Warner Brothers Shake-Up, Nintendo Switch 2 Excitement, and Retro Gaming Collecting | Game Junction Podcast

What if an unexpected cold snap in the southern United States could mirror the current shifts in the gaming industry? Join us as we unpack the fallout from Warner Brothers Games' leadership shake-up and the struggles faced by major titles such as "Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League" and Multiversus. We also explore the anticipated impact of the Nintendo Switch 2 on the handheld market, particularly its rivalry with the Steam Deck, as well as Nintendo's marketing tactics. 

Discover the nuanced dynamics of the trading card industry, where the thrill of opening packs meets the financial risks of collecting. How do collectors navigate the rising trend of low-graded cards, and what implications do digital platforms have on physical collectibles? We also reflect on the uncertain future of beloved franchises like Banjo-Kazooie, considering potential revivals and the creative hurdles they face. 

Prepare for excitement as we discuss the highly anticipated game releases that are set to reshape the gaming narrative. With titles like Ninja Gaiden and the captivating Doom the Dark Ages capturing our attention, we explore how these games push the boundaries of their genres. The episode wraps up with insights into retro gaming collecting, pondering the value of orig

NYXI Gaming
- NYXI Wizard GameCube Wireless Joy-pad for Nintendo Switch. Use code "gamejunction" for 10% off!

PWRUP Grip 2
Use code "GameJunction" for 10% off.

Launch Your Own Podcast Now - Buzzsprout
Start for FREE with our affiliate link.

Dubby Energy
Get 10% all your Dubby Energy drink needs using "gamejunction10" and help support Game Junction!

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Chapters

• 0:26 Industry Turmoil
• 13:41 Changing Times in Gaming Industry
• 25:31 Nintendo Switch 2 Sales Discussion
• 35:17 Next Generation Gaming Hardware Discussion
• 46:40 Art Styles in Remakes and Prices
• 51:12 Physical vs Digital Gaming Trends
• 58:00 Nintendo Switch Features and Pokemon TCG
• 1:03:33 Trading Card Collecting Discussion
• 1:10:47 Rising Interest in Trading Card Collecting
• 1:18:15 The Future of Banjo-Kazooie
• 1:24:10 Shift in Gaming Industry Trends
• 1:32:18 Ninja Gaiden and Expedition 33 Impressions
• 1:40:26 Exciting Game Releases Discussion
• 1:48:36 Retro Gaming Collecting Market Analysis

Transcript

Brandon Hurles: 0:26

Hey, what's up everybody, Welcome back. Hey, how's up everybody, welcome back. How's it going? Podcast episode 117. How's it been this week, mark?

Mark Trobough: 0:36

It's been pretty good. I mean it's cold and windy, but other than that pretty good.

Brandon Hurles: 0:40

It's been a cold one here. Yeah, it got down to negative and and the weather said it felt like negative 15. So and it did I felt that way though let me tell you.

Mark Trobough: 0:55

I mean, I saw some crazy stuff down. What's it down? Louisiana, georgia, florida, alabama southern texas was getting some some good snow.

Mark Trobough: 1:03

Yeah, look about a rarity no doubt about a rarity, I think on the panhandle I know some people that were down in on the east coast near savannah that got some, so pretty much, you know, gave them the rest of the week off, more or less, because it's like they don't have any uh plows or anything, they just have to like wait for it to melt on its own and you get several inches of snow. Even at good temperatures, like four inches, it's still going to take like a day or two to melt yeah, it looked like the one video that I saw.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30

I think it got quite a bit too for yeah, in some areas they got.

Mark Trobough: 1:34

They got, like what? Four or five, six inches? Yeah, that's crazy. There's a lot of snow even in ohio. Talk about down there where they hardly ever get it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:42

Yeah, no doubt well, we had quite a bit happen this week. I guess the big thing obviously was the Xbox Developer Direct, which was just yesterday, so that was one of the big things for the week. We got some other stuff too. We got some Warner Brothers Games news that may or may not be good, depending on who you ask. Yeah, new AVGN game got announced, some discussion on the Nintendo Switch 2 affecting Steam Deck sales. I see that's kind of universally advertised across a bunch of different websites, so that's interesting to dive into. So Pokemon TCG stuff I just threw this in there because Mark likes pokemon tcg quite a bit and I was like oh yeah, yeah, talk about, because I do my daily hour or so or whatever.

