comes to mind, because chromatic I mean mod retro did the chromatic handheld, the game boy, game boy, collar um. But other than that, really all you think about is analog. I mean, you know analog, yeah, I've got the analog 3d on pre-order that comes out sometime next couple months, the analog pocket here, and you know they've obviously done the um, the mega sg and super nt and all that stuff. So all those FPGA consoles that play the way the original consoles play. So this is kind of coming from a different. This is coming from this person. I thought this was really really cool. So this is the same company that did the. They made the OLED screens for the Nintendo Switch Lite and then also now they have the ones I think it's called the Super 7 OLED screen, whatever but it's the OLED screens for the Nintendo Switch Lite and its touchscreen as well, stuff like that. So it's like you can upgrade your Switch and stuff. But yeah, really really cool and stuff, um, but yeah, really really cool.

Brandon Hurles: 18:09

So, like some of it says, that comes with uh, two ps1 controller ports, two ps1 memory card ports, one uh yc for light gun, micro sd, three usb type a, one type c for power, hdmi, den 10 v composite Ethernet, 3.5 millimeter analog audio and TOS link digital audio. So this has absolutely everything to the gills. And this is for the founder's edition of it. For the starting price it's gonna be 150, which is incredibly reasonable, I know. I think after that I don't remember, if you put the price out, what the standard price is going to be after the founders editions of these are sold out. I think it's 200 or 250, but the founders editions assigned by the whole team on the inside of the the case, which is really cool.

Brandon Hurles: 19:00

Um, yeah, I mean, I think this is this is really awesome news, because, yeah, I mean, I think this is really awesome news because I have a feeling, I have a strong feeling that and I think they still are going to do one analog is going to do like a PS1, because they're doing the 64 now and they haven't, besides the analog duo or the, the turbo graphics CD. They hadn't really messed with CD technology yet for FPGA, but I have a strong feeling that after the Analog 3D, ps1 was next. So I still think they're going to do that. But I'll absolutely grab this.

Brandon Hurles: 19:39

I think it's really really cool. That's a great way to be able to experience a console. Obviously, you've got literally every output hdmi down all the way. You know to composite, um, you know fpga, anything like that. It just screams my name. You know. Being able to play it. The way that it was originally intended to be played is really cool. So, so, there's no emulation involved and, um, I do like that. They are having the extra add on for uh, cds, actual CDs, so I think it's pretty cool.

Mark Trobough: 20:14

I agree. I think it's really dope. Uh, the more we get as far as like just keeping retro games alive. I just love to see it.

Brandon Hurles: 20:20

Yeah for sure. Uh, pam to see it. Yeah for sure. Uh, pamela over on facebook said that sounds cool. Uh, mr coffee said maybe build one with brand parts. All we need is just the manual. And also said game boy is just the ultimate nostalgia for me. Johnny said hey guys. Uh, mr coffee said game boy light is pretty good, runs on less batteries and longer. Yes, good stuff, for sure.

Mark Trobough: 20:46

It would be fair. Back then you didn't care, you just wanted that backlight. Yeah, for sure. I need it for the car rides. Yeah, marvel Rivals is doing fantastic. I guess it's like a two-parter. Obviously, the big thing is starting today, the 10th of January. Fantastic Four drops, so that's four new, four new characters doing already massive lineup of characters. Yeah, which means and they and they all we were talking about before we went live a lot.

Mark Trobough: 21:12

All these characters play so different yeah so there's such a different way that you could play these games based on. It's not just like a reskin, but every character kind of plays the same and feels the same. Outside of one unique ability, they wholesale feel different, which I think just uh, it's fun, but it adds like a new level of complexity, especially like if you were looking at this game competitively, how different characters play. They're so different.

Brandon Hurles: 21:33

So it I it makes the mixing and matching better as well as yeah, obviously there's certain bonuses by playing characters that are from the same universe or the same I guess sub ip I still haven't even played every character yet, because I've been, I've been playing it I mean, we played on stream, but I I played it myself too quite a few times like, if I have like 10 minutes or something, I'll boot up a game of that, like it's just the quickest and easiest thing to boot up to play because the matches aren't long. Um, I still haven't played every character yet, but but every character I've played plays so entirely differently. It's like trying to relearn the game with each character. So it's like I think what so?

Brandon Hurles: 22:13

far the character for me with what I've played maybe the 10 characters I've played with so far is Squirrel Girl. I've just found that the. At first I was kind of making fun of it because I was like, why would you want to use a slingshot in the game like this? But actually, like, what I do is I kind of stand in the back, I go as far as I possibly can away from everybody and I just launch. Just launch the acorns she's killing.

Mark Trobough: 22:43

She's not an up in. Yeah, she's definitely a distance player. Somebody don't want to be up front, she's not that. That melee, yeah, I just like the the feeling, because it's you, uh, swap it out. Obviously I'm kind of biased, like playing as uh to the the shark character didn't know he existed until this game. Yeah, yeah yeah, I like him too but, I can't figure him out.

Brandon Hurles: 23:02

I still don't know how to throw people off the edge. That pisses me off so bad by the way, that's his ultimate. Yeah, I haven't figured out how Okay it's his ultimate, so I guess I know how to do it, but I haven't done it. But that pisses me off so bad when people do that to me.

Mark Trobough: 23:17

There's been a few times I've rebounced back, but most, but most of the time he came, unless he kamikazes with all of you in the near future. Yeah, if he launches you far enough, you ain't coming back, but there's been a few times that I have come back from it, which has been cool, I do have to say it because it came up, because you picked Squirrel Girl as your favorite character, and the first thing I thought of was the Aku meme from Samurai Jack, where he's like with the phone extra thick.

Brandon Hurles: 23:48

That's, that's the school girl for sure. Yeah, no, there's this real I. You know I hate microtransactions, I hate all that stuff. But there's this really cool japanese outfit for squirrel girl that I've been like on the fence about because I'm like I play this game enough. I kind of like it. It's cool. It's a old school japanese skin for um for squirrel girl, and I'm kind of getting tired of the way she looks now. So I've been on the fence, I've thought about it, but it would cost me like over $50. You can't buy the exact amount that you need for that, which is annoying. You can't just buy the exact amount. You've got to buy a certain amount of tokens and then buy another small amount of tokens to equal the tokens that you've got to buy like a certain amount of tokens and then like, buy another amount, a small amount of tokens, to equal the tokens that you need. But, um, yeah, that that's the one thing obviously I don't like. But it's free to play, so, like, I can't complain about it.

Mark Trobough: 24:36

The game's fun, I mean it, it's, it's everything you can win from a game like this it's and yeah, and then because there was another article, but the numbers are already irrelevant. So, as of two minutes ago, this game hit another, you know, a concurrent player peak record. As of two minutes ago, the games hit 592,881 concurrent players just on steam alone. Wow, that is crazy. As of yeah, because as of right now, it's the second most popular game behind Counter-Strike 2, which is at $601,000. I mean, to be fair, that game peaked at like $1.3 million in the last 24 hours, but I mean, counter-strike is one of the most popular games that's out there, especially with the competitors. So this game is like breaking the doors off of records. It's like, hey, aaa, industry, this is how you make a game. It's not that hard.

Brandon Hurles: 25:33

And obviously you know, it's not just an English developer, it's a Chinese developer, yeah. Yeah, so it's like half and half right.

Mark Trobough: 25:45

Let's just say there's a all 50 concord. Players were uh are really salty about this game. Yeah, I've seen a few people talking about that on on youtube and stuff like that can't say like if concord had just made this style of game, it would have been successful. But they, but they didn't there was.

Brandon Hurles: 26:03

There was a lot that went wrong with Concord and like that. That's not to say that I didn't play it, so I can't say whether it was a good or what game.

Mark Trobough: 26:10

But I'll make this claim and stand by it. This is the probably the most successful Marvel IP since endgame.

Brandon Hurles: 26:17

I Know, I agree with that.

Mark Trobough: 26:20

I'll stand by it. It's just how long has it been since Marvel was like this? Well, what's?

Brandon Hurles: 26:27

crazy. Is the whole Fantastic Four thing right? It's like a tie-in with the Fantastic Four movie stuff. So that's in the article right.

Mark Trobough: 26:36

How many good Fantastic Four movies have we had?

Brandon Hurles: 26:39

We've had three really bad movies, but my hope is that I hope that changes, because they're great characters, it's a great story like. The comics are good. Fantastic four is a good team of characters, but it's just never serialized into a movie. Well, I don't know. I mean three, you could. There is argument that three attempts isn't a lot of. Isn't a lot of attempts, especially when it comes to what let's be fair to those very kind of like 20 years ago and there's like they're very comic booky characters, if that makes sense like they're very work better in the comic book form.

Brandon Hurles: 27:14

They do action on the live screen yeah, and then you have like what, when translated over to movies, would be seen as kind of maybe silly suits, but like you know it, they're also very old characters, so you know.

Mark Trobough: 27:30

But to be fair, yeah, but it's worked with other characters and I think that you look at the to actually yeah, but I was thinking and then it worked. It was great you look at the old 90s X-Men animated series where they were still on those goofy suits and that's a really popular show.

Brandon Hurles: 27:45

It's not a movie, but it did well I don't think they're goofy in in animation or in comic books.

Mark Trobough: 27:50

I think they look well, the bright yellow outfit is kind of good, but it makes sense in comic books because you need the colors to pop obviously yeah, you gotta pop off the page, for sure. Uh, yeah, so you can see kind of that stuff where it makes sense in one medium but not as clearly in the other I do not agree with that at all, mr coffee.

Brandon Hurles: 28:09

He says you know, the first two fantastic four still holds up. That is a load. If I've ever heard one that is not hold, especially rise of the silver surfer. Oh my god, what a dreadful movie that was, holy crap. I went to the theater and saw all four, or all three fantastic four movies. I was let down as a kid seeing those fantastic four movies I was so let down especially because I love silver surfer. He's such, he's such a cool character like he's such a such a big, massive character, like he's really important.

Mark Trobough: 28:46

He's like a really important character in the marvel universe and it's not like they did bad with it, like I get. It's probably for somebody, a lot of these, a lot of these actors, it was early on in their career, but it's, you know, not a bad lineup of actors.

Brandon Hurles: 28:59

Man, like that was great, like did uh, I own gruffood.

Mark Trobough: 29:02

Jessica alba, chris evans and michael jickles or how do you say his name? Like these are all really good actors role.

Brandon Hurles: 29:09

You know, as uh captain america later in the mcu it's like well, didn't he?

Mark Trobough: 29:14

also. Didn't he also reprise the same role in the deadpool Wolverine movie? Yeah, he did. Yeah, I love the callback. And then obviously it's like oh, he's gone, we don't have the budget to keep him any longer. I do like he reprised that role.

Brandon Hurles: 29:28

There's so much funny stuff with the Marvel movies predating MCU, because obviously you had the Deadpool-Wolverine fight in X-Men Origins Wolverine, which was funny because they later talk about that and stuff.

Mark Trobough: 29:43

It's not even the same Deadpool. What was?

Brandon Hurles: 29:50

Ryan Reynolds was funny because they later, you know, talk about that and stuff. It's not even. It's not even the same deadpool. It's not what was ryan reynolds? That's the funny thing, though it's the same actors but in a terrible movie.

Mark Trobough: 29:55

Yeah, like there was a horrible, um, but they're acting the same characters again. Yeah, the fact that it was a really bad interpretation of deadpool, though, if you ask me because there's nothing like Deadpool, they sewed his mouth shut.

Brandon Hurles: 30:07

I know, which makes no sense, being that Deadpool's Deadpool. But yeah, then you had Blade and stuff, so with Ryan Reynolds with that and you know all that stuff. So I always thought that was kind of funny.

Mark Trobough: 30:19

As a nostalgia movie. It was like a 10 out of 10 for me for the Deadpool ring. Just the amount of nostalgia, can you?

Brandon Hurles: 30:24

believe that Wesley Snipeses is coming back those blade. I think that's pretty cool because he's such a cool character man I like what's. His name is an actor he's done a lot of great tax evasion.

Mark Trobough: 30:34

I think I'm sorry, it's a white collar crime. Nobody cares, it's a. It's a victimless crime. Who cares about the federal government? But I mean you think of blade, like you think of wesley snipes and to be fair, and I agree with it, the modern mcu really traces its origins back to blade. That's like one of the early real dark, gritty, uh, action hero movies.

Mark Trobough: 30:56

I mean you kind of had that with some of the batman from the 70s from the 80s, but those were also kind of goofy in the 80s and 90s with the Batman and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 31:04

Yeah, I mean, if you think of, like, batman Returns was a pretty dark movie. I mean it was really dark, especially for the time it was. You know there were some goofy bits but of those Batman movies it was the least goofy. It was a dark movie, like dark as in. It was like actually dark during the movie and it was. It was a dark movie like dark as in. It was like actually dark during the movie and it was also, like you know, just very dark themed it was.

Mark Trobough: 31:29

It was not made for kids and yeah, because uh, just because I want to say the original blade movie came out in 98. Uh, grossed 70 million at the us box office, 131 worldwide, so it was really the first precursor to what the modernists use. Like you could tell a dark, gritty comic book movie and it be successful and with it not being like batman or superman or I'm sorry. Uh, batman, batman, superman are not marvel, they're uh, they're dc. But it's still the same thing that you think about comic book movies. It's really when you transition from a goofy-ish to really getting dark, gritty and serious like all the way through, even if blade what's it?

Brandon Hurles: 32:09

blade three is kind of goofy trinity, yeah yeah it's a little goofy, but yeah, I mean those first two blade movies really good, very dark, just just good movies. Man, I mean wesley snipes is a hell of an actor for one and the portray it was just a perfect casting for that character. Just truly was. It was a perfect casting.

Mark Trobough: 32:30

So like to have him come back it wasn't it because it wasn't like right after this you get into the x-men movies, you get the fantastic four movies it's hit or miss. Then you get iron man and stuff like that and then it starts. Stuff starts to fall into place after that yeah, because x-men was like.

Brandon Hurles: 32:44

He was kind of. I still like the original x-men, but like if you go back first, you go back to those three yeah, if you go back and watch they, they don't hold up nearly as well, but I think that I I still. I like x-men 2 as well again it's really just x movies.

Mark Trobough: 33:01

It's the problem if you get rid of x3 or do that storyline better, because they've always struggled with that storyline in every movie they've done it in. Yeah, I don't necessarily hate most of the x movies. It's really x3 and then uh, the uh. The wolverine origins movies are really the only two terrible I'll tell you what the worst x-men and I can't.

Brandon Hurles: 33:19

It's so bad I can't even remember the title.

Mark Trobough: 33:21

It's the worst x-men movie I don't know how you can say wolverine origins isn't the worst.

Brandon Hurles: 33:26

X okay the two, two worse, sorry, dark phoenix and the new. Oh yeah, because that's like the mutants, the new mutants. Nobody even knows about that. And that was the last one.

Mark Trobough: 33:35

I've heard about that it's yeah, you're talking in movies besides, you know, dark phoenix because it's the same thing they did with X3 and they just didn't do it For whatever reason. That storyline with what's it? Jean is her name. They just can't do her well. They can't do that storyline well. The animated series was able to do it, but the actual movies it's always done bad. But outside of those three movies most of them are pretty well Granted. Hugh Jackman really carries that. Those movies to be fair.

Brandon Hurles: 34:05

For sure, he's just a really good actor. Yeah, he is a really. Hey shout out to lucas for coming in here. Thanks for hanging out, man, we appreciate it, uh.

Brandon Hurles: 34:13

Mr coffee said go back and re-watch him. Compared to eternals and shan chi, the ff movies are great comic mean, if you're comparing them to the Eternals which was a god-awful, horrible Marvel thing that shouldn't have ever happened If you're comparing it to those, I mean, yeah, I've re-watched them. I've actually intentionally re-watched them and owned them. So I'm not saying they're the worst things in the world because I like Fantastic Four. I like the worst things in the world because I like fantastic four. I like the property. I just don't think they were a great portrayal and movie no, but I think to be fair 2015.

Brandon Hurles: 34:52

Fantastic four is just absolutely dreadful.

Mark Trobough: 34:54

There's no redeeming quality to that I'll say this if you're gonna measure to other movies, you need to measure to the movies that came out around the same time, because you look at what three years later you had iron man in 2008, and it just blows it off the door as far as just just a movie, not even a comic book movie. It's just so much better are you talking about?

Brandon Hurles: 35:11

you look at what it came out around.

Mark Trobough: 35:13

Yeah, came out 2008. Yeah, yeah, I think the even the original x movie is better and that came like what around before it, or x-men came out way before iron man. X-men, yeah, x-men came out 2000 right so the the first two, yeah, because x-men 2000, x2 2003, I guess if you compare it to the last stand that came out a year later, they're kind of on par uh, but if you can compare it to some of the other ones, it's it's kind of hit or miss.

Mark Trobough: 35:40

I think it's better than last stand, it's better, obviously better than origins that came out 2009 worst of the trilogy, if you will but this is also a time period where comic book movies are still trying to find their footing, because Iron man didn't come out until 2009, and then the MCU itself really starts taking off there that's really where they found their proper footing here we are going into these deep dark rabbit holes again, which is fine it's hard not to, sometimes, if you think about it iron man wasn't.

Brandon Hurles: 36:09

He was not a big character. He was not one. He is now. You think about it now and you would. You wouldn't think that you know there would be no mcu without him, realistically, but iron man as a character until that movie came out, iron man was not a big character.

Brandon Hurles: 36:27

He was not, he wasn't he. He didn't sell comics like that. He wasn't. He wasn't a big comic seller. Um, you know, you had like the animated iron man series that was super silly, where his suit was in a briefcase. You had like some other things for iron man that would, you know, kind of nostalgic. But iron man itself as a character was not big. It was not a big character. So it was like kind of taking a chance, like that felt like they're taking a chance with this character because in the grand scheme of things he wasn't a big character whatsoever.