Mark Trobough: 2:32

You have to do with the open packs? Oh yeah for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 2:35

I actually just saw some stuff for tcg pocket today too that I tagged you in earlier. That looked really. I think I saw that. Yeah, it looks really cool, uh, but yeah, we got some other stuff. Obviously, uh, we need to switch online games added, which. Thank you for adding that in there, because I forgot about that. It happened late last night oh yeah yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 2:58

So, uh, yeah, we got some pretty cool stuff to dive into, so we'll go ahead and get started, but uh, yeah, I guess first we'll uh get and wrap back around to the warner brothers game stuff. Here the president david hatted uh is stepping down after 12 years. Um, so obviously we got, like suicide squad killed justice league, which they lost 200 million dollars from uh, and then the multiverses stuff, which is, I don't think it's really caught on right I don't think anybody that plays it.

Brandon Hurles: 3:32

Yeah, I don't see a whole lot about it I mean, we, we played it when it first came to beta or something right? Yeah, we checked it out. It was definitely interesting, um, but yeah, it definitely hasn't led anywhere for sure. So, yeah, I mean this is Before I get into his statement, I will say I think it's probably good news. This is probably what we need. Let's be honest Warner Brothers game sucks that whole studio sucks.

Mark Trobough: 4:01

I don't know a single good game that they've ever made. That's the problem. I mean, they do Mortal Kombat, you know do they make that or do they have somebody another studio make it? That's not first party. Does Warner Brothers themselves make the game?

Brandon Hurles: 4:16

I think so could be wrong.

Mark Trobough: 4:19

Look it up Mortal Kombat that's what I was about to say.

Brandon Hurles: 4:26

Nether Realms or whatever. Yeah, okay, so Nether Realms owned by Warner Brothers Games, so I mean their studio makes it a studio they probably bought.

Mark Trobough: 4:37

Let's be real.

Brandon Hurles: 4:39

I think so. Yeah, they bought it from Midway back in the day oh yeah, because Midway went bankrupt in 2009.

Mark Trobough: 4:44

So it's not them, it's just a studio that they own, that they bought it from Midway back in the day, oh yeah, because Midway went bankrupt in 2009. So it's not them, it's just a studio that they own, that they bought, not like they acquired. It is and isn't, but, yeah, it's like a studio they acquired after the fact.

Brandon Hurles: 4:53

Yeah, I mean to be honest with you. I just think it got a blow.

Mark Trobough: 5:00

Fair enough.

Brandon Hurles: 5:03

He says I'm so proud of everything we've accomplished together at Warner Brothers Games during my time with the company. It had been an absolute pleasure working on and building our iconic gaming franchises and will continue to be an enthusiastic supporter of this talented team's future endeavors. I look forward to working on the next chapter of my career and will always be grateful for my time with Warner Brothers Games. And that's that. That was a statement there. I chose to leave during a quieter release period and ensure a smooth transition and minimal disruption to ongoing projects. Yeah, I know, I think he kind of blew it and he left Just like did pretty much, you know I don't know.

Mark Trobough: 5:52

Yeah, you mentioned that and it reminded me of something else. What's that About leaving the studio? I needed a poll, just to make sure, about the I believe it was one of the directors. I need to pull up real quick. I forgot to pull it up beforehand. Oh, you're good. Okay, so it was a. What's it? Corny Bush, a game director of Veil Guard, essentially just just bailed on Bioware after that game bomb. That happened too right. Yeah, it happened earlier this week, or maybe it didn't.

Mark Trobough: 6:28

It was either this week or last week. I know it happened within the last week. I don't know if we, if it happened last week, we didn't get the chance to talk about it. It's one of those things you could say whatever you want, this was straight I'm bailing because y'all are about to lose your jobs. I I hear a lot of people talk about how it's one of those studios up in I thought it was Canada for Bioware. You're like, yeah, 100% that it's the Edmonton office. It's already rumored to be shuttered, but it wouldn't surprise me with how badly that game bombed. Because what did? They recently came out and said it hit about 50% of their expected sales, which means they more than likely lost money on that game.

Brandon Hurles: 7:04

For sure. I mean if Warner Brothers Games lost expected sales, which means they more than likely lost money on that game for sure. I mean if, uh, warner brothers games lost 200 million dollars in suzuki squad, I don't think dragon age did probably that much better right? Yeah, we're talking about like making money it had to have. I mean, they probably didn't break even. I'm sure they had to have lost money. It hit 50% of their sales. They were kind of big on.

Mark Trobough: 7:28

Because what they were saying about what 6 to 7 is what they were expecting, Were they?

Brandon Hurles: 7:32

expecting from the last Dragon Age that came out 10 years ago.

Mark Trobough: 7:35

Probably Realistically. That's what they were expecting. It's a different studio now.

Brandon Hurles: 7:39

You got different people here. Don't bank on the name. It's like assassin's creed, right like I think. I do honestly think that um shadow is going to do fine, despite all the issues and hiccups along the way. I think it'll be fine, though I don't think it's going to be anywhere near what it could have been, because they kind of dropped the ball.