Mark Trobough: 37:01

He truly that first movie did I remember watching that as a kid band theaters?

Brandon Hurles: 37:05

that's like the my legit first experience I never read comics, but like he was never, he was never a big character and like doomsday was always you did, did that character a lot of justice yeah, it definitely did. I mean it blew that character up, became one of the biggest marvel characters. Now that you know, one of the most recognizable probably period now, if you think about it. I would say with robert downey jr's I can't think of any anyone that's more recognizable to like a kid another time is that that's another one of those.

Mark Trobough: 37:38

It's the right cast, the right casting for the right role, and it just fits perfectly.

Brandon Hurles: 37:42

Yeah and it was and it's also like it's also such a cool backstory with robert downey jr because, like you know, he's like in and out of jail and stuff and had like problems and stuff back in the day and and iron man, they really took a chance because if you, if you go back in, I've gone back in and done a little research, watch some stuff, things like that and like they really took a chance. People did not want him for that role. Like a lot of people were against him for that role. They said did not make sense, he is not. People were saying he was not a good guy. Um, so like that was really his redemption story kind of too, because I mean entirely different person than he was back in the day. I mean, you know, and that everybody, you know, everybody changes over time, stuff like that but it's like it was kind of like a redemption arc for him, like it was, you know, and he even he even says that like on joe rogan podcast he's talked about that um, I'll be frozen. Yeah, he's frozen. Uh, all right, so we got. Uh, mr coffee said correct, stanley wanted to create the opposite of bruce wayne.

Brandon Hurles: 38:51

Uh, got gamer freak says hello mark. Uh, was the x-men movies more based off of bruce or wait, where did we go there? Uh, john birch, yeah, it was. It was iron. One still holds up. Yeah, holds up. Very well, I think marks back in here we got. Oh, now I'm frozen, not sure what's going on there. Let me check, make sure. Still good, looks like it says I'm loading in. Let me turn my camera on and off real quick. Not sure what's going on there. Sorry guys, can you hear me? Brandon, I can hear you now. Yeah, not sure what. Uh, what happened there? That was really weird.

Mark Trobough: 39:31

I just, I just completely lost you. You just froze and you'd periodically you froze, you froze like oh okay, discord's, discord's being you know I was like I'm not dropping any frames, I'm like it's not the internet's not the problem, because if my internet went to crap, I'd drop it.

Brandon Hurles: 39:47

I didn't drop any frames either, so I don't know what's going on.

Mark Trobough: 39:49

Yeah, it's weird but yeah, just I guess, catch up uh but gamer freaks did uh blade rules. Mr coffee, also wesley. Uh, there's a legit black belt artist. Yeah, I didn't. Yeah, I didn't know that, yeah, yeah, he's a slave to my.

Mark Trobough: 40:04

I was saying, hey, game freak, uh, oh you redeeming nothing, uh, these. But oh, sorry, game freak, no, that's that. Stuff's uh disabled for the podcast. Sorry about that. Uh, mr coffee, wasn't the x-men movie more based on the john burn comic story arc of x-men? Yeah, it was dude. Yeah, that's a question of brandon. Yeah, uh, yeah, I said uh, mr, yeah, correct, sam Lee wanted to create the opposite of Bruce Wayne, saved his career. Iron man 1 still holds up. Matt Long saying I got just got back from Vegas he went to CES.

Brandon Hurles: 40:40

That's insane, I know. I said that's one of my dreams. I said one of my dreams to go CES and it was E3 said that's one of my dreams, Congratulations. I said that's one of my dreams to go CES and it was E3. Obviously, that's not going to happen now, but next year I would like to make it a goal to maybe make it out to CES. I would love to go out there and do some live coverage. It would be cool to go live out there.

Mark Trobough: 40:58

Go live. Reignage wants to gamble.

Brandon Hurles: 41:07

It's okay, we understand. You know what? Whatever, mark, mark, mark, uh didn't even do a twitch story, so there's that you know.

Mark Trobough: 41:11

So I have to sorry. I was trying to try to get a bunch of stuff pulled. When we talk, for we talk x-men for like a half hour.

Brandon Hurles: 41:16

Oh, get out of here. We all right. What's next topic? I'm gonna get a story, uh this is.

Mark Trobough: 41:22

We got a few of some small ones to be quicker to run through uh a game I think I need to check out, uh infinite nike. Uh reported uh huge earnings during the first month of that game. So in the first month of this mobile game being out, they amassed just shy of 16 million dollars in profits on that game. I haven't even heard of that game.

Brandon Hurles: 41:42

It's a really popular game infinity, nikki, is that what you're talking about?

Mark Trobough: 41:45

yeah, sorry, I'm sorry.

Brandon Hurles: 41:46

Yeah, that's the dress up game yeah because I, mr coffee, I said I wanted to play that before and then he said really popular what? Type of game it actually is. I was like, oh yeah, I'm not playing this game, like no, thanks not playing dress up game it's.

Mark Trobough: 42:02

It's essentially like a lot of these games. They're gotcha games but it's, it's a really popular if they're making six million dollars. There's a there's too many.

Brandon Hurles: 42:08

There's an audience there for it but I mean it might be good, like if you check it out and let me know, then maybe it reminded me more of uh, what's the other?

Mark Trobough: 42:17

uh, it's another chinese game. Uh, I gotta pull it up with zenless zone zero. Well, that's them, but it wasn't the exact one that.

Brandon Hurles: 42:27

I was thinking of Genshin Impact.

Mark Trobough: 42:29

Yeah, it was Genshin Impact. It's one of those style games for the most part is what I thought it looked like on the outside. Yeah, but for whatever reason, those games just do super, super well. We did get another rumor about Mario Kart 9, so you thought Mario Kart 8, they were just going to stick with that one forever. There's a rumor that Mario Kart 9 will be a major launch title, potentially for the Switch 2, and the rumored date for this they say March 3rd. But I don't know. It just doesn't feel like the Switch 2, if they announced it would launch that fast. Who?

Brandon Hurles: 43:03

two months or just under two months, feels like a very quick turnaround for a console launch uh, matt said it was a business trip but I had time to walk the gaming vr hall. Yeah, matt. Uh, matt's really in the vr, so we it's okay. It's pretty much been on hiatus. We got to figure out how to re-pick it back up. But we're doing a collab video VR where I have the PSVR 2. That's dope and he's got at the time had the MetaQuest 2. Now he has a MetaQuest 3S, but still got the footage and everything. So we still at some point got to do something with that.

Brandon Hurles: 43:33

But yeah, he's really into VR and does VR content, which which is really cool. He's got a pretty big channel and stuff. So definitely go check him out, give him a subscribe and he's on all platforms as well. But he said my wife would love it. She makes me's on the Wii for hours. That's cool. Johnny said I miss you guys. Hey, we miss you Hanging out with us on the podcast and stuff. Glad to have you back. We obviously weren't streaming to Facebook and he doesn't have YouTube or Twitch, so good to be back. That's good.

Mark Trobough: 44:06

But on top of that rumor there's also another rumor that's going to be incorporating, they say, a feature from F9, but essentially that would more or less be a high-speed mode. They kind of feel like they tested with the 200cc. Potentially, is the rumor, so at the very least you could probably expect the 200 CC potentially is the rumor, so at the very least you could probably expect the 200 CC to to remain. Uh. But I mean, I could see a Mario Kart game being being a potential launch title for the switch too.

Brandon Hurles: 44:29

I could too. And it's like what, what more do you do with Mario Kart? Like, what would the next?

Mark Trobough: 44:35

because, like the three DS you had the gliders you know, all I can think of is double, double characters, double carts.

Brandon Hurles: 44:44

Yeah, you know, each one had like a sort of gimmick DS had its online, you know, had the battle mode and had its online, I guess it comes down to is if they wanted to do more with the game.

Mark Trobough: 44:54

Maybe our cart eight deluxe that they have it, just didn't have the infrastructure to incorporate other things in a new game. Does that better for them? I would like them to bring back a lot of this older stuff from the games as well as try something new. I don't, I don't, it's kind of hard to tell, but bring back the double dash, bring back the, the battle modes, bring back all these other things you've had in these past games.

Brandon Hurles: 45:13

Yeah, I wish you'd bring back the stuff really cool, like making the custom emblems. The battle mode was really really cool. You're never getting custom Still back to me is still my favorite Mario cart period.

Game Junction: 45:26

I love that era, but I love the S and the DS version.

Mark Trobough: 45:30

Those are like. None of them are bad.

Brandon Hurles: 45:32

There isn't a bad Mario cart Like they're even super circuit on the GBA. I love it. I think it's underrated. I think people overlook it because it was basically just the next evolution of the Super Nintendo Mario Kart. It's the same. It's sprites, it's still 2D, it's obviously 3D but it's still sprites. So you don't have a 3D character model. But it was basically a better version of the Super Nintendo Mario Kart and it just had really good tracks and stuff like that. But there's never been a bad Mario.

Mark Trobough: 46:03

Kart and it was just. It had really good tracks and stuff like that. But there's never been a bad Mario Kart. If you ask me never. Yeah, I mean, I believe Mario Kart 1 and 2 really good. I mean really really fun um everything yeah, cause Mario Kart the Wii has my favorite track, which is Maple Treeway. I don't know why, I just absolutely love that course.

Brandon Hurles: 46:19

I don't know if I have necessarily a favorite track per se, because each, each game has a. I mean, I don't think I have an overall favorite track, but there's definitely tracks that stand out for from each game for me, which is really cool what they did with the, the booster pass and bringing so many of those. You know those, those um courses.

Mark Trobough: 46:41

That's how you keep. That's how you keep these types of games alive and relevant. So many of those courses back. That's how you keep these types of games alive and relevant for so long you constantly are bringing in old courses.

Brandon Hurles: 46:47

There were people that were complaining at the time I gotta pay for this to get more courses. Come on Any other game, you would never complain about another game doing that. Your Call of Duty paying for a skin, your Fortnite paying for a skin. Meanwhile, you're paying this cheap price for a booster pass, getting all these courses and additional content and a lot of these courses. I thought it was a great deal, I thought it was awesome and it was a way to keep the game alive.

Mark Trobough: 47:14

Yeah, like to be fair. When they're bringing these old SNES 64 Game Boy courses to this game, they essentially have to rebuild those courses from the ground up, like maybe the Wii course tracks. You could pour it over and give it a new coat of paint. But some of these older tracks have to have a lot of work put into them. So it makes sense those old DS courses. You can't just one-for-one bring that course over. It requires a lot of work.

Mark Trobough: 47:39

You've got to essentially bring the graphics up to snuff. You've got to make sure the course is the right size for the game, because courses were different sizes in different games but it fit. What was the mechanics of that game? The mechanics aren't the same that the old DS or the old SNES game had. So it requires a level rework to some degree, especially if you add more, because some of these tracks on the on mario kart 8 have more characters than they probably did on the original. Um, on the original, you know, console was on as well as different carts and stuff like that. So I I understand it. Plus, yeah, you know some course add something new to the course and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 48:15

You know what I think, other than super circuit, is definitely the most underrated Mario Kart hands down, At least played probably. But other than that, nobody talks about Mario Kart 7, and I thought the gliders was a pretty cool mechanic. I thought it had good courses.

Mark Trobough: 48:34

I thought the gliders were cool and it was something different.

Brandon Hurles: 48:37

You know, 3D was actually pretty good in it.

Mark Trobough: 48:38

It was pretty good 3D. Mario Kart 8 feels like Mario Kart 7 7, just better. I mean that's fair mario kart.

Brandon Hurles: 48:45

8 is better, I would say is better than 7. But I thought 7 was good and and it held its own as well, especially for the time and I thought you know, first of all you had the gimmick of 3d and the 3d and it was good. It was good, 3d wanted to play it to 3D off. It had the glider mechanic. You know it was a pretty good game. It had good courses.

Mark Trobough: 49:07

Yeah, and then, yeah, I was right. So the Mario Kart Super Circuit has sold the. It's the least sold game at 5.9 million copies sold. What's it? Mario Kart Double Dash had the 6.8 and stuff like that. And then they technically have mario kart 8 for the wii. U is the next least popular one, but mario kart 8 deluxe for the for the switch is sitting at, like you know, just shy of 63 million sales that's wild, uh, matt.

Brandon Hurles: 49:32

Matt said uh, I like playing shy guy on the ds version. I do too. I like playing shy guy and yoshi. Those are my characters for uh mar DS.

Mark Trobough: 49:41

Yoshi for everything.

Brandon Hurles: 49:42

Track and Baby Kart on Double Dash. My family had Baby Kart tournaments. Yeah, I thought the babies were cool characters. I always played them too. I thought that was pretty neat, mark is the Mario. Kart master.

Mark Trobough: 49:54

I don't know about that. If you do want something funny, though, the estimated US dollar revenue of the entire Mario Kart IP is sitting at a little over just over $10 billion. I don't believe you, mark? I'm just saying, it's in the 180. It's sitting just right at 184.4 million copies sold across the board for every Mario Kart game Lies, which includes the, which includes Home Circuit. To be fair Lies it's right at 184.4 million copies sold across the board for every Mario Kart game Lies, which includes Home Circuit, to be fair.

Brandon Hurles: 50:27

Lies, would you?

Mark Trobough: 50:28

believe if I told you that the Mario Kart Live Home Circuit sold 1.7 million copies. I believe that I bought both. I was a sucker. I bought both of them and did nothing. If that was any other game, it would have sold maybe it One time. And more than that, it was a collector's item.

Brandon Hurles: 50:44

They were, but it's crazy that well I think I have a I have a strong feeling that in the future yes, they produced a lot of those, but a lot, I mean. Most people obviously took them out and played with them and you know you're supposed to run around thing or something like that yeah, you're supposed to run around with them and do stuff with them, but I have a feeling that down the line those are going to hold some value. Especially if they're sealed or something like that.

Mark Trobough: 51:08

Yeah, I have a feeling they'll hold some value. A lot of that stuff, especially if it's got a physical component to it. It's not just the game. If you keep it in good condition, eventually in like 20 years it's going to hold some value, Especially when you get those the the coin mechanic for mario kart 7.

Mark Trobough: 51:24

I forgot about that, yeah no, but I was just going to say like, especially once you get down the line, the kids that grew up playing, say, mario kart 8 or the home circuit. They want to come back and they get the nostalgia. That's when the price for some of the stuff is gonna is gonna go up I mean, it was a really neat idea and it came out.

Brandon Hurles: 51:38

It came out at a perfect time.

Mark Trobough: 51:39

It couldn't come out at a better time, you know, during covid I mean it was the, it was the the right time, just technologically, it was like the right time for it to come out?

Brandon Hurles: 51:47

yeah, for sure.

Mark Trobough: 51:48

And they finally had the the technology, not the the affordability with the technology. It came out the right time. Like this came out around the wii era, it'd been far more gimmicky and far more expensive probably yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 52:01

All right, what do we got next?

Mark Trobough: 52:04

There's another quick one, just because I know we played it and I have it. The Lollipop Chainsaw Repop has. What is it? It just broke $200,000 in sales, which for a remake of a not super popular IP, it's doing pretty decent. I'm pretty sure with that they've made their money back $200,000?.

Brandon Hurles: 52:25

That's not too bad, because I went through limited run games.

Mark Trobough: 52:29

Sorry, not in dollars, it's $200,000. Sales of the copy of Cocktail.

Brandon Hurles: 52:33

Game. I knew what you meant. I was going to say $200,000. I'm like whoa what they didn't make nothing.

Mark Trobough: 52:40

I don't know know what's the game like. You know 50, 60 bucks and stuff like that, you can tell you they made quite a bit of money.

Brandon Hurles: 52:45

They count that into sales for that which a lot of people got a lot of people got that collectors um yeah, that's cool man.

Mark Trobough: 52:53

So this gets it. You know proves there's still, you know, maybe not a massive popular game, but you know people do want to go back and play those older games with.

Brandon Hurles: 53:00

I want to pick this up really bad, but I still have not gotten an answer from anybody on whether it's been patched up, because it it launched very poorly, like the game was when I played it when I played it on the playstation like a sub 10 frames at points like there's I never experienced that when I, when I, when I played the game, it may have had. It may have had a day one patch. It may have got a patch when you played it.

Mark Trobough: 53:25

I don't know. I played it like a month or two after because I was waiting for my physical copy.

Brandon Hurles: 53:28

Yeah, it had to have been patched.

Mark Trobough: 53:29

I mean, like a lot of those other games, you periodically have dips in performance. But largely I didn't have really any problem with the game.

Brandon Hurles: 53:35

Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure that lollipop chainsaw on the on the ps3 360, or at least 360 ran at a a straight 60 frames per second yeah and then I don't know how much has been done behind the scenes.

Mark Trobough: 53:49

To be fair, this is probably more of a port than a native to this console and stuff like that, so you're not dealing with the same hardware, this game was.

Brandon Hurles: 53:56

This is not for this straight remaster, isn't it I?

Mark Trobough: 54:00

I'm not sure. But you're still dealing with and I don't know the technology, but you're still dealing with a game that was coded for a different era of hardware and you're making it try to work on newer hardware. So just by default, you're going to run into issues. If this game was built from the ground up for the PS4, PS5, it should run fine. But you're dealing with a game that was designed for wholesale different hardware. And they're probably they. They didn't rebuild the game, they they took what was already there.

Brandon Hurles: 54:29

According to this article, they're saying this lies somewhere between a remaster and a remake, because they did it.

Mark Trobough: 54:36

It's still largely look and feels, yeah, that you can still tell it's. It's a game that was made, you know, 10, 15 years ago or like 10 years. You can still tell it's a game that was made 10, 15 years ago or like 10 years ago and brought over Because it was rebuilt from the ground up. It would look and play not exactly the same like it did. It feels like I'm playing a 360-era game.

Brandon Hurles: 54:53

Yeah, well, we did get a really cool announcement today House of Dead 2 is getting a remake, which is really freaking cool. Man, um, I'm really excited about this. I retweeted this earlier today. I was like, yeah, this is the announcement I wanted to see today, because this, uh, this ip does not get enough love. Yes, we got.

Mark Trobough: 55:12

I've never heard about it before today.

Brandon Hurles: 55:14

So you ever played in the arcades?

Mark Trobough: 55:17

we never had arcades growing up for the most part every pumpkin show the fair I never, I never played arcades there.

Brandon Hurles: 55:21

Oh, for the most part, I never did Every pumpkin show the fair.

Mark Trobough: 55:22

I never. I never played arcades there.

Brandon Hurles: 55:24

Oh my God, I that was the first thing I did. I spent, like most of my time there Played. I played in beat time crisis one and two in the arcade.

Mark Trobough: 55:32

To be fair, largely we were growing up, arcades were seen as like a, a dead and dying thing Magic Mountain um you none of that, are you serious? Oh, for Magic Mountain. But you're playing games for, for those little tickets to get prizes yeah, but there was still arcade games.

Brandon Hurles: 55:47

I grew up playing arcade like.

Mark Trobough: 55:48

You play like the uh, you play the, you play the Mario one, or you play like the uh.

Brandon Hurles: 55:53

CC's Pizza back in the day had Mario, the Mario Kart arcade game and had um the Jurassic Jurassic Park shooting game. I can't remember what that was called specifically, but uh, um, also had. Do you remember carnival? Do you remember that arcade?

Mark Trobough: 56:10

game it was a carnival evil like, yeah, sorry, the other one I was thinking of. It was the, the arcade version of hydro thunder that I used to play on the 64 they had the arcade version of that did you? That was more of a oh, I have this game I want to play on the 64. They had the arcade version of that. That was more of a oh, I have this game. I want to play it on the arcade. Did you know?

Brandon Hurles: 56:23

that they have because I've actually played it. I went to a really cool arcade last year in Arizona. They made an arcade version of Crazy Taxi, the stand-up arcade unit of Crazy Taxi.

Mark Trobough: 56:36

Yeah, I didn't know about that, never played it, but I knew it existed. Really, really cool. Here's another thing, because I don't know how many people played hydra thunder back on the day dude, so good, oh, I didn't. Oh, I guess there there was a a 360 arcade version of the game. I want that. I would like an actual remake or remaster that game to come to modern consoles what it's a simple game.

Brandon Hurles: 56:56

Yeah, I mean it was a challenging game, at least on the 64 it was it was like prime childhood what was really cool about Hydro Thunder was that it really especially the 64 and the Gamecube the water mechanics were insane for the time the water mechanics were just so crazy, like mind blowing that game had a level of skill because there's like a lot of shortcuts that realistically you need to hit if you want to like, win a lot of those races

Mark Trobough: 57:25

but those shortcuts required some amount of skill to hit, skill and timing, like it was that they get. Games still required a decent amount of skill to to win and beat and stuff like that, because they're also also like it was back in there where they have like hidden courses so you'd have to do so well to unlock hidden tracks, which were, which was like really challenging finding.

Brandon Hurles: 57:43

It was back in there where they have like hidden courses so you'd have to do so well to unlock hidden tracks, which were, which was like really challenging finding. It was like unlocking, unlocking the content, stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 57:48

It's not just given to you. You have to like, do well at the game to get these unique courses. But those car, those courses are very, very difficult.

Brandon Hurles: 57:55

Well, I just want to say, um, I truly appreciate everybody watching. We are at our peak number that we've ever had, ever at 179 people.

Mark Trobough: 58:05

So thank you all so much for.

Brandon Hurles: 58:08

Yeah, never thought the the restream stuff before didn't do so well, but it seems like maybe you know, it's come back around and stuff like that. So we appreciate everybody watching. I did just want to shout everybody out Cause it helps out a lot. All that watch time means a lot to these platforms so we really appreciate it. Matt long said I played the crazy taxi arcade version. Mr Coffee said I miss arcade style on real shooters with a light gun. It's not the same using a controller. I agree, I have my brother.

Brandon Hurles: 58:38

So my brother lived in Australia. He met a woman a few years ago. He was in the military and then when he finished up his time at the military he met a woman online in Australia. So he ended up moving there for a few years. He sent me back this crazy light gun that works for the Sega Saturn and works for the PS1. It has a cord for both. It's nicely made, Just some no brand that I've heard of before, but really really cool. So I have a Dreamcast light gun. I've got, obviously, the NES Zapper, I've got the Zapper for the Atari XE, I've got the Zapper for the Sega Master System. So I love my light gun games.

Brandon Hurles: 59:25

I think they're a lot of fun, especially you play stuff like time crisis, especially time crisis too. I mean I just think it's a classic. And then, um, house of the dead one and two are just absolute classics, if you ask me. But like there were so many good light gun games on the wii that people don't talk about both of the resident evil games for the wii, they're both many good light gun games on the Wii that people don't talk about Both of the Resident Evil games for the Wii. They were both on-rail light gun games. They were really really, really good. Then obviously you had the. Basically it was almost like a demo game, but it was still a game like Link's Crossbow Training that came with the Wii Zapper. That was fun too For the time really really fun.

Mark Trobough: 1:00:02

Yeah, I would agree. We got some interesting news and this is I thought this was really, really interesting and you ask people 10, 15 years ago, they'd say this has a 0% chance, it would never happen. It's being rumored that both the Master Chief Collection and Microsoft Flight Simulator 24 are reportedly in the works to come to the PS5 and the Switch 2 sometime in 2025. Wow, all right, which, if that's like you're talking, flight Simulator, that's one thing, but Halo coming to both a Nintendo and a Sony console. So If that's true, that would be insane.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:43

Halo was supposed to come to the DS back in the day. I don't know if you know about that. It also came to the Atari 2600.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:49

It's called Halo 2600. It's a rare, expensive. It's like an unofficial official game, if that makes any sense at all. But no, it would be crazy makes. I think it makes sense now. I think it makes sense now, like I I do. I think we're going to talk later about one of our big news, so maybe it might not make as much sense as it could, depending on where xbox is going, which we'll be talking about a little bit later, but it doesn't surprise me at all. You know, I mean, I I love xbox as a brand, but they, they haven't um dug their heels into the console like they just have not, it just feel like they don't care anymore.

Brandon Hurles: 1:01:42

Yeah, they, they don't. It doesn't feel like they love their hardware like that, like it doesn't feel like they are. They've been essentially it almost feels like a sega situation, where it's like we love our ips but we don't care about hardware.

Mark Trobough: 1:01:56

I mean because this is what the second console, the second generation, they've lost to the Sony and I'm pretty sure they've also, I'm pretty sure they've also lost to the, to the Switch, how well the Switch is selling. They've lost. So they like with this current generation, they're pretty much in third, third of three between Sony and Nintendo, because Nintendo is pretty much on pace to the Switch to be the best selling console of all time Until Sony comes out with another 50,000 console sales out of their butt.

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:28

Yeah, I think that Nintendo competes with nobody, if you ask me.

Game Junction: 1:02:36

I feel like they're going to be the only one that keeps physical media alive, I mean the PS6 is not going to.

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:42

But let's be fair nintendo survives off their ips, but they don't they, they, they have zero interest of ever porting their ips to anything else but I will say this, I I will say in defense of nintendo I think, because you think back to gamecube and you think back to even, I mean like, even the wii, like, even though you think about how different games were for the wii, it still got the third star, the, the third party support, like it was there.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:13

Yeah, the call of because it was a really popular console, even you know, because different games, but they were there at least Because it's kind of like what you saw with the Switch. You had high sales, so there were people there, so there was a financial incentive to make those games. Obviously, game developments changed back in the day and the hardware limitations of the Switch aren't the same hardware limitations that the Wii had. Comparatively, yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:37

But I mean usually, when you have a console that sells extremely well, regardless of whether or not you like developing for it, you're going to because there's such a massive install base.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:47

It just makes sense financially yeah, I, I don't know it's, it's. It's a tough one to say because I've I've done videos on kind of like the demise of xbox and really where my kind of head was because I don't want xbox as a console manufacturer to to leave the console market, because you, if you ask me like we talked about before. This was something completely different. Competition is good. Nintendo competes with nobody, if you ask me. So if, if Xbox is not there to compete with PlayStation, who competes with PlayStation?

Mark Trobough: 1:04:23

Because most people that have it, they'll have a PlayStation, they'll have a Switch and they'll probably have a PC and stuff like that. It'll have a PC and a Switch, or it'll have a PlayStation and a Switch, because, to be fair.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:39

The Switch is far cheaper, but it's usually like either you got a.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:46

PS, ps5 and a switch, or you got a pc and a switch.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:47

Yeah, I don't know many people like us that have a pc have the consoles. Well, you know, because we're into it deep right, like we're into it, yeah, but like let's be.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:55

Let's be fair. You've seen it from first, from microsoft, the Game Pass coming to PC, and now, with Sony, their first party IPs are eventually coming to PC. They might not be playable when they come out, but they're bringing their IPs to PC. So what's the point of having those consoles if you want to play on PC anyways? The only games that aren't going to come to PC are the Switch. So what are you going to have? You're going to have a PC to play your Sony and your Microsoft first party games and then to play your Sony and your Microsoft first-party games, and then you just have a Switch for Nintendo games and because it's handheld, portable though that market's starting to change, nintendo will still be able to compete because they make really good, beloved IPs which is what's going to keep them alive.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:32

Their IPs definitely keep them alive. I will say that I think that the third-party situation because Nintendo is very aware of the third-party situation with the switch one I mean, they're aware of everything they. It's not like they launched like and 20 when the console launched, it was already launching with underpowered hardware, like it was outdated hardware when it launched, but it was the it was.

Game Junction: 1:05:58

It was the trade-off for the handheld yeah, it was true, it was.

Brandon Hurles: 1:06:04

Look, it was an evolution, right. So we had the wii u. The wii u was a test for the switch and I think the switch was a test for the switch to really realistically I think now the advancements are so big that I I do feel like third parties are going to, because square enix is hinted at, like all the final fantasies coming over to switch and xbox, I mean, like that tells you like let's be final fantasy 7 rebirth can come to switch too. That's a pretty big deal.

Mark Trobough: 1:06:32

Well, because there's two big things. One, nintendo's always been in the handheld market and they've always dominated it. Well, so the handheld market's not new to them. But also, since the switch came out, you've had the steam deck. You have, like the, the asus, raw galley. Yeah. So the, the, the more advanced technology. You know it's more well known. You know what you're dealing with. Uh, well, yeah, you might have to charge more for higher end technology, that that technology is slowly becoming cheaper, more accessible, so you can beef up it without becoming like $800-$900 like it doesn't necessarily need to.

Mark Trobough: 1:07:03

X is $700, you know the hardware to hardware specs might not compete with those, but it'll be good enough for Nintendo IPs and it'll be good enough to have some level of third party support. Willing to bring a version of their game over if it's slightly downgraded? Yeah, as well as you're bringing in AI support. Willing to to bring a version of their game over if it's slightly downgraded? Yeah, as well as you're bringing it. Ai, you have the.

Brandon Hurles: 1:07:24

It's not necessarily well, nvidia has dlss, but you have the, the, the upscaling technology, which definitely helps more of the uh it's gonna be a big help, I think, actual consoles, I think it's gonna be a big help on the third party side, especially because it's yeah, it's gonna give those third's, going to give those companies a way to make these games work on the switch to and work well, because we don't want a bunch of crap, ports, right, but but it also means even with upscaling you still need to properly optimize your game, so the upscaling actually improves the performance.

Brandon Hurles: 1:07:55

Yeah, I've seen people talk about it.

Mark Trobough: 1:07:58

It's growing, but you know some of these developers lean on the DLSS to the point where it's just like it's not properly ported. But you're hoping that fixes the problem and it doesn't. So you have a poorly optimized game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:08:09

Yeah, yeah, I know it's pretty crazy. Mr Coffee said the only major competitor is download speeds. Hey, I don't know. Man know man, let me check. Right now I got a button on my stream deck for testing my a lot of that comes down to just what your? What your?

Mark Trobough: 1:08:23

router is, but I feel confident that switch to dock is going to have a uh yeah, I mean it's got to.

Brandon Hurles: 1:08:31

I think I think it has to because you're you're going to be running. I think they're going to lean more into the um. Uh, my download is 910, my upload is 920, so pretty good. I think that they're going to lean a lot more heavier into the online aspects of Switch 2 being. You know, I think they want to get more into really like the console space, if that makes sense, like they want to. They don't want to compete but they want to be a competitor if that makes any sense at all.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:08

They just need to be competent. Let's be fair the online multiplayer was the only major drawback, like voice chat on your phone.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:17

Yeah, you had to use that because let's be fair, the hardware was just too underpowered for what they wanted to do. They had to use something because, like, let's be fair, the hardware was just too underpowered for what they want to do, they had to use something like, oh sorry, something like that. So that's like the only major thing they really need to fix. As far as the actual hardware itself, yeah, I, even if it still requires, like a bluetooth connection, as long as it connects to the console. You know, that makes more sense because I mean to be fair, uh, microsoft and Sony essentially have Bluetooth headphones. What's crazy is that?

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:45

the DS and the Wii U had had freaking microphones built into the system.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:53

I mean to be fair. They were like low quality microphones.

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:55

They were really low quality, but I was chatting a Metroid prime hunters on my D. I eventually bought the little heads. I've still got it now sealed, just as a memento, I guess. But um, the one one-sided uh headset, ds chat headset I had. I also use it for we because they made a we variant of it. It's the same exact thing. Yeah, just we packaging, um, but then they did the we.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:20

It was like a Wii I forget what they called it, but it was for Animal Crossing City Folk specifically, but it worked for other games too, where it was just a. This technology is stupid because when you think about the reverb coming back from your TV but basically it was a microphone that you set next to your TV to talk to your friends and Animal Crossing city folk but you're getting all that feedback from your TV's noise. So it was just a bunch of echoing over and over and over. It was really bad. It was rough. I still have one of those just to have it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:56

But Matt Long said I got my way a Stream Deck for Christmas. Yeah, I won this in a giveaway Stream Deck XL and it is. I have not had the chance to set everything up on it yet, but it's going to end up being an absolute game changer for streaming and the podcast. So I've got a few things on it now, but it's going to be even editing. Like there's editing tools that you can map for each screen for editing, so it's really really cool. Yeah, just want to give editing tools that you can map for each screen for editing.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:23

So it's really really cool. Yeah, just want to give a quick little shout out for the Prime games for January. So, as of right now, if you've got Prime, eastern Exorcist and the Bridge are on the Epyx Game Store, bioshock 2 Remastered you can get the GOG code for that. Spiritmancer Amazon Games app and Skydrift Infinity is on the Epic Games Store so you can get those games now if you've got Prime Gaming. Just wanted to give that a quick little shout-out.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:47

Yeah, I'm always down for free games.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:50

Yeah, most people have Amazon Prime, so yeah, why not claim?

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:54

I claim every one of them.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:56

Always have I think it's free game, why not?

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:58

Yeah, why not Unless?

Mark Trobough: 1:12:00

it's on Epic Game Store, then we don't touch that devil. I still claim those Steam all the way, unfortunately the only one that's major Bioshock. I already have on Steam, so I bought that years ago.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:15

Yeah, All right. What do we got next, Mark?

Mark Trobough: 1:12:21

I'm going to share this back out here. We've got some pocket tcg news. You know the biggest uh game that we've been playing on our mobile phones, uh, so pocket tc, uh, pokemon tcg, pocket uh has generated over 400 million dollars in revenue, uh, since it released two months ago, which is insane. That is so the game is insanely popular and if you watch people, especially some, some poke tubers there are people that drop several hundred dollars on this game to open packs, to like get every single card and stuff like that as well, as there's a lot of, there's a lot of people that stream them, just uh playing the uh the pokemon card, the actual uh competitive version of this game, yeah, which is like a simplified version of the actual card game, but it's probably the first time a lot of people have actually played the trading card game to to any degree.

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:08

Really, yeah, it's like a simplified version, but like, not like stupidly simplified, like. You know what I mean. It works for like quick bursts. It's a mobile game so like people want to play it on their breaks and like play, you know, because you can actually there.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:23

There's another, a desktop and a mobile app for the actual their actual mobile version of it, where when you open packs you have like qr code to open packs within the game. You can play that as well. But this feels like a probably for a lot of people, a a real entry point to the actual trading card game, probably since the, since the og trading card game on the on the game boy really, because, let's be fair, a lot of people that might actually buy the physical cards probably don't play the game like me.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:49

You just buy them to collect them yeah, put them in, try to see what you have and stuff like that. And you've got extras. You know you either get rid of them or trade them or something like that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:57

But a lot of people don't I mean that buy these cards don't actually play the game I barely even play the game on tcg pocket I. I've played through most of the like. I try to do all the events that pop up to get those cards and stuff um, but playing against real people. I probably played like 10 times against real people. I've done, I've probably got.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:16

I think I've around 20, 25 or something like that. It's not not a whole lot.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:21

Yeah, I don't have a lot. I'm more into it just for the collecting factor. I just think it's fun to pull the cards, see what you get every day, but it's insane.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:28

This game has already probably paid for itself 100 times over.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:32

Oh for sure.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:35

At this rate, even if it starts to wean back a little bit, this game wouldn't surprise me if it breaks a billion dollars in its first year running.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:41

You gotta think how big the gotcha mechanic is right and well, it's on top of the gotcha and and pokemon.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:48

It's just a really really popular money on this game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:51

You know they're spending loads of money on this game, like there's I mean just the genetic apex, just in the base set.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:57

It's like 226 cards for the base set alone, like there's. They're as big as actual card sets pretty much, maybe not like reverse hollows and stuff like that, but just the base cards, you know it's. You know, if you wanted to like fully complete an actual deck in these games, you, you almost certainly have to spend real, real world money on this game yeah, for sure, I think it's really cool.