Mark Trobough: 7:59

Yeah it's a deal. So just to verify, the inquisition sold over 12 million and it's. I don't know if we got a hard hard number. I was trying just to verify. The inquisition sold over 12 million and it's. I don't know if we got a hard hard number, I was trying just to verify. Uh, we know it probably sold at least 2 million copies, which is more than likely them losing a significant portion.

Mark Trobough: 8:14

They, they well, they guarantee they spent over 100 million dollars on this game I believe that, yeah, I believe that yeah, it's just a yeah, all of a sudden that you get more news that comes out and they're like, well, I wouldn't be surprised if they're they're shuttering more studios in the coming, in the coming months, especially because what isn't ea's big um investor meeting here pretty soon, yeah, next few weeks yep, yeah, I'm uh interested to see what happens.

Brandon Hurles: 8:41

I guess who takes over?

Mark Trobough: 8:43

yeah, or then maybe that's why they came. It's one of those things like, once they have an investment, they have to come out and be like this is what this game did, and on top of it, they have to be like these are the steps that we're trying to make because we can't afford to, can't afford you to leave and us lose money.

Brandon Hurles: 8:58

Yeah, yeah, I'll be interested to see what happens. I mean, I guess what we are told happens at the investors' meeting. Yeah, I mean, look, it's the same deal. Suicide Squad failed, probably tried to stay on. They didn't want them there. So, oh, smooth transition, transition out of this stuff.

Mark Trobough: 9:24

Yeah, what was it? A few days ago there was Ubisoft's stock was another one of those things where it just tanked, but it's still on the way down because Ubisoft's another company that's in a really precarious situation as far as if their next game, their Dragon Age game, in March does not do well, it doesn't bode well for the company or a lot of their studios yeah, sorry, I said the wrong in March does not do well, it doesn't bode well for the company or a lot of their studios. You mean, yeah, sorry, I said the wrong thing, it was we were talking Dragon.

Brandon Hurles: 9:50

Age. Yeah, I don't mind. Yeah, inade says they were expecting $3 million for Dragon Age and sold $1.5 million.

Mark Trobough: 9:59

Interesting. Yeah, I mean the one platform that we obviously can see, which is Steam. Sales aren't good and it very quickly just flatlined to a non-existent player base.

Brandon Hurles: 10:10

I mean even I saw this is a crazy thing. I knew it was going to drop quick, but I think I think I sent it to you too. But I saw dragon age.

Mark Trobough: 10:19

The game had been out for like four weeks and it was like 15 bucks on game fly or something yeah, that's not good when a game's games go on sale eventually, but not not in there in the first six months to like a year, usually where they that's where the bulk of their sales are gonna come from unless it's like a sports title or something where it does start to drop off well yeah, it's.

Brandon Hurles: 10:41

It's one of those things that I don't know. It's a they. They made a lot of missteps along the way. It's, it's. It's one of those things that I don't know. They made a lot of missteps along the way. It's only their fault. They only have themselves to blame. I mean, it's the same way with Ubisoft and Assassin's Creed Shadows. Look, it got delayed again. There's been all these hiccups along the way, all this political stuff making comments about this and that. Oh, is the main character a samurai or is he not? Was he actually historically a samurai or whatever? I don't know. I was listening to a thing about it today.

Mark Trobough: 11:15

It's just one of those things where it's like did you, did you? Regardless of If you do your research, you just Google, regardless of whether it's historically accurate or not. It's just with how everything is and the culture, war and stuff like that, you like you had to have known this was a bad decision. Yeah, out the gate. Like I don't want to, because I've heard some people talk about it's like. It's like they found like the one black guy in japanese history like oh, let's just make a story around him I mean basically, it feels like uh, not thinking, like all the discourse around gaming, thinking maybe this is a target that people will use to attack us.

Mark Trobough: 11:48

whether credible or not, that's a thing that exists in the gaming community right now. So why even open yourself up to be? Attacked in such a way.

Brandon Hurles: 11:57

It makes you wonder about some of these companies or platforms or stuff that are still doing that stuff, especially in the climate now where it's like you instantly alienate at least 50 of your audience because we talked to xbox developer direct live, and it was just like this. One game comes up right and it's around a black girl, so just di f this. I'm not playing, even if it's not in there.

Mark Trobough: 12:23

talk to some people. Everyone is so trained to look for it. You see something, you just expect it to be there. That's what's going to be around, and it's almost like you've set yourself up for failure just based off of trends. What people in your studio come out and see on social media?