Brandon Hurles: 1:15:21

I I've enjoyed it. I I didn't think I'd enjoy it as much as I have. Um, yeah, but you know I wasn't expecting much, because they already had a pokemon trading card game app and people were like, why are they? Why are they making a new one? Like what, what's the point? But I get it. It's a more simplified, easier version, gotcha version the other game, the other one, yeah scan the cards. It's from physical, all it is is.

Mark Trobough: 1:15:46

It's just a pure. You're just there to play the game competitively against other people. That's all that that app and game is for is a digital version of the trading card game. That's it. You're playing against other people. Yeah, this one actually has you opening cards. You don't have to spend money to get those yeah, uh, also because there's been rumors around, uh, you know, a mass effect uh tv series. I'm pretty sure they've already kind of talked about it being in the works.

Mark Trobough: 1:16:12

Uh, the voice actress for the uh female, uh femme shepherd, the female shepherd, uh, jennifer hale, has come out essentially wanting to to play the role of a female shepherd in the actual series. It's essentially come out.

Brandon Hurles: 1:16:26

Blah.

Mark Trobough: 1:16:27

Or essentially, she wants, like a lot of the original cast, that voice act, a lot of these characters to essentially be in the TV series where, if you're a fan of the games and you want to hear the same, you know the same voices from the games. This would be like a kind of like a no brainbrainer, though. Would they actually pull the trigger on this? I don't think they would, outside of probably like a some of the leads, but it'd be. It would be neat to bring back all the og voice actors for the, for the trilogy, and essentially cast them for for the role that they've played.

Brandon Hurles: 1:16:57

Yeah, yeah, it would be. Uh, I I don't know how I feel about it exactly. I'm not sure how to feel like mass effect 3 rubbed me wrong there at the end.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:11

Um, mass andromeda was a joke, um but if you look at the original trojan, we still don't know what they're going to do. But we do know um amazon and MGM studio. Amazon owns MGM studios, but MGM studios is the actual studio essentially working on this, uh, on this project. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we've seen it before. This is either going to do really well or it's going to absolutely bomb. You've seen it recently when it done well. When it done well, these shows do amazing, but if it doesn't live up to the, to the core audience, of the ip it's, it's just gonna absolutely tank.

Brandon Hurles: 1:17:45

Yeah, yeah, I'd be interested to see what it does. I mean, it seems to be there for a while. Video game movies and adaptations had a real good run. Now there's been like there's been a few misses and stuff like that. Like there's been more mid movies uh like, for instance, like uncharted not a bad movie, but not like a great movie either.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:05

Uh, it was, I think, a lot of these for what it was, but like considering for what the games are there.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:09

There's heavy story driven and oh, it's a. It's a video game, so there's. You know it takes like 20, 30 hours. A tv series fits far better than a movie for a lot of these games, especially the the story heavy ones, because, let's be fair, if you want to do any justice to the characters in the story, you need more than two hours to tell any decent story I mean, like last of us did the tv show right, um, very successful.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:32

So I mean I feel like they're like okay, I this did really well. What, what else can we grab from what? What? And mass effect could do well, like you know, the whole space thing, it's, it's popular enough that, like it would make sense for for that to work, like star wars is, is garbage right now, if you ask me. So bring in mass effect, make it good, make it like a big old franchise and you, you just need to do it, right.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:59

Yeah, the one thing that's up in the air, and oh, you get a lot of hit or miss with hollywood. As far as the writing goes yeah, no doubt you definitely do.

Brandon Hurles: 1:19:07

You definitely do. Uh, patrick said the last handheld I owned was the atari links. Wish it had better battery life. The games are cool. I've got an atari links it's over here. Um, I actually have. I've got the adapter for my analog pocket. Right now I've got the uh turbo everdrive pro in there with the, the adapter in my analog pocket, but I have the atari links. Um, uh, not ever drive, the atari links game drive and then the adapter as well.

Mark Trobough: 1:19:34

So I love the atari links big fan uh, for another game that's coming out next year, borderlands 4,. We've gotten essentially two things that they've told us, the smaller oh my god, I'm gonna smack you the smaller of the two things. This is from the lead writer, sam Winker. Essentially, he says there's a decrease in toilet humor from Borderlands 3 to Borderlands 4.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:01

You say Sam Tinker.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:03

Sam Winkler, I didn't say Tinker. There's no T in his name. There's a last name.

Game Junction: 1:20:09

Winkler might be worse than Tinker To be fair if you.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:12

I'll say this To be fair if you play these games, the problem with Borderlands 3 is it felt like they were forcing jokes just all over the place, like they were getting paid by the number of jokes they're writing. If you play Borderlands 2, the jokes are there, the toilet humor is there, but it's far more naturally written in and it's not like constantly in your face. You know there's room to breathe between some of the jokes and the humor in that game. Yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:35

It's a huge problem for Borderlands 4, but the other one that was also confirmed is and I feel like this is the only game that's still doing it they did confirm you're still getting split-screen co-op for Borderlands 4. I mean that's good, which is essentially a staple of the series from the original game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:49

Yeah, for sure.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:50

I mean, most people probably aren't going to play this game on couch co-op, but the fact that it's there, people will use it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:21:04

It's like an impossible thing for them to implement.

Brandon Hurles: 1:21:05

It takes me back to the time of you coming over my first time playing borderlands you came over to my apartment, brought over your ps4 um and played borderland and then you left and you just left in the middle of the night like what. I thought you were staying um, but no, I remember that that was my kind of introduction to the series and played it then and I mean I love 1 and 2, have loved 1 and 2 ever since. I always say I think the combat for 3 is the best. I just think it's the story that's weak.

Brandon Hurles: 1:21:36

But I think, if you go in, just to play for gameplay 3, you can't go wrong with 3 for gameplay. I mean the story at it's not, and again Borderlands 3, if you go in just to play for gameplay three you can't go wrong with three for game. I mean the story at it's not.

Mark Trobough: 1:21:43

And again, most of the story is not bad but there's horrible either.

Brandon Hurles: 1:21:47

It's not like I can't play this type level of stuff, but it's not the villains, and it's the, the, especially the way the game ends.

Mark Trobough: 1:21:54

I didn't wasn't the biggest fan of, but it's it's really the. The worst part was the was the villains. It's it's. It's patchy as far as the writing goes between.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:03

It's patched between good and bad and stuff like that yeah I will say I will say this and I haven't even picked it up yet I I plan on getting on ps5 at some point, physically, uh, to play, because I need to play it. But I haven't played tiny teeny yet, so I can't really speak on that. But I've heard, like, um, I've heard good things and I've heard mixed things. I haven't really heard bad things per se. I've just heard that it's a fine game. Basically, overall, I've heard it's a good game. It kind of takes a lot of the stuff from Borderlands 2 and the combat and stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 1:22:41

We just need better writing than what new tales gave us, because god, that was terrible, yeah, but we do have a an announcement date for the xbox developer direct. That's going to be coming january 23rd um don't know how close of the week of that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:57

Is that because I?

Mark Trobough: 1:22:58

was going to ask if you'd want to. That is a thursday as a thursday.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:01

What time is it?

Mark Trobough: 1:23:03

we have the day. I don't know if we actually have a time, we just I think they just gave us the day of this, all right, so it's january 23rd, 10 am, pacific time, which is a impossibility for me because I'll be at work.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:15

Yeah, 10, a pacific that covered the last, that of them live, so I would like to, if I can plan around it, yeah cause, that's one P&E. I don't know it's so. I can't know until it's a little bit closer. But I would like to cover it live. You know it would be cool.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:36

I've covered the last ones live. I was blown away by the last event cause we got like a whole timeline map of all the stuff that xbox had planned, um. So I imagine here's what I think. I think that we see something hardware related. I'm not saying we're seeing the successor to the series x, but I think that we see something hardware related, as in the Xbox handheld. I have a feeling.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:04

If it's going to come out this year, you'd hear it probably around this time period. The only games that are confirmed for this is Claire, Obscure, Expedition 33, Doom of the Dark Ages and South of Midnight.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:16

Those are the only confirmed games.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:18

That would be good information. Those.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:20

By far.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:20

Doom is the most popular, but it's like just under two weeks, so not next week, but the week after we'll definitely be talking about this direct. I mean, maybe next week we'll be talking about the Tinder direct. That'd be great. They drop some on a Monday, say hey, this is Tuesday or something, because they don't drop stuff more than like 72 hours out for their directs.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:39

Matt Long said. I played some of the Indiana Jones live stream. Did you like the game? I love the game. I still haven't beat it yet, but I'm probably about 12 hours into the game. I think it's fantastic. I was mildly optimistic because I liked the IP and then I thought that it looked like everything coming out. It looked like it was going to be good. We were just like we're cautiously optimistic At times. We're even maybe pessimistic with games because we crapped on Marvel Rivals. We crapped on a lot of stuff right Like let's be honest here and I'll continue to crap on stuff we thought it was going to be another clone. You had the Concord issues. There's reasons to be, you know, weary of things coming out, but no, indiana Jones is fantastic. I think it's great.

Brandon Hurles: 1:25:31

I just had really bad marketing yeah, I really want Mark to play it. I think that he'll like it, because I know that you like old Indiana Jones, because I'll talk about this.

Mark Trobough: 1:25:40

This is old Indiana Jones, like it's'll talk about this. This is old Indiana Jones. Like it's a really good game, but the way it was marketed and the perceived. Xbox.

Brandon Hurles: 1:25:49

On the outside. I'm sorry.

Mark Trobough: 1:25:53

Because everybody focused on that one dude who looks like the reincarnated DEI and they're like, oh, this game is going to be trash. It was just not marketed well in any way. To be positive, outside of the December window.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:06

But then the game came out, and I mean it came out to a lot of praise and a lot of people love it.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:12

The problem is a lot of people the first impression's everything. If they see anything negative that they don't like in that first impression, they're just not even going to pay attention to it after the fact and that was the, the inevitable problem was yeah, this game was not marketed properly and it hurt probably a good good sales potential. But like, let's be fair tongue, game pass triple. A game industry has gotten a real bad reputation in the west.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:35

So people are just are looking for any reason to be like oh yeah, I figured that's gonna be finding dei and things that aren't dei.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:43

Like we are so tired. But the problem is we're so tired of it that you've been trained in places that it's not there.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:52

You know what I mean yeah, it might, because we talk about it might not be in the game but it's, and it might be in the marketing. You might have people on social media come out and say stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:00

Uh I'm definitely not defending it either. You know how I feel about it. I'm just saying, like we are the marketing, because you we have to the point where it's like we've been burned.

Mark Trobough: 1:27:11

Sorry, I just want to say we've been burned so many times in the industry with stuff like this, especially when they try to hide stuff like that, people are just, you know, extremely. They get a whiff of it. They're like I'm out. No, like I don't. I don't want this at all, whether that's right or wrong, it's. It's just sort of the reality that we're in right now yeah, for sure, for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:29

I mean, it's one of those things that that you know if, if something happens so many times and then you wear the person out, like this is just a cycle of society, because this has happened throughout history many times in many different ways.

Mark Trobough: 1:27:47

When you look at the games they're doing really well, they're starting to come out of China, they're coming out of South Korea. A decent amount of stuff that's still coming out of Japan is still good. A lot of the games that people want are coming from Eastern developers. We just talked about it how popular Marvel Rivals is, and that are coming from Eastern developers. We just talked about it how popular Marvel rivals is and that was developed by a Chinese developer.

Mark Trobough: 1:28:03

Yeah, it's like you know these developers know what they want and they'll obviously mark it, which is wild, you know they don't have a, they don't have underlying opinions that they, they, they, that they want to push and stuff like that, or that people are tired, so skeptical from the get-go yeah, it's a reputation the industry's created themselves.

Brandon Hurles: 1:28:21

So yeah, yeah, I, I don't it's one of those.

Mark Trobough: 1:28:24

It's like you're gonna have to. You're gonna have to take a while and prove me wrong several times for me to, to, to come back or even start trusting you again yeah, I, I don't disagree at all, yeah but on top of that you still talk about xbox.

Mark Trobough: 1:28:37

Uh uh, the sales numbers for the xbox series x and s are not ideal. So these are the sales numbers just from november. These aren't like lifetime sales. But as of november 2024, the xbox series x and s were a distant third at 767 000 consoles sold. That's the nintendo switch. For that same, for that same month, we're at 1.7 million and the ps5 was at 4.1 million. Like it's not. Like if you just look at the at the x, because the switch is at the end of its life cycle. If you look at the ps5 and the xbox, it's getting crushed right now from from it's not even hitting a million. The ps5 broke over 4.1. And this is november. This is, like you know, the the holiday season build up.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:22

Maybe they're not december numbers, but a lot of people start shopping in november early and stuff like that yeah, they do yeah, it's, it's not even, it's not even a competition, really it's, it's, it's really not, it's, oh sorry sorry, uh, on this same thing on the same tweet that was posted. So the lifetime sales for the xbox series s and x uh 31.2 million. Ps5 is at 67.6 million. Obviously we know the switch is at 146 million it's not so it's essentially getting better than the xbox one.

Brandon Hurles: 1:29:53

If I, if I like it's already at, I believe, past lifetime sale, I could be wrong, could be wrong wrong.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:00

They said the PS4, which still sold 4,000 copies in November, is sitting at 117.1 million, still no Wii U.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:08

But it's not good numbers, it's not good numbers.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:10

The PS5 has sold over twice as many copies as the Xbox Series X. It's the fact that the Xbox they're never going to relive their 360 era.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:19

As far as popularity, you think that the ps5 surpasses ps4 sales, because ps4 sales are crazy well, the the lifetime sales of the ps5 is at 67.6 and the ps4 is set at 170.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:33

I think it'll come close. But you're realistically, we're like what? The halfway mark of the life and its sales are probably gonna start slowing down.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:41

We're pat I mean sony, said it themselves so like whether or not. They sell the ps5 for a few years after you know the ps well, you imagine, because they have the, the ps4 is still selling.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:53

It's with 4 000 copies, but they're, they still had some sales yeah, it's still my local walmart doesn't move I think it'll. It'll come close to, it could come close. I don't know if it'll break $100 million, for sure it just it's up in the air. I'd also be curious to know how many people have moved to PC, because the PC market is for sure digging into it from where the PS4 was at.

Mark Trobough: 1:31:16

Yeah, I would tell you that Especially when Sony and Microsoft keep bringing their games to pc, it's less and less of a reason if you, if you're going to pick one, why not go for the pc and get everything all in one?

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:27

there is a caveat for me. Um, so I I love pc now. I I truly love pc gaming now. But when it comes to playstation first party games, I have absolutely zero interest in playing them on PC, and that's because of the mixed bag that it's been. They're optimized for the PlayStation five. You don't have to worry about any of those issues. The dual sense controller I love the haptic feedback. I think it's great and it plays into a lot of games and I, like I don't want to worry about optimization issues. I don't want to worry about my you're. You can't make the game run correctly on pc for six months, you know. And then also waiting as long as you have to wait for the game. To me it's just like I. No thanks, like'll, just A lot of people have massive backlogs anyways.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:22

Stellar Blade's the only one I'll probably double dip on. But let's be fair.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:26

Just because of what it is, you know If you were going to pick one where you could get everything, and you probably already have to have a massive backlog of games to play anyways. There's no reason to need to play all these games. When they come out and you're willing to wait as well as potentially save money, it's not the worst decision. Eventually, these games are going to come out sooner and sooner on PC.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:44

It's just a matter of them properly having to optimize the launch A port studio working at the same time.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:51

I think that's only a matter of time, because Microsoft's been doing that for years now.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:54

I think they want to go day and day. I think they want to.

Mark Trobough: 1:32:57

I just don't think they haven't been able to um, but it's not an immediate drive and it's still been something fairly early, but I think it's only a matter of time before they start this, this day and date which will, because inevitably, start cutting into their console sales we're just we're heading so close and the consoles just straight up being pcs that are, you know, mid-range PCs.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:19

I mean, at the end of the day, it's not the NES era anymore. Consoles aren't as specialized as they once were, where they were all completely different hardware Every bit of it was. Now consoles are more like PCs, they're more like an affordable PC, and I understand why somebody goes for a console versus a pc, because it's just plug and play. It's plug and play.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:45

It's so easy. But, to be fair, the prices of consoles have gotten so close to the prices of what you can get a reasonable pc for right, close, close to like a thousand dollars.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:56

Okay. So, for instance, ps5 pro you're looking at around, they guesstimate a 4070 Ti is about what you're getting. So you look at just the price of just a 4070 Ti right now. Then get your CPU. You want to get an equivalent CPU to the PS5 Pro. You're already over. I mean you're over already on just two parts. You still got the motherboard, you still got the memory, you still got the case. So, like pc, gaming isn't, it's, it's, it's not for everybody, and I and I get that. But I will say this I have seen more people moving the pc than I ever have ever.

Mark Trobough: 1:34:38

I mean it's been more affordable.

Brandon Hurles: 1:34:39

Like, look at like I I pulled up something I wouldn't say it's you, you could buy a pre-built pc for like yeah that's what I was about to say.

Mark Trobough: 1:34:47

As of right now, uh, I pulled up some on ibuypower. It's not the, it's one of the it's on the top best selling page that I scrolled then I found the cheapest one. So for like just over a thousand dollars you can get a pre-built pc that's got a. It's got an i5 cpu. It's not the best, but it's 16 gigs of ram, it's got a 40 60 in it and a terabyte of empty, uh, one terabyte of m.2 nvme. You can play any game with that. You're not playing max settings, but for for a thousand or just over a thousand dollars.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:17

you have a 10range PC and can still play 1080p games.