Brandon Hurles: 12:41

the stuff that you put out there You've just opened yourself up to, just the assumption of dei is there it's gonna immediately a significant percentage yeah, I mean the you look at the climate of the past four years, all the stuff that's happened, like you have to know what you're doing. You gotta they're self-aware. They're not stupid, right?

Mark Trobough: 13:01

I guess the question is how much money do you have to lose before you actually realize maybe we need to go away from whatever we're doing? Is is not good or healthy? Yeah, we need to do something else. Like, how much money does it take? Because, like, let's be fair, at the end of the day we've talked a lot of people um, most of these execs at the top of these companies only really care about one thing, and that's money. They don't, honestly, god, they don't care about because they think it will make them money, not because they actually care about any any social cause.

Brandon Hurles: 13:33

They're just money's all they care about but you would think like at this point, if you only care about money, like you wouldn't do that, but that's still.

Mark Trobough: 13:41

It's still happening well, because it's also a different thing, because you got, you have people at different levels that believe it. You have, you know, higher people, maybe not at the corporate level, but at people that are managing studio level that do want to push this stuff and we'll just we'll push it until you know they go out of business essentially. So it's one of those things where it's like realistically, like if you did want to make a hard change away from what you're currently doing, that that involves you firing a lot of people at the top yeah, because I know people talk about it, about the people at the bottom that just your regular designers, that kind of get caught up. But you know they, you have to, they have you have to realize what's going on, see the writing on the walls and start planning for that. But like, realistically, like you have to like clean house if you're going to get a lot of the stuff out of there and bring in new people.

Brandon Hurles: 14:25

Yeah, and I do think things are starting. We are definitely things are changing, but there's still some stinkers along the way that we're dealing with. I guess, and I feel like maybe Ubisoft with some of the issues as far as Assassin's Creed Shadows, they may not have. I think they definitely intentionally chose the story that they chose for that. As far as the main character, I think some of the things along the way they may not have intentionally done. I don't think they were trying to alienate the Japanese audience, for instance, by calling the main character. I don't think they did that on purpose for instance.

Mark Trobough: 15:08

No, I mean there's there's probably people that believe it Cause the. I think a lot of the idea with some of the stuff is like, well, you have this core base, but we could find these new people. So let's just focus on finding new people, not realizing if you don't give your core what they want or you start to alienate them, you can lose that core base of support. They're not just gonna be there forever. So it's like is the what you're looking for? Good, and there is a balance to keep your core base happy and to find new audiences. But like realistically you, infinite growth is not like a realistic thing. Like there there is a cap of like what you're going to be able to make and you just have to sustain it what you're making. Like you, you have to focus on the core audience and then splinter off here or there. But if you completely don't care, attack them and only looking for another audience that isn't as invested in maybe gaming or the community as a whole, it just causes problems and you're seeing it right now.

Mark Trobough: 15:59

You know you thought you have a Dragon Age is a very popular game, maybe not the most, but's it's. You know, 12 million copies for inquisition, yeah, and when your second one is hitting you know a tenth of that in sales, like that's a problem. You've lost a lot of your core fan base. That just isn't just willing. We're at a point where people aren't just willing to just buy a game because it has a as a name on it or it has a studio from when you were younger yeah, because a lot more discourse. It's like it's not the, it's not the, the name, uh, that's. It's not the dragon age, or it's not ubisoft or ea or bioware. It's the people behind it that make the game, not the studio, and when those people leave, you're gonna get a different product. So instead of because it's the same thing best analogy you don't watch a movie because of the studio. You watch it for certain actors that you like.

Mark Trobough: 16:47

Well, it's the same thing in gaming. It's just not as public out there. You might like certain actors, but if you like certain types of games, you should be looking at. All right, who's the actual director? What have they worked on? Did this director move to a different studio? That's probably who you should be following.

Brandon Hurles: 17:02

Yeah, no, I agree with that and we have to also keep in mind people got to realize these studios are not the same thing. They were 10, 15 years ago. Once upon a time, bioware was a big name. Yeah, it was a big name. Dragon Age was a big deal. I played Origin and then I've got Inquisition but never played it, but it was a big franchise. That was one of the big, what I call the big three. It felt like it was the Call of Duty, assassin's Creed Dragon Age type deal for a minute there and then Dragon Age fell off for some reason.

Mark Trobough: 17:39

When you don't make a game for a decade, that's already a problem for a well-known game series but they had, like you know, three games, for instance, like on the ps3.

Brandon Hurles: 17:48

So for that you know that console cycle, it's pretty big.

Mark Trobough: 17:51

Yeah, and people that made those games aren't there is brand new people top to bottom. You know nobody that that made those games are still there anymore, so you need to be aware of that when these new games come out yeah, you can't can't be attached to the studio like that.