Mark Trobough: 1:35:24

It's not a 50 series, but it's a 40-60. It's not the top, but it's affordable and you can play any game at 1080p resolution just fine.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:31

Mr Coffee said.

Mark Trobough: 1:35:33

And that's just a few hundred dollars more than what consoles are going for.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:36

Let me hit just a couple comments here, real quick. Pamela came back in and said when it's at your local Walmart, it's definitely reached its half-life. Matt Long said if I get on PlayStation, I feel that I am now obligated to platinum it. See, I've never I haven't platinum.

Mark Trobough: 1:35:55

I've got away from that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:56

I've been with PlayStation since the PS I mean PS1, and obviously it was introduced in the PS three era. I've never platinum a single game. Uh, so yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:36:07

I platinum with you, but it's only games that you like and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:36:10

I played a lot of Xbox three, 60. And then I I've I've talked about before but the Xbox one, I didn't get one until two years before the series X came out and I I never had a PS4 until PS5 was out. I bought a PS4 after I already had a PS5. Um, I don't remember why, yeah, I don't remember why I did that. Uh, I think it was just a collector thing. I wanted, I wanted to have one.

Mark Trobough: 1:36:37

I didn't have the PS4 at launch, but I traded it for the PS4 Pro for her to play games on, so I bought a PS4.

Brandon Hurles: 1:36:45

Yeah, so I mean I can't see on here through my chat? You'll have to let me know, mark, what they're saying over on Twitch, but Rapsheet has left a few comments and I can't view what they are.

Mark Trobough: 1:36:57

Oh, those were yeah, they were emojis. We had Gamer Freak saying love y'all mario. Uh, what's? Uh, let's go xbox. Love mario, uh, does mark play video games? Yeah, I do, uh mark playing landiana jones, stuff like that, and the rap sheet was coming back with some more emojis uh.

Brandon Hurles: 1:37:17

And then matt long said I do prefer console when playing with a friend that is here in my house. Yes, I can put a second controller to my PC, but I prefer both sitting on the couch. That hurts me. You have to platinum everything I have, so many trophies I purchased a PS3 to go back and platinum my childhood games. I mean fair enough and like I get it.

Mark Trobough: 1:37:36

Some games are a pain to platinum.

Brandon Hurles: 1:37:38

I have a really high gamer score on Xbox, because the 360 era I was all 360. I mean, I got a PS3 at the very tail end, like I got a PS3 Super Slim, the one that slid the door. The door slid on it, so like I got it when it was $100 or something, but something wrong.

Mark Trobough: 1:37:59

What's going on? All my windows just minimized.

Brandon Hurles: 1:38:07

I don't know why, all righty. Then, uh, and then matt long said oh, I caught up everything. Yeah, I said about the childhood games there. So, yeah, no, that's a good reason to do it. I've got a ps3 sitting right here, I can touch it. It's the og ps3 backwards compatible. The reason I have this here is because I can play ps1, ps2, ps3, and then I got my ps5 right next to it where I play ps4 and ps5 games so I can play every era of playstation games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:38:39

So it's hooked up at all times. Achievements how many games do you 100%? I don't know how many, but I've got a pretty high gamer score because I started from the very beginning of the gamer scores being introduced. I couldn't tell you, I'd have to look it up. I mean, like I know people with way, way higher gamer scores than I have, but for me it's pretty high. My gaming time is almost non-existent these days. It's hard to get in any game time. I'll check on the app here, but what do we got next, mark?

Mark Trobough: 1:39:18

This one was just something that I thought was neat. Playstation Game Night reviewed how many gamers turn off their playstation compared to they just put it in rest mode. Uh, so they. They came out and said about 50 of ps5 users uh, put it in rest and the other half will actually shut it down. I always I can I can confidently say I'm one of those that I just put in rest mode.

Brandon Hurles: 1:39:37

I almost never turn it off, always put mine in rest mode and I've never I didn't know people shut their ps5 down. I mean, the one of the big things is like, if you're in the middle of a game like, you want to be able to just pick back up where you are on that game.

Mark Trobough: 1:39:50

That's the big reason. I think it works for like one game, one application.

Brandon Hurles: 1:39:53

You can minimize a game, pull up like a, like youtube, and you can go right back to your game yeah, I like being able to just pull my game back up if it's game I'm playing, especially if I've got like 20 minutes of game time or something like that.

Mark Trobough: 1:40:06

I want to be able to just I mean the rest mode, these consoles, so well designed for rest. But same with my pc, just more or less. You just put it in rest mode and it's. It works so well at minimal power, it doesn't zap a lot. And these cons, these consoles, are designed to essentially sit in rest mode. It's not gonna hurt your hardware or anything like that, unless I know I'm gonna be like out of the house. I always heard that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:28

I don't know if it's true or not, or if it's ever been debunked, but for years I heard that it was always better to put your PC into sleep mode than it was to turn it off.

Mark Trobough: 1:40:42

That's what I heard from it's like the 90s. I've heard that I think I'm pretty sure it has, because they're designed to. But it's one of those things where power cycling is not the best thing at at uh for a lot of stuff. But I've been around a lot of electronics that never get shut down. But they're designed to never be shut down.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:02

So it's, you know, power cycling, it does more damage so I wonder if there's truth to that that leaving your PC or console in rest mode they're designed to put it like for the PC.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:15

It's sleep, it's rest mode. They're designed for that to work and they assume a lot of people are because it allows you to have stuff right they're running in the background, or to not have to restart and restart all these applications. Everything's still running in the background. You're just minimizing how much power draw that your PC's using and stuff like that. So where stuff's still running but it's not drawing hardly any power and you're not running fans and RGB unnecessarily.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:38

So people in chat saying Pamela said always in rest mode. Matt said when I first got my ps4 and played every day I used rest mode. Mr coffee said shut it down. It bugged me that my xbox one x had a rest mode.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:53

Uh, but if you're not gonna play it every day, you're probably better off shutting it down.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:56

But yeah, if you're not gonna play it all the time, I can hear it's such a low hum it would. But you can hear an xbox one x? I I've never had an xbox one x, but if you could hear it, yeah, that would bother me too. I wouldn't want to have it in rest mode, if that's the case. Um matt said, I always turn my desktop off, never sleep. I do it for maybe how much my electric would cost.

Mark Trobough: 1:42:18

I mean I don't know electric bills like 50 60 bucks a month, so it's it's negligible yeah, I don't.

Brandon Hurles: 1:42:26

I mean very little power is used.

Mark Trobough: 1:42:29

Yeah I'd be like very very little sleep you're. You're saving pennies on the dollar at that point. If you were to actually look at your, your energy costs, I, I do actually think like these these computers you think it actually is bad to power cycle off that much like?

Mark Trobough: 1:42:44

if you're going to do it every day, like you're doing it every single day? Yeah, I don't think it's good, and the base settings on your pc and console are designed with the power save in mind. Yeah, and stuff like that to minimize the draw, and stuff like that. So they're the power draw is so negligible.

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:02

I've got 1, 2, 3, my PC Wii U. Even so, I've got 4 consoles, always on rest mode, plus a PC, and electric is negligible it's the same thing my Wii U has not been turned on in months it's in rest mode. I mean you know, in the in months it's in rest mode.

Mark Trobough: 1:43:22

I I mean you know like four in the six months it probably cost you like a dollar or two in the energy. It probably.

Mark Trobough: 1:43:27

Yeah, it's it's so little like it's, it's the same thing with, like, uh, like with headlight, because growing up you still use the old fluorescent.

Mark Trobough: 1:43:35

Those drain battery, drain power, you know, not terrible but it drain noticeable because your parents always say turn the lights off and stuff like that. But if you have any of the newer bulbs, especially the led ones, the power draws so low. You could just leave all your, all your lights on and you'd see, uh, you know, a negligible increase in your power bill and stuff like that. Like we've gotten so good at a power saving a lot of our technology, let's be fair like some of this stuff still draws power when it's actually on and you're playing it a lot. But there's a lot of stuff that you know when you're not actively using it's so good at you know not drawing such negligible power. But it like if you're not gonna like if you're gonna play your, your console, like once a once a week, you know you're probably better off than shutting it off. Like if I'm gonna be overnight I'll shut my PC and stuff off, just because I don't want it on, just in case.

Brandon Hurles: 1:44:23

Yeah, if you're gone that's a different story. I would probably shut down To be fair, it's still negative.

Mark Trobough: 1:44:31

I don't know why. Periodically my PC will wake up from sleep mode for no reason. I don't touch it, It'll just wake up.

Brandon Hurles: 1:44:44

That's a minor thing, I don't know. Interesting, yeah, I uh. Yeah, camera freak said never shut down a pc. Uh, mr coffee said isn't there a big issue with the cmos battery in the wii u? There is. Yeah, uh, that is a problem with the wii u. So if you have your wii u turned off, if it's plugged up into rest mode, you're fine, but if you have your, if your wii u's turned off, and not the battery dying would be a problem.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:05

Yeah, it's a problem, uh.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:07

Pamela said uh, I've never heard it home, but it's in another room. If we're in a bedroom, that would be in. That would be annoying. Matt long said can I upload my files to google drive while I'm sleep? Yeah, I think so, because I upload stuff from my phone to. I mean, yeah, I think so right if you're in sleep mode? I don't know yeah I don't know, because I've never done it that way.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:29

I mean, I don't I'm not sure about that, you might have to google that one.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:32

I'm not sure on that one, to be honest with you, I think sleep was more designed just to to.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:37

It's pretty because you're like, when I my pc, when I put it into sleep mode, the fans stop, the lights turn off, like you visibly hear a lot of stuff turn off, uh, but it's still drawing power to keep all your stuff running in the background. That way, when you come back, you just need to like move your mouse, everything comes right back on. You don't have to like restart the computer. Everything started up, pull up applications like that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:56

I will say, as far as like moving files, though I don't, I, I don't know, I power cycle before every stream and podcasts, just because of, like all the background stuff I've done throughout the week or whatever working with uh, editing software, different apps that I've had pulled up, I power cycle before anything I'm doing stream or podcast wise. So I always do that. I always restart the computer before um, that way there's's less things running and I just feel safer doing that. I found when I didn't do that before that there tended to be more issues, but now that I do that and I have done it for a long time at this point, probably well over a year tends to be less issues, less things running in the background, stuff like that. So I do that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:46:42

But uh, uh, to hit up earlier when you were talking, matt long, uh, my gamer score is um, oh boy, I just had it up just a second. So it's 23,058, which I I mean, I think, relatively high achievements wise. Yeah, like I said, I don't get to play games like I did in the 360 era Back then it was written games getting all the achievements. I could possibly get playing stupid silly little games like Doritos Crash Course just to get all the achievements things like that which I still have.

Mark Trobough: 1:47:23

Get all the achievements, things like that which I still have, actually Stuff like that I have a question because you say you do a lot of work on your computer and stuff like that. Do you have a battery backup Like an Ops or I guess a UPS, it's all the same thing. It's just like a battery backup. No, should I. I mean it depends, or I guess I guess ups, it's all the same thing. It's just like a battery backup. No, should I.

Mark Trobough: 1:47:44

Uh, I mean it depends, uh because I know a lot of people that that they if they do a lot of work on stuff like that, because if you're not constantly saving your work, because the idea like a battery backup is, for one, it makes sure you're getting clean power into it and stuff like that, but the idea is that you like lose power and stuff like that. Your computer doesn't shut off or your console doesn't shut off, which is not good for it. It has you know however long of battery backup which is enough for you to save your work and shut your pc down that I might have to look into.

Brandon Hurles: 1:48:14

Okay, I might have to look that one up it's one of those things though.

Mark Trobough: 1:48:16

Uh, just in case, like if you lose back for one of those things like it's one thing, if you just it's one thing if you're just playing a video game, a lot of those auto save, but like if you were actually doing a lot of work, uh, a battery backup it's one it makes. It makes you you get clean, constant, clean energy. You don't have a lot of those fluctuations, uh. But it also makes sure that you know if you were like lose power, you don't lose any of your work and your pc doesn't just shut down on you. It gives you time to to save what you're doing and power down for you know whether it's like you know 10 minutes or to like an hour from 185 dollars all the way up to 1300 dollars.

Mark Trobough: 1:48:50

So I might do a little more research depends on how big and how long you want it to last and stuff like that. But yeah, I know a lot of people like if you do any amount of work on your PC, that's important for your job. Battery backups are really important.

Brandon Hurles: 1:49:05

I'm probably going to have to invest in that because I have had to restart. There's been some problems. I've had a few instances where we've lost electric and I lost all my progress.

Mark Trobough: 1:49:15

It's very frustrating. Even a cheaper one that'll last just long enough for you to save your work and shut down, just in case.

Brandon Hurles: 1:49:23

Yeah, I think I I need to probably.

Mark Trobough: 1:49:26

I do a lot of like. I do a lot a lot of work stuff for work on a computer, but the problem is one that's done on a web page to it's, it's all. I have a work laptop for it, so there's a. There's a battery in it by default. Yeah, but any hard electronics that I've ever worked on for my job, there's always a battery backup that's designed to be able to properly, you know, shut stuff down yeah, for sure, as well, as it also gives you, it gives you constant clean energy.

Mark Trobough: 1:49:51

So if you're looking at like the, the lifespan of your, of your hardware really matters to you, uh, making sure there's no fluctuations in the power. If you have a good battery bank, it's giving you constant. I guess we just call clean versus like dirty energy and stuff like that. But that's a yeah, I don't know I can dig into that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:05

That's so like. That's a whole different thing than.

Mark Trobough: 1:50:08

Clean and dirty. That has to deal with the what does dirty? Energy mean Exactly Fluctuation and energy. It's your pc needs like a constant, like a 12 voltage or something like that. Clean energy means you're constantly getting 12 voltage. You're getting no fluctuations. Dirty energy would be, you know you. You can get small variations to like large variations between it, going down to like 10 or going up to like 16, which is not not ideal for your hardware so that sounds like something I need to invest in, probably but I mean like even more, so you're more expensive, like gpu and cpu right I'm not sure, but like ideally your uh, your power bank should be doing that for you as well.

Mark Trobough: 1:50:46

But a battery backup. Not only does it give you an emergency battery, but it also makes sure you're not getting fluctuations.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:55

So is it like an upstream of energy? I guess I'm trying to figure out, like the functionality of how it actually, how it actually works. Is it like upstreaming the energy, like the?

Mark Trobough: 1:51:10

uh, well, no, like the like all you love, the closest thing that we get. First of all, dirty energy just means you're not getting the constant wattage or a voltage essentially, but I guess the idea is say there's like a lightning strike, like hits a power bowl, uh, like a voltage essentially. But I guess the idea is say there's like a lightning strike, like hits a power bowl, uh, like a power pole or something like that. Before you lose power you get a massive surge of electricity that could essentially fry your like components on your computer because they're very sensitive.

Mark Trobough: 1:51:32

That stuff like that, a battery, like like a proper ups that does what it does it's supposed to, or even just a uh, a power strip, prevents that that voltage, that extreme spike, from getting to your, to your stuff. It protects your actual hardware from that happening. It's why you should never plug in like a console or like your computer straight into that, to that wall outlet.

Mark Trobough: 1:51:52

You should very least put into it like a power strip yeah, if you get that if you get that voltage it's stopping at the power strip, it's not going into your computer and stuff like that right, yeah, I, I definitely do that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:52:04

I've got a good power strip too. I spend a lot of money on it, a good monster power strip. It's got like uh, different ports for like green energy, and then, like it's got like a variation of of uh, of plugs for it, so stuff like that. But uh, I it's also probably like eight years old, but I paid a lot for. I paid almost 200 bucks for it when I bought it so well we went.

Mark Trobough: 1:52:31

We went in a rabbit hole. I know we were talking about before yeah, I don't know.

Mark Trobough: 1:52:33

It's all right, we're having a really good episode so, yeah, two, two other small little things, I guess. Uh, before we get to some of the big stuff, one Team, ninja, came out and teased some plans for their 30th anniversary. They're going to announce something in 2025. I don't remember if I saw for sure what it was, but they're like, hey, we're going to tease something because apparently this is their 30th anniversary. They've made games like Ninja Gaiden, andiden and dead or alive and stuff like that, uh, but apparently they're supposed to be having something that that comes out later this year or they're really there. I don't know if they've announced it yet. I didn't see. I saw that they're going to announce it, but not not something like for sure nice yeah, I yeah, as well, I guess, I don't know.

Mark Trobough: 1:53:26

No, you're good. Yeah, I just. I just saw that and put it out there, so I guess we should be expecting something from them as well as there's. There are rumors that a Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion remake could be in the works.

Brandon Hurles: 1:53:38

Yeah, I saw a meme that said that is what it's.

Mark Trobough: 1:53:41

It's rumored to be using Unreal Engine 5.

Brandon Hurles: 1:53:44

Skyblivion was the meme I saw.

Mark Trobough: 1:53:47

Skyblivion is a mod for Skyrim, with essentially remaking Oblivion in the same engine. That was the one thing I saw.

Brandon Hurles: 1:53:56

I would love a Morrowind and Oblivion remake.

Mark Trobough: 1:54:01

I like Morrowind and Oblivion a lot first of all, I find it hard to believe because they say Unreal Engine 5 first of all, but this is never used Unreal Engine 5.

Brandon Hurles: 1:54:10

Well, Unreal Engine 5 is particularly good.

Mark Trobough: 1:54:14

It's an overused engine and it's good for first-person shooters, overused problems. It's got problems. It's not the best engine out there and I think it would be worse for it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:54:25

It's not.