Brandon Hurles: 18:04

I think it's a bad move.

Mark Trobough: 18:06

I think people are slowly learning.

Brandon Hurles: 18:09

Yeah, they are, I think so too. Alright, so we got a report coming in. I verified it with a few different websites, but supposedly Sony has some fixes coming in for the PS5 Pro to improve the gameplay experience. Obviously, there's been issues with the PSSR, which, I mean, to be fair, I think we kind of expected that it's their first foray into machine learning and the whole deal with AI, upscaling and DLSS and their version of it and all that stuff.

Brandon Hurles: 18:45

So it looks like they've got some stuff they're going to be rolling out for the console to be interesting to see, because there are like obviously one of the big ones was Silent Hill 2, where it had a lot of major issues and they like went from. They did an update for PSSR and then went right back to what's it called, right back to FSR, and then went back to PSSR again where it's at right now and it's pretty good. Digital Foundry did a video on it and talked about it, and so I was watching that to kind of stay up to date. It looks like some of the games are getting patched and they're figuring out what to kind of do, but it looks like they're going to be rolling out some updates for the console itself, so that'll be interesting to see. And then did you see about the new AVGN game?

Mark Trobough: 19:39

AVGN yeah, Angry Video Game Nerd. Oh no, I did not. I haven't really watched angry game nerd in quite a while, oh man miss.

Brandon Hurles: 19:48

Now he's still the goat, still the reason that I, I we're doing this now really realistically yes, it came out with a new.

Mark Trobough: 19:57

What's a new nest game?

Brandon Hurles: 19:59

yeah, it's an actual nes. Yeah, it's gonna be a modern platforms too, but it's going to come out in physical cartridge for NES. So yeah, it's called. It's just called the Angry Video Game. Nerd 8-bit, I believe, is what the full title is but yeah who's he publishing it through for the physical?

Brandon Hurles: 20:19

it is going to limited run games for the NES game. I believe is what I saw retweeted. And then I don't know if they're doing the non like physical for the modern platforms or not. Let me see if I can pull it up real quick that I'm not sure it's a great question.

Mark Trobough: 20:46

Yeah, because what that's, the actual clip, the actual cartridge, yeah, cool, because I mean it looks like an old. At least from from what I was saw the actual like an old style looks, yeah, looks cool. Yeah, it's sick yeah, I really think it is. That's kind of think he said he's also publishing it on some other other platforms. Obviously it's not always. It's not only on the physical. You can get the digital. I think it was on steam and some other pc stuff yeah, it's gonna be on steam into the switch.

Brandon Hurles: 21:19

Uh, xbox and playstation. I believe I was trying to pull up on Limited Run's website and I actually don't see it. Maybe on their X account Can't get confirmation on it. They're doing a physical for the modern platforms too, or not?

Mark Trobough: 21:41

I mean it would be nice, but I can't imagine it being that expensive. If you can put it on a NES cartridge, it's not. It's in the megabits. As far as the size.

Brandon Hurles: 21:49

Okay, so January 22nd. They just said we'll have more news to share about the physical NES release soon. Until then, check out the Steam page to learn more about the nerds' newest adventure. So no confirmation, it looks like. My guess is they're probably just doing the NES card. But that would be silly to not have a physical, because his other games are on physical. I don't know, I don't know. It seems like he's like a physical media guy. You would think like the modern platform releases would be there too, but you know, I don't know.

Mark Trobough: 22:23

Yeah, but it also can get expensive on the other ones because you barely need any space on a Blu-ray for the Xbox and PlayStation.

Brandon Hurles: 22:34

Yeah, it's going to be like a super small game.

Mark Trobough: 22:36

It might be harder to justify that and it's just easier to do it digital only. Unfortunately it falls into that whole indie style of it's just not not financially feasible to to make a hard copy, unless you're just going to do pre-orders only yeah, it could be one of those deals.

Brandon Hurles: 22:53

Uh, so game rant put out that there is a that no, uh, no man's sky developer teases potential new update, um, and just says it seems like a launch. Yet another content update for no Minutes Sky is nigh, thanks to a tweet from developer and Hello Games co-founder, sean Murray. Contents, which have gotten fans excited over the possibility that part two of the game's Worlds update is finally here. One of New Minutes Sky has been put out since content for fans, blah, blah, blah. So I don't know. Do you know what the Worlds update is?

Mark Trobough: 23:27

No, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. We've played it periodically, but it's not something I follow all the time, unfortunately.

Brandon Hurles: 23:35

I'm not too sure on that. Worlds update.

Mark Trobough: 23:38

I assume it'd be another decent update. Are they trying to add more stuff? I guess only time will tell.