Mark Trobough: 1:54:26

I mean, let's be fair, the creation is not the best out there, but it's designed for these games. The Unreligion isn't designed for games like this. It works better with Call of Duty and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:54:36

Yeah, but you see, with Call of Duty, black Ops 6, I'm actively playing it and it has more issues than any Call of Duty I have. I mean because we were streaming it. The last time we streamed it, those issues, those weren't coming from me. I was testing. I was testing to make sure that everything was good on my end Paying latency, all of that stuff. Everything was good on my end. It's the game, it's the game optimization.

Mark Trobough: 1:55:09

Black Ops 6 uses the IW engine, which is an which Infiniti Award made themselves.

Brandon Hurles: 1:55:12

It's just a different version of it yeah, but it's just an offshoot of Unreal Engine 5, right? I have no idea okay, well, could be wrong there, but regardless, it does have issues and it's talked about by a lot of people. So we got quite a few comments. How do I even put my desktop to rest? Just go to the Windows icon. So we got quite a few comments. How do? I even put my desktop to rest, Just go to the Windows icon power Instead of going to shut down.

Mark Trobough: 1:55:38

you hit sleep instead, Because you have shut down. Sleep and restart it's all in the same area.

Brandon Hurles: 1:55:45

Rap Sheet said, I've encountered people who never reboot their PC.

Mark Trobough: 1:55:47

Then wonder why stuff is not working all of a sudden. Well, it depends on whether they're just leaving it on or they're put into rest mode. True, uh, we got as well as after several years, eventually, eventually, the hardware is gonna gonna, is gonna die got our first x sometimes designed to be on constantly, so it just depends yeah, uh said, invest in that, and then also do you play pokemon.

Brandon Hurles: 1:56:10

I love Pokemon, so I play Pokemon.

Mark Trobough: 1:56:13

Mark's not just not Scarlet and Violet. I hate those games. They're such poorly designed games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:56:20

Pamela said sounds like going through a hurricane. Definitely use a power strip. Diy Prison Media said hey guys. Pamela said Buckeyes are beating the Longhorns 14-7 third quarter. I know it has nothing to do with the topic, but it's Ohio State football. We were talking about whether anybody cared or not and chat about college football doesn't matter. Michigan beat Ohio State, that's all I care about oh, wild man, wild man, what a man, what a man you know what I hate the SEC more than Ohio State.

Mark Trobough: 1:57:03

So you know, if Ohio State wins I won't be too upset yeah, we'll see what happens.

Brandon Hurles: 1:57:09

I haven't been following this year. I mean I've been following, but I'm not. I did not subscribe to any cable package or anything to watch the game, so everything that I see is after the games or during, or tweets or whatever you know. So Mr Coffee said Damn, that's a huge score. Oh the battle of Toledo.

Mark Trobough: 1:57:31

Yeah, rap Sheet said forgot the game was on.

Brandon Hurles: 1:57:32

Yeah the game's on Still going on now.

Mark Trobough: 1:57:36

Pretty much kicked off right before we went live.

Brandon Hurles: 1:57:39

What third quarter? I don't know. I'm intentionally trying to not pay attention to it, so I can focus on the podcast.

Mark Trobough: 1:57:45

Yeah, there's 319 left in the third quarter. Texas is down by seven and they're what? Third and seven on Ohio State's 25.

Brandon Hurles: 1:57:53

Yeah, sounds about right, all right. Well, let's head into the big news, because we had a lot of big news this week. We are running on 10-10, but I think we're good, right, yeah, no, we're good, okay, all right. So one of the the, if not the biggest, and besides the switch to stuff set that we saw, that is obviously some of it is legitimately real. We can't argue that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:58:18

Besides that, I would say, the biggest discourse and what I'm seeing everywhere, non-stop, on all platforms, is uh video announcing the 50 series cards uh, yeah, which we all knew was coming we knew was coming and and I actually learned that the 40 series cards were the longest gap of cards from nvidia, so it was the longest gap we've had between cards. Um, obviously we got, like the super cards later, a year later, but we didn, but we didn't get a new series of cards. So we've got. I'm just reading from the official NVIDIA website We've got, powered by NVIDIA Blackwell, geforce RTX 50 Series GPUs. Bring game-changing capabilities to gamers and creators. Equipped with a massive level of ai horsepower, the rtx 50 series enables new experiences and next level graphics fidelity, multiply performance with nvidia dlss4 which is crazy. Generate images at unprecedented speed and unleash your creativity with NVIDIA Studio. So we've got some of the finer details. We got NVIDIA Blackwell Architecture, the ultimate platform for gamers and creators. We got 5th Gen Tensor Cores, max AI Performance with FP4 and DLSS4. So, keep in mind, we are at DLSS 3.5, obviously with the 40 series. New streaming multiprocessors optimized for neural shaders, 4th Gen ray tracing cores built for mega geometry, and some of the other details we got are AI, enhanced graphics and performance with multi-frame generation. So right now we have single frame generation. So that's what people are saying is one of the big, significant changes besides just DLSS 4 to the 50 series graphics cards Game winning responsiveness.

Brandon Hurles: 2:00:27

Nvidia Reflex 2 with Frame frame warp uh, true to life graphics. Full ray tracing with neural rendering, digital humans and ai assistance with nvidia ace. Accelerate your creativity. Nvidia studio creator tools and technology. Enhance any video with ai, nvidia broadcast and ninth gen nvidia encoder performance and reliability. Nvidia app with game ready and studio drivers uh, the ultimate gaming display technologies with the new nvidia g-sync. Um, so some of the mappers. Unfortunately, I don't have a setup where we can show you guys, um, some of the mappers, so we're looking at mark. I assume you got the link that I had on there, right?

Brandon Hurles: 2:01:13

yeah so we're looking at like we'll take, for example, what we got cyberpunk 2077 um, we've got double the performance with dlS 4 and full ray tracing. Yeah, 2x. We've got just above 2X for well, significantly above 2X, I guess, for Blackmeth Wukong with DLSS and full ray tracing. So we're at below 1X on that just slightly and we're above 2X. We're talking the 5090 right now, of course, um versus the 4090. So these comparisons are a pretty big jump um from the 4090 to the 5090 yeah, actually, because they were saying one of the big things was a significant.

Mark Trobough: 2:02:06

Uh, these new graphics cards are going to be pulling a lot of power, a lot of power. So if you're going to upgrade, you'll probably have to update it. So the 5070 is spec'd to pull 650 watts, the 5070 Ti 750 watts, the 5080, 850 watts and the 5090 is pulling 1,000 watts. These are pulling a lot of power. Yeah, so if you already have a poorly optimized pc as far as venting, you're gonna have a bigger issue like power, like power cooling on these, as well as the cpu, is going to be a continued. It's always a an issue, but these are pulling like a lot more power. Yeah, let me pull up the 46, save the so what what I've seen?

Mark Trobough: 2:02:47

the 5070 is equivalent to the 4090, essentially, but slightly not as good, I just want to say, because the 4070 that I have only pulls 200 watts, yeah, so that's a huge jump. And then the 4090.

Brandon Hurles: 2:03:05

I've got the 4090. What 450 watts yeah, the 4090. It's right around 850 watts on average yeah, so I think, unless you're using the Zotac, the Zotac 24 Trinity that pulls 1000 watts.

Mark Trobough: 2:03:25

I think it's the higher and still pulling close. It's a little bit more, but it's the lower and ones that are pulling significantly more.

Brandon Hurles: 2:03:32

Yeah, obviously making sure you've got the overhead founders edition. Of course we don't know.

Mark Trobough: 2:03:36

you know from the other cards manufacturers, but it's on like an extra, like 250 Watts on just the lower end cards, which is a significant increase in power draw, I mean, which really matters if you're building your own PC and then if you don't have a whole lot of overhead already on your on your on your on your power supply, yeah, you might have to, I might have to upgrade it.

Brandon Hurles: 2:03:58

But I mean the jump, and I'm looking at the performance tab right now. The jump is pretty massive. I mean it's pretty, I think.

Mark Trobough: 2:04:04

I say, say, if you're looking at the 40, 70 with the dlss you're looking about on, uh, when they looked at like the, you're looking at like what about a 30 depending on the game you're playing increase, it was like the maximum that people saw was a, was a 30 increase?

Brandon Hurles: 2:04:17

yeah, for the engine.

Mark Trobough: 2:04:18

Well, that's a 30 increase in frame rates so for a lot of the stuff is especially doubling a lot of the, a lot of the performance uh, yeah that you were getting from the, from the previous generation, like it's a significant jump in power which is mainly being pushed by by the ai and in the dlss and stuff yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 2:04:37

So reading on the dlss for uh, it says supreme speed, superior visuals powered by ai. Dlss is a revolutionary tool of neural rendering technologies that uses ai to boost fps, reduce latency and improve image quality. The latest breakthrough, dlss 4, brings new multi-frame generation and enhanced ray reconstruction, which is a big deal, especially if you care about you know, if you care about that stuff in video games. It's got super resolution powered by GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs and fifth generation Tensor cores. Dlss on GeForce RTX is the best way to play, backed by an NVIDIA AI supercomputer in the cloud, constantly improving your PC's gaming capabilities, and I think that's with GeForce. Now, right, with the cloud connectivity, there's some cloud involvement in this as well, which is pretty interesting.

Mark Trobough: 2:05:39

Also. Another big thing is the pricing, the 5070 is starting at $550, but the 5090 is $2,000 dollars, so what's crazy is that's msrp, which means it's gonna be scalped for a lot more yeah, msrp 2000.

Brandon Hurles: 2:05:57

But what's crazy is the other cards are actually cheaper than when the 40 series cards launched so well because it's the flagship one is probably.

Mark Trobough: 2:06:05

They're probably offsetting the costs with the, with the 5090, to keep the other ones cheaper probably obviously most consumers most, most average consumers aren't getting the higher end one you're dealing with.

Mark Trobough: 2:06:16

More industry is going to be getting the 5090, the minus bulk and stuff like that on top of a few scalpers. Because, to be fair, the, the 5070 to 5080, you know, based off the, the, the return on investment for the, what you, the performance for the cost. You know you don't, you don't need the 50 90 if you're just playing video games and especially if you're not playing it like max settings constantly at like 4k, you don't necessarily need the fifth, like you can be just fine with the 50 70 and stuff like that I mean to be fair, because a lot of people are going to be getting the 50 90, 8k with the 40 90 with no man's sky like that's kind

Mark Trobough: 2:06:50

of crazy like, let's be fair, a lot of people are going to be going after the 5090 are going to be people that, a lot of a lot of people that are doing like video rendering and stuff like that, stuff that you're probably going to be benefiting far more from the actual hardware I will.

Brandon Hurles: 2:07:03

I will say this I am going after the 5090 and a lot of it has it of. It has way less to do with video games than it does with. For me, it would be a big deal when it comes to video, especially with my job, but then talking about Game Junction and then gaming as a plus when it comes to that. So it's something I'm looking into. I think I'm going to try to get one. We'll see. I mean, scalpers are going to be all over it. We know how the 4090 launch was a nightmare. If I remember correctly, and at the time, I was paying attention to it, but I wasn't even in the pc.

Brandon Hurles: 2:07:41

I mean, I wasn't, I didn't even have a pc yet I had my laptop. Uh, so I remember the 4090 launch was a nightmare for people and it took well over. It was like. It was like the ps5. It took like probably a year and a half before and even now, even right now, like they're still being sold above msrp. So like the 5090 is not going to be any different. You know what I mean. I mean, they're still being sold like to find it at MSRP. You're lucky to find an MSRP. They're sold out everywhere at.

Mark Trobough: 2:08:15

MSRP, you have to expect, not to.

Brandon Hurles: 2:08:18

Yeah, yeah, I mean it's, uh, it's, it's, it's pretty, pretty crazy. Um, let's see.

Mark Trobough: 2:08:34

What else can we say on the uh 50 series here? So I mean it'll be interesting once they actually you know you get them out, people can start reviewing them and stuff like that, or I'm sure some people have already gotten access to yeah, there's uh, they have a lot of boundaries already been able to, or I think.

Brandon Hurles: 2:08:43

I think tech tips.

Mark Trobough: 2:08:44

Yeah, I think I saw. I haven't watched about the key posted video.

Brandon Hurles: 2:08:47

In the past I watched asmongold's reaction to Lion's Tech Tips video. Yeah, it was interesting stuff for sure. I definitely am highly intrigued on the jump from, say, the 40-90 to the 50-90. Because I mean, based on the stats that they're giving us, it's a pretty significant jump.

Mark Trobough: 2:09:11

But like let's, let's be fair, these are stats from nvidia, so you want to see the actual people in the industry start benchmarking these did. Let's be fair. Nvidia is gonna is gonna probably be optimizing all the hardware that they're that they're making steps with, as well, as you don't know exactly the, the, some of the settings and stuff like that. We know some of what they're that they're making steps with, as well, as you don't know exactly the some of the settings and stuff like that. We know some of what they're telling us, but you don't know everything else. So you want like uh, what's it the? Uh, there's another computer, it's like tom's hardware and stuff like that's one of the big sites that'll do a lot of benchmarking for these.

Mark Trobough: 2:09:40

Yeah, actually seeing proper benchmarking from the people in the industry, we you'll be better off wanting to get those and comparing those differences and stuff like that before you would actually want to make a purchase outright. Let's just be fair. Nvidia is going to be biased in wanting their stuff to look as better because they want you to upgrade, because it financially benefits them. So actually getting people in the industry that are doing proper and widespread benchmarking across the spectrum with different hardware setups is going to be really what you want to look for as far as, like, how accurate are some of these uh benchmarks that nvidia's come out and telling us? So you want to always want to take these with a grain of salt until people that unbiased sources are going to be testing these, comparing them to, um, you know, some of some of like the ryzen and stuff like that. Yeah, you know, I, I definitely agree.

Brandon Hurles: 2:10:25

I think it's good to see other people's opinions who don't necessarily have any stake in the. You know, I definitely agree. I think it's good to see other people's opinions who don't necessarily have any stake in the. You know, in the game. So definitely there's going to be more and more stuff coming up building up to it. Like Linus got to check it out, I imagine 100% Digital Foundry is going to be able to dive super deep into it.

Mark Trobough: 2:10:48

They're the resource for like benchmark 100%. Digital Foundry is going to be able to dive super deep into it.

Game Junction: 2:10:50

I just want to wait and see how accurate the benchmark is.

Brandon Hurles: 2:10:51

They're the resource for benchmark tools for all gaming. They are the only channel I know of that put the PS5 Pro to the test, down to the smallest of details, where people would not care about it. But people do care about it. There are people that care about that stuff. So yeah, Escalated Friend said people do care about it. There are people that care about that stuff and um, so yeah, I mean escalated friend said I'm buying a 50, 90 day, one mark. Are you upgrading?

Mark Trobough: 2:11:17

I've only had my 40 70 for a little over a year, so not not anytime soon. Wonder what the I only gave it? I only gave it 1440 P. So yeah, Game, it's just not worth the price. It'll be a few years before I upgrade my PC again.

Brandon Hurles: 2:11:35

I think for you it might make more sense to hold off anyway, just in case, and if I was going to get something, I'd probably be looking like the 5070 Ti.

Mark Trobough: 2:11:43

It'd probably be right around what I'd get I'm not going to get. I don't need a 1590. I'm not. I don't need to game that high level you don't work on your computer a lot either.

Brandon Hurles: 2:11:56

There's a lot of other reasons.

Mark Trobough: 2:11:58

I work on a computer, but I'm still stuff myself the 4K thing.

Brandon Hurles: 2:12:03

To me, I want to have a 4K monitor, to have a 4K monitor. Most of the time I care more about performance. I want to have a 4K monitor, to have a 4K monitor because I mean, like, there are games. Most of the time I care more about performance, you know, usually with video games. So to me that normally doesn't matter. But there are some games like, say, in like Stellar Blade. I would actually, for that, probably prefer to play that in like 4K than I would care as much about performance. Now, if I'm playing like a competitive marvel rivals call of duty, I don't care about the 4k at all. I care about performance all the way. Frame rates, that's what matters to me there.

Mark Trobough: 2:12:37

But I don't have a. I don't have a single display that does more than 1440p.

Brandon Hurles: 2:12:41

I don't need my 40p monitor is my, my desktop, my, my, my tv only does like I can do really, really high frame rates, but I mean like very few games can even reach the frame rates that my I'd rather have higher frame rates over 4K.

Mark Trobough: 2:12:55

I'd rather play at 1080p with like maxed out frame rates.

Brandon Hurles: 2:12:57

I have found one game, because I have a 480 hertz monitor. I found one game to be able to run at basically max, which was Doom Eternal, which is really cool. I mean it's like, uh, it's a good optimized game, then it's a uh, it's a different experience. It almost feels like it's it's different.

Mark Trobough: 2:13:16

Playing at that high of a frame rate it just feels I don't even know and there are some games that might give you like 200 frames, but anything above 60 you're just not really seeing.

Brandon Hurles: 2:13:24

To be fair, yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, gamers nexus is a great technical source for these pc parts. Um, their breakdowns are for uber hardcore pc gamers. Yeah, that's a good. I don't can't say I necessarily watch them that much. They pop up every now and again in my feed. I don't know too much about them, but I've watched some videos here and there. All right, what do we got next? Mark, I think it's jumbled in.

Mark Trobough: 2:13:52

Switch to stuff, if I remember correctly yeah, I was just getting stuff pulled up real quick, uh, to make sure I have it. Yeah, uh, okay, yeah. So obviously they say nintendo. Yeah, unsurprisingly, nintendo didn't really mention they get to see yes, the. I don't think this was ever a realistic thing and they're never going to launch the Switch.

Brandon Hurles: 2:14:10

2. They did the Game Boy.

Mark Trobough: 2:14:15

The Switch 2 specifically. If you were expecting any kind of announcement around CES, you were smoking something. It was never going to happen. Nintendo was always going to do this stuff in-house with their directs.