Brandon Hurles: 23:48

Yeah, and then we got some interesting stuff here. Nintendo's stock hits all-time new high, hitting all-time high of 9,775 yen, following a Switch 2 reveal which I mean to be expected. I to be expected. Well, I say to be expected, but I mean it hits a record high. That's a big deal.

Mark Trobough: 24:10

Not surprising. They finally came out and announced the Switch 2, so it's a lot of speculation based off of the Switch 2's expected to do pretty well at launch. So people are buying into it now, obviously expecting the stock to continue to go up.

Brandon Hurles: 24:26

Let me ask you do you think this, this outsells switch one?

Mark Trobough: 24:32

yes, that, that's a hard one switch one was like really the first time you get into it, obviously there's more competition. I think it's got a good chance to probably break the 100 million mark but it's hard continuing. The switch has been the what, the first console in like 20 years to come close to the, to the playstation 2. Yeah, I mean, like you're talking, it's really hard to get that high console sales like I, I don't, I don't, I just don't think it will. You have to be, it have to be super popular.

Brandon Hurles: 25:00

Yeah, it's hard to tell because, like, the hype around this console is like unprecedented. It's bigger than anything I've ever seen before.

Mark Trobough: 25:09

Yeah, that's the that's the hype around your, your core people that are in the gaming area, and what you really need to do is have people that are have a reason for people to upgrade from the switch to a switch to that are just you know, your regular everyday people that don't really follow it, your families and stuff like that. So I could see it a little bit harder. Obviously, they also need to support this for another six years.

Brandon Hurles: 25:31

essentially, I saw somebody post on X today. That was kind of interesting Shout out to Paul. Gale actually is who posted it, so let me pull up his tweet about it. But it was. He said Nintendo's got around $15 billion in the bank. A 30-second Super Bowl commercial only costs $8 million. There's no Nintendo Switch 2 presence at this year's game. It's not because they can't afford it. Rather, nintendo doesn't find it necessary to be safe. Don't expect to show up, but is it possible?

Mark Trobough: 26:08

yes, I don't know why you'd ever expect that I. I don't think nintendo is such a big company. They don't. Why waste the money?

Brandon Hurles: 26:13

you don't need that I mean you look at the views they get on their directs because like you pull up, for instance, I'll see if I can pull it up real quick, but like because the other problem is they'll have yet to officially have their direct, like they still have, like another two months or, uh, two months, like a week or so, like two weeks, before we get the actual announcement for what?

Mark Trobough: 26:32

the actual information you know, the release date, the pricing, ideally the some games and stuff for it. Like I just don't, I just don't see them announcing, because what you do, they're just going to show the same commercial. You're not going to have any information as far as the hardware, the pricing, the release date. It just doesn't make sense. If you're going to make a television console, you, that's after the official announcement, you have all the information. That's when you ramp up hard into the advertising side of it. This just doesn't make sense to me. I would, I would expect that I I have zero expectations and I wouldn't expect him to show up at all yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 27:04

So in a natey said, uh that he thinks, think it will break a hundred million. I it's a tough one because, like I'm thinking about, the switch was like kind of an unprecedented console. It was weird. It was a console that came out.

Mark Trobough: 27:18

It was already behind in technology, I think it's helpful, like gaming as a whole benefited from the pandemic, and then you saw the studios that were mismanaged because they didn't realize this was an unsustainable thing and it was only because people couldn't do anything else. A lot of people weren't even working 100%. That's probably what boosted the sales, because games like oh, it's their Sims equivalent. I can't think of the name Animal Crossing. Yeah, you had animal crossing also. Sorry, I blanked on the name uh, animal crossings. In that same aspect. That game is only so popular based off when it came out at the 100 percent.

Brandon Hurles: 27:55

This is why those sales were so boosted.

Mark Trobough: 27:57

100 it would have done well regardless, but but. But.

Brandon Hurles: 28:00

The pandemic definitely boosted those game sales another thing I've not heard anybody else talk about is the fact that a lot of households that have gamers in it or kids multiple kids have more than one Switch. Me and you both have more than one Switch. My daughter's got a Switch. If I have another kid, I have a Switch too.

Mark Trobough: 28:23

It's affordable. You can have maybe one for you and the family. Maybe you get one of the lights for the kids to play another kid, because it's a, it's affordable, you can have maybe one for you and the family you've got, maybe you get one of the the lights for the kids to play with something a little bit more affordable they can kind of move around with. Uh, because usually when you think of families, the switches, you can buy what about two switch ones for the price of a playstation, or even like a ps4, really, yeah, or it's maybe slightly over, and you can also kind of stagger that stuff out. Like, let's be fair, a lot of us, a lot of adults, are hardcore gamers, but a lot of these sales are coming from, from parents that have kids.

Brandon Hurles: 28:49

Like that's still going to be a big chunk of where we're console and game sales go towards 100, and I think the other thing is too, if it's a 400 on the console, which I think it's fair to say, it's for sure.

Mark Trobough: 29:02

I think it's not gonna go higher for sure. I think it has to be 400.

Brandon Hurles: 29:04

They're not going to go higher than that. I think it has to be 400. It's not going to be any less than that, I think anybody. So you get like a Switch 2 Lite. Yeah, I mean yeah, unless there's a Lite. How long after the Switch 1 came out Did the Switch Lite come out? Was it like a year? Maybe let's try to pull a year. Maybe pull it up real quick. Yeah, I can't remember.

Mark Trobough: 29:27

You just pronounce it, you know it's just easier, I swear yeah, switch Lite came out in September of 2019, so what about two years later, which I think makes sense yeah, that makes sense and then, yeah, I mean a lot of people then, like myself, picked up a Switch Lite as well when it came out for just myself.

Mark Trobough: 29:46

So yeah, oh, and I just I saw this apparently back in july. I don't know if we ever talked about this back in july of last year. The switch became nintendo's longest running console, without a replacement, since the nes sounds about right, which is great. I mean, the wii u obviously made sense, but the fact that they they sat on this for what? As long as they have? Eight years now, because what it came out in what 2017, 2017?

Brandon Hurles: 30:11

yep, so yeah, you're sitting about eight years. That's crazy how they've made eight years with that, that console, you know what I mean. Like I'm still playing it now, like yeah, it'll be.

Mark Trobough: 30:21

It'll be eight years in march, I guess, technically, because that's when the console came out.

Brandon Hurles: 30:24

Yeah, it's crazy because I mean, like it's been, it was so popular.

Mark Trobough: 30:28

You look at the sales.

Brandon Hurles: 30:28

There's no need to rush out a second console yeah, for sure, derpy entertainment says 400 or 350, not buying it if it's 500, because the chips they're using is kind of underwhelming I don't think nintendo wants to sell that high like let's be fair like these massive consoles are selling for that much I don't, I don't think, I think nintendo wants to to be that that undercut price across the board that's another benefit towards it because you're maybe not getting it for for multi-platform titles, but you're getting it for nintendo titles.

Mark Trobough: 30:57

It's family console the. The price reflects that, uh. But I mean I think there's there's an obvious they can't charge $300 for it when you look at inflation and everything else. With the upgrade I think it'll be worthwhile.

Brandon Hurles: 31:08

Yeah, and you got to think too. I wonder how many units COVID actually moved of the Switch, because it was like there was a period of time there right at the beginning where you couldn't find one again Like you couldn't find me and they were sold out. I know my local store for sure.

Mark Trobough: 31:32

I can confirm it was this way. They were gone, switch lights, regular switches gone, all sold out. It's like it depends it was. I'm curious because I think it could hit. It'll probably hit, at least at adam it'll. It will break 10 million in the first year. I think it'll be between 15 to 20 million its first year. Yeah, I think the first year sales will definitely determine and then you can. Obviously people are going to make the comparison between the Switch 1 and the Switch 2. But I think it needs a really good initial boost in its first year and then obviously you're going to look at subsequent years. How much can it maintain sales and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 31:59

Yeah for sure. I think that first year is going to tell a lot, and then, of course, I expect the first like I don't know give it a window of at least like six months is just going to be kind of crazy, with people trying to get one.

Mark Trobough: 32:11

Yeah, because I do believe the rubers they want to avoid that shortage with the split between two days with the holiday when it first releases. So you want, you know, probably 10, 15 million units kind of banked up before you actually release it.

Brandon Hurles: 32:26

But then you think back to the pictures of people with a pallet full of PS5s and Series Xs.

Mark Trobough: 32:33

I think they have to avoid only selling it online, digital only. That's the problem. It's so easy to bought it. If you were to put a significant percentage in physical stores which isn't a problem when those consoles came out, then that wouldn't be such a problem, Especially when stores limit how many you can buy.

Brandon Hurles: 32:53

Yeah, for sure. That's a good point. We talked about this last week, I think, or the week before that, where they take up the most shelf real estate still.

Mark Trobough: 33:03

Yes, which is don't take up that much real estate. The boxes are not big.

Brandon Hurles: 33:07

They don't, but they've got the most showcased area as far as storage, Everything I've been in Switch has the biggest section, if you will.

Mark Trobough: 33:19

Yeah, but if you think of stores, think of a GameStop. They're usually not that big. They don't have that big of a storage area. You can store significantly more switches or even the switch to. Then you could a ps5 and xbox one. Those, the consoles are massive. You.