Brandon Hurles: 2:14:27

And they always do a direct in January anyway, so I did not expect it's only January 10th. It was always going to do this stuff in-house with their directs and they always do it direct in January anyway, so it's like I did not expect.

Mark Trobough: 2:14:31

It's only January 10th, so you have like another three weeks before you, you know, to get announcements.

Brandon Hurles: 2:14:35

So yeah, yeah, for sure.

Mark Trobough: 2:14:40

I don't know if there's anything at all about this other than the fact that, yeah, they didn't they didn't come out and say say anything.

Brandon Hurles: 2:14:51

But none of us were expecting this to happen so well, I guess, diving into the other, switch to stuff.

Mark Trobough: 2:14:55

So, um, we've got so first we got a switch to is this the leak for, or the other rumor around, red dead redemption 2 coming.

Brandon Hurles: 2:15:06

Well, that was that was one of them. Yeah, what was kind of interesting about that is that it's rumored so that game runs. I don't know if you know that, but it runs at 30 FPS on console.

Mark Trobough: 2:15:19

I haven't played it in years. I mean, it came out on the PS4, Xbox One era, so that wouldn't surprise me too much.

Brandon Hurles: 2:15:24

Yeah, it runs at 30 FPS, so it so rumored to be coming to switch to running at 60 frames per second, um, which is, I mean, I seems, too good to be true. If it's running on consoles at 30, I would expect it to run at 30 I want to say that to an extent that I'm like 60 frames is nothing, now, like I don't like to be fair.

Mark Trobough: 2:15:47

If this is equivalent to the console it came out on, which is ps4, I'd expect it to run equivalent to the ps4, which is if it's running at 30 fps.

Brandon Hurles: 2:15:53

It's probably what you're gonna get on this the only thing I'll say to that is that ps4 didn't have dlss, which is going to boost frame rate don't know how much that does and how optimized the game is.

Mark Trobough: 2:16:06

I wouldn't hang your hat that you're gonna get an extra 30 frames just on DLSS alone well, we also got a rumored, speculated release date for May 2024.

Brandon Hurles: 2:16:26

So I mean, I said April, you said May, if I remember correctly from last week, right?

Mark Trobough: 2:16:32

May makes sense if they're going to announce it this month. If they don't announce it this month, may Realistically you want probably sold six months, you need to sell it. Six months of promo from announcement to release. I just think anything less is just not Like. Three months is not enough time to properly promo this console from announcement to release yeah, I mean I don't know, may make sense that they talk about it four months, but I mean six months is ideal is ideal, for sure, like you need.

Mark Trobough: 2:17:01

We won't know for sure until they come out announce it.

Brandon Hurles: 2:17:03

So then we got a tweets uh, uh, no, this is about the backward compatibility. And then we got a tweet no, this was about the backward compatibility, so we know about that. So that's some old news there. Okay, so here is some of the big stuff that popped up just today, or yesterday, I guess, technically Japan time. Accessory manufacturer Genki recently posted the most plausible and extensive look at the Nintendo Switch 2 yet, so you can look this up. The Genki um accessory maker, uh, which has also leaked stuff before in the past. No surprise, uh, genki posted um extensive look at the Nintendo Switch 2. The accessory manufacturer quietly launched a new page on its website typing up its Switch 2 products, which shows what Nintendo's next console supposedly looks like via a convincing mock-up. Nintendo Switch news has heated up in recent weeks as bits and pieces of it has supposedly leaked via production line photos. So, yeah, I mean, mean, based on like what they're showing, um, very plausible, very believable, it's pretty much what I would expect the switch to to look like, I mean slightly bigger.

Mark Trobough: 2:18:23

It's a slightly altered switch.

Brandon Hurles: 2:18:25

Yeah yeah, slightly altered. Nothing's changed dramatically. You've got a bigger screen. Um, this is what I imagine it looking like, and if they're showing rendered photos for their products they're designing ahead of time to sell right at launch. I mean, it kind of makes sense if you ask me. So that definitely makes sense. And then, according to CentroLeaks, a popular source for Pokemon related rumors, the next-gen Switch will have a 12GB RAM and 256GB internal storage shout out.

Mark Trobough: 2:19:10

Matt Long said he had to go, so hey, have a good weekend, man.

Brandon Hurles: 2:19:13

Yeah, thanks for hanging out. We appreciate it. So that's a big jump over the 4 gigabytes of RAM in the Switch. 1. Yeah, come with an 8-inch display, hdmi 2.1 support, so that means it'll support VRR and all that jazz. Uh, two usbc supports, magnetic controller attachments, upgraded sl, sl and sr buttons, dual cooling fans, a socl cpu and GPU GMLX30RA1, whatever that means. And then a few other specs that I'm not sure what they mean, but it will also include a gigabit Ethernet chip. So that confirms basically our port there. So if it supports gigabit Internet.

Brandon Hurles: 2:20:07

My assumption is yes, they are going to want this to be a more accessible online multiplayer machine too.

Mark Trobough: 2:20:15

Well, it also pretty much just guarantees that it's going to have a wired connection. It's going to actually have a proper Ethernet port on the docked version. You're not getting gigabit on Wi-Fi, you're not coming in anywhere close to it no way, no way.

Brandon Hurles: 2:20:30

And even if you were going to come close to it, that means you have a really expensive Wi-Fi router, yeah, yeah, but even then, even with, I mean, I've looked at like $800 Wi-Fi routers and you're still looking at like, running at like I mean it's good, but like 600 megabits per second versus like, like I said, plugged in. I was just checking like I'm running 910 upload, 920 download plugged in. I mean that's, that's a 300 megabits per second. It's a pretty big difference. So you're spending 800 on a router. I say just plug it in.

Mark Trobough: 2:21:04

That's how I feel that that's also taking into account how much of your default internet, how good your internet that you're getting anyway, is.

Brandon Hurles: 2:21:11

Yeah, true, true, true. And then so I'm trying to find, because I saw this. This was a GameStop leak. See if I can find it real quick, because we don't have it on our notes yeah, it's like I didn't.

Mark Trobough: 2:21:33

I didn't see that at all so well, supposedly in their system.

Brandon Hurles: 2:21:37

Um, okay, so here it is. Nintendo stays completely silent amid flood of switch 2 leaks at gamestop and cs 2025. So basically, this has to do with the. Are you aware of the new Micro SD card Expresses? They are essentially the equivalent of an SSD.

Mark Trobough: 2:22:02

They run at speeds of an.

Brandon Hurles: 2:22:03

SSD, so they're new. So this supposedly their system popped up with a bunch of. You can look at the images online. There's a bunch of websites. Just type it in, just game stop, switch to 50 articles popped up. But uh, basically it popped up with the new micro SD card expresses that are running at SSD like speed. So there's essentially no load times in these. So they're still going to use microSD cards, but they're a new, a recently released microSD card that run at very high speeds that are meant for the Switch 2 and 4 gaming rather than, you know, like your standard microSD card. So that leaked across their system. It was up for not very long after somebody took that picture and showed it in the system. Obviously they probably got a phone call from nintendo and it got taken down and it was flooded with a bunch of like, fake like listings for yeah what was going to be the switch to stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 2:23:05

Um, so that was basically saying this included a micro sd card and 256 gigabyte, 512 gigabyte configurations, and as well as the dedicated joy-con charger grip for the switch to, so not just the regular one, the one that has the usb-c connection port for the uh, yeah, make it actual controller. Um, so, yeah, that happened as well. Um, yeah, there's a bunch of switch to, so I know that we're missing stuff, because there's so much that's coming out that it's very hard to keep up, like you've got to really be on on the ball and it's. It's definitely, uh, uh, definitely hard. Uh, it looks like, uh, texas osu tied up 14 nice mark loves that thanks for letting us know.

Brandon Hurles: 2:23:58

Uh, all right, so next we've got. I know you're gonna be a little bit disappointed about this one mark oh, yeah, completely sass creed shadows.

Brandon Hurles: 2:24:07

Oh yeah, completely. Assassin's Creed Shadows gets delayed again to March 20th 2025. Here's their full public statement. Dear players, we want to extend our heartfelt thanks to our incredible fans and dedicated teams for your unwavering favor, unwavering support since our announcement in September to further refine and polish this game. Since november, we've been thrilled to share our progress through gameplay overviews, and the overwhelming excitement has truly inspired us. Each week has brought valuable feedback from our community. While we've already made remarkable strides, we believe a few additional weeks are needed to implement the feedback and ensure an even more ambitious and engaging day one experience. Accordingly, the new release date is March 20th 2025. We remain committed to delivering a high quality, immersive experience, fostered by ongoing dialogue between our players and development teams. We know you're eager to learn more about Assassin's Creed Shadows and we're excited to share that. More updates will be coming your way very soon. Mark Alexis Cote, on behalf of all teams working on Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Mark Trobough: 2:25:23

All I heard was a bunch of PR slotting. They didn't say anything other than the game's delayed for another month because, well, we suck at game development game. This means when this game was supposed to launch, it would have launched in an absolute mess of a state. If they essentially need, like another six months of development time on this game, well, there is there.

Brandon Hurles: 2:25:41

There is some uh fun to come out of this uh this is a rip on on ubisoft more. Domino's Pizza. This is official too. You can look this up. Domino's Pizza replied to their tweets and said call us if you need help delivering on time.

Mark Trobough: 2:26:02

That's a pretty good burn. I'm not going to lie.

Brandon Hurles: 2:26:03

That's really good, but then Ubisoft replied. God, I didn't save the reply from ubisoft. Uh oh yeah, on on x uh assassin's creed. The account said altar, waiting for his pizza since 1257.

Game Junction: 2:26:23

It shows him dead oh I, I don't think I love when companies have nothing to do with anything related to it yeah, they rip on them like hardcore, but to be fair.

Mark Trobough: 2:26:37

You see this and you're like I don't. Based off what happened with the, with Dragon Age, which I thought was gonna sell a lot better, I wouldn't be surprised. This game, you know, struggles to sell and it just becomes like the death of Ubisoft as you know it. Yeah, if this game struggles to sell and it just becomes like the death of Ubisoft as you know it, if this game doesn't sell, well, that's three games that sold terrible within a year and that's not good.

Brandon Hurles: 2:27:01

Yeah, I mean I said it before the show, but I think this is either a nail in the coffin for ubisoft or this is a okay launch and people like it and all the issues were, you know kind of whatever development.

Mark Trobough: 2:27:21

The problem is, I'm curious how many people, kind of like dragon age, have already written this game off and they just have zero interest in it, regardless of what it does.

Brandon Hurles: 2:27:28

I mean, I've pretty much written it off and the thing is it sucks is that I like the era, I like samurai games like this is the Assassin's Creed that I would want, like the time period but there's better games that have come out recently and there's another game that's gonna come out in the same era. Yeah, yotai is coming out, so I'm like I don't really care.

Mark Trobough: 2:27:46

Ghost of Tsushima just does it and it's a stealth game that feels more stealthy. Rise of.

Brandon Hurles: 2:27:52

Ronin, which I still gotta play. I've got that and I haven't played that yet and that's supposedly pretty good, and so I'm like not like there's other games to play, but it's like.

Mark Trobough: 2:28:05

I'm a mom. This game is like a decade too late, realistically. I don't know if it decade too late realistically.

Mark Trobough: 2:28:12

I don't know if it's too late, but Other people have come in and filled this void with good games. The problem is it's got other games Like. Ghost of Tsushima. Is such a good game Like. Will this game be better than that, Both narratively and the way the game plays it essentially does Assassin's Creed better that effect? You have the, the other slot that ubisoft has in their game, which is a point direction like oh, a icon, a thought on their map or whatever you want to call it like all the towers way too many, way too many points of interest, way too many.

Brandon Hurles: 2:28:41

You know, map uh, tower unlocks and stuff like that's kind of like a pain, that's like a staple of all their games I feel like this is not going to do anywhere near as good as valhalla did, because, regardless of uh, I mean, I enjoyed the game. I thought valhalla was great. You, you didn't really valhalla.

Mark Trobough: 2:28:56

Valhalla also had I didn't care for it. It also had zero drama, unlike this game I like I like the whole viking theme too.

Brandon Hurles: 2:29:03

So just like the, the samurai stuff I I like the, the theme of it and but. But the problem with it was where there was too much going on. Like I love a, I love an open world game, I that's like, but there can be too many things to do at times.

Mark Trobough: 2:29:19

The world could be way too packed yeah, that's what I feel like last playing odyssey nothing but crap all over. It's like like, oh, so I'm here to do it.

Mark Trobough: 2:29:27

It's like, oh, there's a million things to do, but there's really not a lot to do, it's just filler content to some degree yeah, it can be a problem and, to be fair, the last two games we stopped put out, put out have been, were subpar in outlaws and uh and skull and bones. It very doesn't not leave any confidence that this game it's just gonna play better than those games so yeah, it doesn't leave.

Brandon Hurles: 2:29:51

It doesn't leave much confidence for sure. Uh, mr coffee said the game launches any bugs or glitches. The game is going to be roasted.

Mark Trobough: 2:29:58

There's blood in the water and a lot of people are circling it looking for any social media content is just waiting for this game to do something wrong and they're going to jump all over like that. That's that's what. That's what a lot of gaming content is, but then again the industry's, you know teed that up for people to just go after them.

Brandon Hurles: 2:30:14

So it's kind of like a a problem of their own making uh, personally, I think the game is going to have a huge problem being sold internationally. Yeah, I don't know, man, I mean like it used to be, this is how it used to be. It used to be, man, I mean like it used to be, this is how it used to be. It used to be all duty assassin's creed, like any other game, had to schedule their game around those games. Do you remember that?

Mark Trobough: 2:30:36

yeah, like those were the big games, those were that's like you're talking 360 era games and then that that era of game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:30:42

Like you did not want your game launching the same week that a call of duty or a assassin's creed was launching.

Mark Trobough: 2:30:50

Because it was so, or even like a madden, or like a fifa or something like that, because regardless, those games still sold, sold yeah yeah, yeah, I mean it's, uh, it's, it's definitely gone downhill.

Brandon Hurles: 2:31:02

And then, like we've already got confirmation that they're remaking black flag, and then Yakuza is very openly making their version of Black Flag too, which could do it better.

Mark Trobough: 2:31:14

I'll say this to the bear. Remakes can do well, but when you re-release a game, it's just never going to sell the same as it did the first time.

Brandon Hurles: 2:31:25

I think they realized.

Mark Trobough: 2:31:26

It might be good, but it's a coat of paint on an old game and people see that. So only hardcore fans are really going to go after a Black Flag remake compared to if you had a brand new game.

Brandon Hurles: 2:31:38

I think they realize too now that Black Flag was probably peak.

Mark Trobough: 2:31:43

Assassin's Creed. They did peak there.

Brandon Hurles: 2:31:45

Yeah, I mean, I think it was arguably, while not my favorite, probably my second favorite because I liked that how a lot it had. It had its issues and black flag had its issues too, like some performance stuff. But I think that arguably amongst the fans, like black flag is easily the the top game for the franchise. Yeah, um, so I think that I think that, like a dragon doing what it's doing and being very openly saying, oh, skull and bones, completely failed at taking the concept, we'll step into that we'll step in we make good games doesn't have and it doesn't have this baggage and this and this bad reputation that ubisoft as a whole is is built.

Mark Trobough: 2:32:24

People are just gonna be like, oh, I'll just get that game instead, I don't need a remake which I'm, I'm, I'm like legitimately really excited for that, like a dragon because, let's be fair, I've got the remake going back.

Mark Trobough: 2:32:36

Going back and played old games are fun, but you do. You want to play a new game with a new experience sometimes, so new games are always going to do better than than remakes, like it's just a reality, like if you had to pick between those games like well, I play this game, this is new it's got a new take on it. Let me, let me give it a.

Brandon Hurles: 2:32:52

Give it a shot it's got to be a re like a remake, not not a glorified remaster like it's. It's got to be, you know, like when I say remake I mean things like like final fantasy, 7, rebirth or games like 20 25 years old where, where, where, no, it's not just like a you know a beat for beat remake, where it's like, no, we're doing new things to these games like ubisoft is gonna do new stuff when that game there's gonna that's new code of paint, ship it out the door.

Mark Trobough: 2:33:24

I mean, like are we even going to make it?

Brandon Hurles: 2:33:26

to a black flag remake, because if this doesn't do well like I don't this doesn't spell good news. We saw that the the Star Wars outlaw stuff really did them in Like that was not good. What a mess that was I mean to be fair.

Mark Trobough: 2:33:42

It really started with skull and bones. It was not what people wanted.

Brandon Hurles: 2:33:44

Come out and say a quadruple, a game, make up your own term like are you an problem was?

Mark Trobough: 2:33:51

you were expecting a, a, a more in-depth black flag and you got a, a bare bones black flag like that's so much you can't do. It's like, how did you look at this and say, yeah, they love black flag, they'll absolutely love this game? You don't even do it, it's just like a simulator. If, if, anything else.

Brandon Hurles: 2:34:08

Yeah, yeah, I don't know. Escalated Friends said I love old games too. I mean I do too. But yeah, you look at the industry as a whole.

Mark Trobough: 2:34:17

I mean, most people want to play new games and have new experiences. Yeah, I'm talking more just industry trends as a whole.

Brandon Hurles: 2:34:25

All right, what do we got next, Mark?

Mark Trobough: 2:34:28

This is one of the things that we talked about. Uh, because I haven't we have no idea how this is going to affect uh, gaming long term uh, but the essentially the department, the us department of defense came out and declared tencent a chinese military company, essentially, which then adds blacklisting to that company for certain things. So this could have for companies that Tencent's invested in, could have potential long-term effects. As far as you know, either certain studios are not allowed to do certain things in the US, or certain you know investments like Tencent's not allowed to invest in certain companies and stuff like that, or potentially, tencent products might not be allowed to be sold in the us or in other companies.

Game Junction: 2:35:14

Uh, tencent so this is because this came out, this came out yeah, I think yeah, or any any chinese game.

Mark Trobough: 2:35:21

Tencent has their fingers and this this came out on the sixth and this is how. We have no idea what this is the the the potential ramifications of this are going to be Because I'm not going to go into it, but obviously there was a presidential election about to have a new president come into office in the US and stuff like that but if something like this was to be permanent, it could cause ripples in the industry Because Tencent's a massive company and they have their hands in a lot of games, studios and stuff like that. This is just one of those things where it's like to watch. We were talking about before the whole TikTok stuff. If that goes forward, that's going to have impacts and stuff like that moving forward.

Mark Trobough: 2:36:03

If it gets banned off of mobile stores and stuff like that, this could have potentially the same thing and stuff like that. This could have a potentially, you know, the same thing and stuff like that. So I think it's it's and then in the immediate, it has zero impact, but in two years if this was the like stay and stuff like that or there's, you know, opinions change this could have a very interesting impacts on the game, game industry, yeah, even just from a funding aspect. So it's you know it'll be interesting to watch and see. It's kind of where I was at on that.

Brandon Hurles: 2:36:31

I still don't quite understand how.

Mark Trobough: 2:36:36

None of us do.

Mark Trobough: 2:36:37

Well, the idea is it's a Tencent's more than just a game. They're like an IT industry essentially, but they deal with games. Tencent Gaming is like a subset of the Tencent. So the idea is, you know, the US government, the DOD, sees them as you know, an adversary or a company that's directly controlled or helps an adversary. So we are just going to blacklist you as a whole. We don't want you doing business or limiting what you can and can't do with US companies, because we see you as a liability, potential, potential threat to to what we do. But how, how this actually affects the, the average everyday user I've got, I have no idea. Yeah, because obviously they're going to try to, they're going to go after this and be like I don't know why you're doing this, take us off this, this blacklist, uh. But I I just think it's it's an interesting thing because we do know tencent's a massive uh, a player in the games world.

Brandon Hurles: 2:37:33

So watching this moving forward will be really interesting to to see yeah, I'll definitely definitely be interested to to see the development of this, because it's I don't really know what to to say or kind of think of it, because it's kind of hard because we don't really know it's what right, how this is really going to impact stuff like this just happened.

Mark Trobough: 2:37:51

But you're talking about stuff that you're doing with government, so stuff moves slow, yeah. But I mean you talk about the tiktok thing. That's like a whole that thing took like two years to be to be implemented.

Mark Trobough: 2:38:00

That's like yeah, at the end of this month, that goes into play. If it doesn't, you know, get overturned. So right, right it'll. It'll be interesting to see how this has an impact as well. As you know how much of a, how much are they really investing in and like say, you know us, you know gaming communities and stuff like that, do they? They have like a big player, nintendo, sony and stuff like that. It'd be interesting to see if they have to, like you know, you know they can't do certain things with companies. You know they're, they're a big funder. That could affect some of these companies as well.

Mark Trobough: 2:38:29

So yeah, absolutely for sure this will be something you know as we move into, like later in 2025 and 2026 it'll be. It'll be interesting to see how that actually has potential long term effects yeah, I definitely interested to see what what happens of this.

Brandon Hurles: 2:38:47

I mean I you know, I don't really know what to say at this point, but I mean, some something's gonna happen for sure, so all right, looks like yeah, sorry, escalate.

Mark Trobough: 2:38:57

That's. That's for for me to know and nobody else to know what is it? We're not not directly talking politics.

Brandon Hurles: 2:39:03

This just happened. Yeah, we don't, we don't, we don't do all that we're not going down the road, it just so.

Mark Trobough: 2:39:08

Hats while hats was being vague. It just so happens, it's just, it's the topic overlaps. So yeah, um, but yeah, I'm not. I'm not going down that route no, thanks.

Brandon Hurles: 2:39:18

Uh, so we got. Apparently xbox next generation console has been confirmed will be the largest technical leap in a hardware generation. So it says Xbox is not exiting the hardware market anytime soon. As the company announced, it has a multi-year roadmap that includes a next-generation Xbox in the future. So they say yeah, so they say.

Brandon Hurles: 2:39:42

During the latest episode of the official Xbox podcast focusing on the future business of Microsoft's gaming arm, xbox president Sarah Bond yuck addressed the role hardware plays in Xbox's future. Bond concurred with an earlier statement by Xbox head Phil Spencer that Xbox hardware would remain the flagship experience for players, despite the company's plans to go multi-platform moving forward. Bond teased Xbox has some exciting stuff coming out in hardware that the company plans to share, multi-platform moving forward. Bond teased Xbox has some exciting stuff coming out in hardware that the company plans to share this holiday. More interestingly, bond teased a roadmap focused on next-generation hardware and this is a quote and what we are focused on there is delivering the largest technical leap you will ever have seen in a hardware generation, which makes it better for players and better for creators and the visions they're building.

Brandon Hurles: 2:40:34

Bond explained in the recent episode of the official Xbox podcast, although Bond did specify that this hardware news would entail leaked documents published last year revealed that Microsoft is planning to launch hardware refreshes for both the Xbox Series S and sorry, xbox Series X and S this year. So this is talking about, as far as the refresh, not the big hardware jump for the next generation, but the project brooklyn, which we knew about. We've talked about, I think, probably two or three times um the adorably all digital xbox. Um, uh, this is a sphere like xbox that has no disk drive and, no, no place for a disk drive attachment you know what?

Mark Trobough: 2:41:34

uh, sorry, I just want to say you know what would be better, instead of calling it like take, take a, take a um, a cue from what this? I don't remember what uh serial company did, but it's like it's instead of a con, the the cute, it's like oops, all digital xbox, like that. That'd be some good advertising.

Brandon Hurles: 2:41:50

I'm not gonna lie you know what's crazy man is that? Um, and I bought it ahead of time. So I I I bought it before I got the ps5 pro. I already knew I wanted that because I have such a a massive uh physical ps5 library like I'm. If I can buy it physical, I buy it physical. The disc drives for the ps5 pro are still selling out consistently, like they're still people want the physical, because nobody wants this all digital console that's the crazy thing.

Brandon Hurles: 2:42:21

Like what are they not getting? I mean, playstation has to be getting the message.

Mark Trobough: 2:42:26

The hey, these can't be kept in stock anywhere.

Brandon Hurles: 2:42:29

They're being scalped and sold on ebay for for high prices and I don't.

Mark Trobough: 2:42:35

We don't care what you want. People want that like if you go, if you go full, next console. There's no physical disk drive like this just kind of proves there's gonna be massive backlash.

Brandon Hurles: 2:42:43

People are not unhappy with it at that point I feel like a lot of people are just gonna end up moving to pc because I mean, that's like, if I'm gonna go all digital anyways, I might as well just buy a pc right.

Mark Trobough: 2:42:53

At the very least you can get, you know, games for dirt cheap yeah, I don't know.

Brandon Hurles: 2:43:00

I mean this the project brooklyn supposed, supposedly supposed to launch at the 500 price point, which is how much a Series X is, and be substantially more. It says Brooklyn will deliver 4K Gen 9 console gaming with more internal storage, faster Wi-Fi, reduced power, more immersive controller and a beautiful redesign that elevates the all-digital experience of the Xbox ecosystem. Reduced PSU power by 15%. New low-power standby mode is 20% of current. Increased use of PCR housing to 30% and then 100% recyclable packaging. I don't even know. I mean like it's good news that they're saying they're not dropping out of the hardware game, because I don't think that's good, not yet. But I mean Things change with these companies so quick that it's like it's so hard to tell. I mean even Nintendo. These companies lie all the time.

Mark Trobough: 2:44:08

They're not going to come out and tell you. Until they will. It's on their timetable, because they came out and said that now like nintendo has been notorious for that too.

Brandon Hurles: 2:44:18

All these companies have just straight up lied to us and it, you know, they're not going to tell us all their plans. So it's like I don't know. Like I, I hope that they don't completely drop out of the hardware game because, like I said, that leaves, you know, very little competition in the, the console space. Um, when it comes to just being, if it were, just nintendo and and just sony, like I, there's no, to me that's not a competition because, please, I mean Nintendo kind of stands on its own to me. Um, yeah, and I don't think they're trying to. They're they're obviously not trying to directly compete with the PS five pro or or the PS six when that comes out. They're not, they're not trying to they're doing their own thing.

Brandon Hurles: 2:45:08

They've got a hybrid console. Nobody else is doing that right now.

Mark Trobough: 2:45:11

I'm sure there's playstation portal, sure xbox is it those are kind of like, uh like, half-assed, you know, attempts at the at that.

Brandon Hurles: 2:45:20

Like I do think the xbox handheld is going to be a big deal because I mean whenever they actually I mean they did confirm it um, yeah, and I think, but are they going to go the affordable route? Or they'd be like, oh, this is no, I think they're going to go the high-end route.

Mark Trobough: 2:45:35

I think they're going to go the high end, which limits the amount of people that are actually going to go that route because, nintendo is not going to go that higher. Yeah, I can't imagine them charging five, six hundred dollars for a hand.

Brandon Hurles: 2:45:43

I feel like they're going to try to surpass the asus roguelite x and we already know that asus roguelite 2 is on the way. So and then the lenovo, which we're getting ready to hit up the ces announcements, but we already know that there's a new lenovo handheld coming out which is very, very powerful, also very expensive. Um, so they're targeting like the high route is my assumption with with, with Xbox, that's. That's because they did the same thing with series X for a while. So the PS five pro came out. It was. It was the more powerful console technically, you know, specs wise, it was just just barely more powerful console, and they've always been the company that wants to be the more powerful console. But like, at the end of the day, if you don't have games, that doesn't mean crap.

Mark Trobough: 2:46:31

Yeah, that's the problem. The first party game selection is why nobody's buying your console.

Brandon Hurles: 2:46:36

Like sure you can have a powerful console, but if you don't have the games to play on it, then what's the point? You know? So I don't know, but I guess we're going to jump into the the CES stuff here. There's a lot that got announced there. I'm trying to scroll through what was the Lenovo Legion Go S brings SteamOS outside of the Steam Deck, which is really, really cool, I think, actually a very smart move. If you ask me, to be able to play all your steam games on a handheld is more powerful than steam deck, steam deck oled, which we do know that steam deck 2 is coming out, but that valve is is allowing these companies to be able to run their their operating system on these other handhelds. I think it's a very smart move. Um, well, I think it's just.

Mark Trobough: 2:47:28

It's just. It keeps them in their own ecosystem and it benefits them, because Valve's been in the software space for forever. Yeah, for a very long time Because, even if it's not their hardware, well, you're buying products on their platform, which directly profits them because they get like a 30% cut on stuff on their platforms. So why not run your operating system that just keeps people in the Steam ecosystem.

Brandon Hurles: 2:47:51

Yeah, it says, announced during CES, this will be the first gaming handheld not from Valve to use SteamOS. It'll have Windows versions too, but starting in May you'll be able to get it with the operating system I love so much. Even better, it does look to offer specs, with a slight to moderate improvement on the Steam Deck and its starting price of $500. So this is a mid-range handheld OTC, because Ace of Rogue Ally, I think, is like almost $800.

Mark Trobough: 2:48:21

Yeah, that's like the high end pretty much. You're getting close to $1,000. Yeah, I think eventually you need different tiers. You need these handhelds to come down in price if you want to sell more of them like closer, like the five, six hundred dollar range. Eventually, especially the more these are out, the cheaper the technology becomes and you can just have a lower and a higher end tier, essentially yeah, for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 2:48:42

And then we got like it let's be fair, it's.

Mark Trobough: 2:48:44

It's a handheld. There's some trade-off going from like a pc to a handheld. You expect that you just need the the average consumer one, to be far more affordable.

Brandon Hurles: 2:48:52

Yeah, for sure, For sure, We've got. So we've got the Acer Nitro Blaze 11, which is the biggest gaming handheld, it says. While it means it's not necessarily the most convenient, there's a certain maximal joy to being able to carry it around With so much room. It's packing some impressive specs, but what really takes the cake is its 11-inch display, 2560 by 1600 display. It gets bright, comes with a sturdy kickstand and it can display up to 120 frames per second. It's also surprisingly lightweight at 2.3 pounds. That's a pound heavier than the steam deck, but compared to a laptop it's still reasonable.

Mark Trobough: 2:49:41

So that well, I mean, you're not, you're not holding like a laptop, that's like the one thing that, like that screen is massive for a handheld that's the point where it's starting to become impractical. As hard, but without big, it is like after a while it's not easy to transport. What's the? What's the point?

Brandon Hurles: 2:49:57

Yeah, that's a. That's a big screen dude.

Mark Trobough: 2:50:01

Yeah, I'm like I don't know, that might be just too for a handheld. Well, it's only two pieces, but sometimes it's just bulky and you just want something that's smaller.

Brandon Hurles: 2:50:11

Yeah, yeah, that's.

Mark Trobough: 2:50:15

Say what you want about the Switch. It's not overly bulky.

Brandon Hurles: 2:50:20

It's about the size that you want. Yeah, I think the Switch 2 is going to do it about right, where you get a little bit, because I could use a little bit more of a screen. You know what I mean.

Mark Trobough: 2:50:29

like slightly bigger you can. You'd expect it to be a little bigger but upgrade the hardware and stuff. But yeah, you don't want something that becomes, you know, something that's not that's. You want something easy that you can throw in like a bag or a backpack and carry around for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 2:50:42

I mean we're, we're past the game boy. Well, you got like the chromatic and the uh analog pocket stuff for those actual like pocket size little handhelds and stuff how many people play on a on a phone and it doesn't have the biggest screen, but it's.

Mark Trobough: 2:50:57

It's big enough to do what you need to need on it. Yeah, I mean a lot, a lot of just optimizing your games to work on a screen of that size instead of like a tv yeah, yeah, for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 2:51:10

Um well, do we have anything else that you wanted to bring up for for this week?

Mark Trobough: 2:51:15

no, I think we've. Uh good, I mean, it's been a while so we've hit.

Brandon Hurles: 2:51:18

You know, you know, close to three hours so yeah, there's just so much to talk about appreciate all the 193 people that are still in here hanging out with us.

Mark Trobough: 2:51:25

Yeah, we ran it early on for like a half hour on some random stuff, so that that didn't help but it keeps the podcast interesting.

Brandon Hurles: 2:51:33

Yeah, it was a good episode though. I enjoyed it. Good stuff.

Mark Trobough: 2:51:36

Yeah, there was just a lot to talk about this week, so yeah, appreciate it.

Brandon Hurles: 2:51:40

We, we really appreciate everybody tuning in and hanging out. I know that you know most of you aren't chatting there on the the X side a lot of people there, um, which is really cool to see. You know, with uh trying out restream. We wanted to see how it was again for a month to see if you know be anything any different. It seems like uh seems like a good way to go. Now I, I it seems a little bit different than what do we got coming up.

Mark Trobough: 2:52:09

I'm not sure. To be honest, I've had a lot of other stuff that's preventing me from doing anything.

Brandon Hurles: 2:52:16

Tomorrow we're streaming Marvel Rivals. I do know that 8 pm Eastern Standard Time Anime Junction cast. Is that coming out Sunday still?

Mark Trobough: 2:52:27

It should. It delayed a whole week but I had other stuff like that prevented me from doing stuff on getting that, getting that out on time. So other than that, I don't have a whole lot because, well, my, my, my work life you heard it here first marks canceling the anime junction cast no, no. But hey, other than the other thing we're back to, we're ahead an episode again, just because I was delayed on getting the other one out.

Brandon Hurles: 2:52:50

Yeah, well, I mean, you know we're going to be talking about some Gundams. So I'm kind of excited about that, because it's been a while with Gundam for me, so I'm always excited to check out or revisit, you know, some of these and check out some of the new stuff as well and stuff like that. So we do, uh, you know, we kind of cover a little bit of a little bit of everything, I think so.

Mark Trobough: 2:53:15

Wait on next week to where I can finally start. You know it'll be new, it'll be episode three, but it'll be a new episode of soul leveling for me.

Brandon Hurles: 2:53:20

So well but, I and watch the original Godzilla, because I think we need to try to film that at some point this week. It's going to take us one hour. I mean I'm sure we can fit in an hour somewhere to film it. One hour Talk about the movie. That'll be our first episode. So, yeah, plan on doing that.

Brandon Hurles: 2:53:42

And then, yeah, I'm not sure, video-wise, I've been behind as well. Unfortunately, work's been really, really busy. We had all the stuff with Snow Daughter being home, so I've just not, I've not had a chance to even film anything yet. I don't have a script or anything. I don't know what I'm filming yet. So something will be out soon, but I just don't know what yet. So, unfortunately, I've also been behind getting a video out on YouTube. But, you know, hopefully the streaming and the podcasting and stuff makes up for that and all that. So, uh, and then, you know, every Monday I put out stream schedule. Unfortunately, Mark um is not going to be streaming every Sunday now, Um, so we'll just plan on if he can fill something in or whatever. Do a pop-up stream or something like that. Maybe you can do that. And uh, and then I'm, I'm going to attempt to to try to do, you know a stream here and there through the week. I just again.

Brandon Hurles: 2:54:38

For me it's like I know day of typically so that sucks so but hey it, you know, using restream and stuff now too with it might not be so bad. So it might might be the way to go. Got to make sure you're you're signed in and good to go. Like you do a pop-up stream for an hour or something like that. It shouldn't be too hard to do. So try to do that and stuff here and there. But uh, yeah, again, um, like I said Now we'll be live tomorrow, uh, stream Marvel rivals 8 PM Eastern standard time, and then for our audio listeners, we are live with the podcast every Friday at 8 PM Eastern standard time, as well as a stream of something every single Saturday, uh, same time. So appreciate everybody watching. Hope everybody has a great night and we'll see you all later. Peace.