Brandon Hurles: 33:31

You just can't have that many on on storage wonder how many uh switches you can put up against the ps5. Get it like the same size, probably like with the amount of space. Uh, just talking side by side four to five probably four to five, to get the same thickness of a ps5, like make it the same size thickness.

Mark Trobough: 33:53

Well it's hard because you it's. If you think like just shelf space, it's not, it's not a one for one, but I think if you just stack them as far as like just the height of the box realistically, maybe not the depth, I think you get four to five at least, and then there's going to be you're not gonna be able to fit a full two for the whole width, probably depending on how you stack them. I don't know. I'm assuming the switch two is going to be slightly. It's obviously going to be slightly bigger. So that's like, that's like a conservative estimate that I'd go with for like a like, a minimum uh, as a whole it would get up significantly less space for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 34:24

Derpy Entertainment asks what capabilities do you think the Switch 2 will have or must have in order to say wow, I think it just needs to just better hardware. Wow, I mean like I'm pretty excited, I would say it just needs better hardware to like.

Mark Trobough: 34:42

If you look at like the Nintendo games, I think that's not a hardware issue, that's a, that's a development problem I like. If you look at like the Nintendo games, I think that's not a hardware issue, that's a, that's a, that's a development problem. I think. Because when you look at like a like the breath, the wild tears that came, which is like the perfect example just to be able to maybe have more stuff happening on screen, have that render distance out a lot more. Yeah, just a slight upgrade.

Mark Trobough: 35:01

Because when you look at nintendo, because obviously it's their, their number, it's a con, their first party games that are gonna make or break the console sales that's why you buy these, these consoles 100 well they're not going this unreal 5 hyper realistic direction which I think in some ways it started to hurt gaming. They stick with a more stylized aspect, which I'm not an expert, you'd assume it requires you know less hardware to to run in a more stylized way.

Mark Trobough: 35:27

It looks better like a game like uh wind waker can last, like you could play it today and it still looks almost as good as when it came out, compared to if you play like a call of duty from 2005, you can tell it's aged poorly because they were going at the time. The realistic graphics look good. Now they don't look as bad, yeah. So when you look at the hardware on that side, uh, it's not as bad. Plus, when you use a what's a stylized uh, art form or graphics, it's easier to hide imperfections with the hardware and your limitations.

Brandon Hurles: 35:56

You can kind of get creative around that a little bit easier yeah, I think like one of the big things that was mattered to me obviously I think matters to you too is backwards compatibility, first of all for physical games. So we've got that. I still do wonder. I mean I guess we'll find out coming up here soon. Hey, are our games going to play better, or are they just playing the same on the new hardware? You know what I mean.

Mark Trobough: 36:20

I think by default they should just be able to run faster because it might not be hitting the limits of it. But I I'm not an expert now. You'd assume they're going to do some backwards, uh on the software. So the games just run better with like a quick little update I mean the newer games 100 will run 10 times better? I think they will, because you're dealing with hardware, that a concept came out in 2017. Realistically, you look at like 2015, 2016.

Brandon Hurles: 36:44

Yeah, hardware, hardware that's like a decade old at this point yeah, the hardware is already outdated when they came out, so that was an interesting thing about that particular move. But then it was the first like hybrid console. Now you see it everywhere.

Mark Trobough: 36:56

There's hybrid consoles everywhere you know you got to be sure to tend to open the door on that, or they just didn't take that well down they definitely did.

Brandon Hurles: 37:05

Look at handhelds now, I like to say I think they're more popular than ever amongst gamers. I mean, there's so many, holy crap.

Mark Trobough: 37:14

You're not having to make that trade-off Like back around the Game Boy Advance and DS era. You might have the same game on a handheld, but it's essentially a fully different game because it doesn't have the power to to run, you know, 3d graphics. We're finally at a point where a handheld essentially can realistically run console level graphics, or maybe it's just slightly downgraded um, so that that's less of an issue, especially when people came out like with the steam deck, where you can. You don't have to rebuy games for handheld, you just games that you play on your pc. You can play on the go. Yeah, it's like a one-for-one swap right, yeah, for sure the technology, the pricing's obviously come down.

Mark Trobough: 37:53

You can, you're gonna still find, you know, thousand dollar, you know handhelds, but those are going to be more geared towards a hardcore. But just the overall technology is more more accessible and after seeing the Switch, there's an obvious market for it. They didn't have to take the risk. Nintendo took the risk and then once you see there's popularity for it, then you can really go all in knowing that there's some markets, depending on what people want to do.

Brandon Hurles: 38:18

I guess, since we're already talking Switch 2 and you brought up the Steam Deck, one of the things that's been going around this week is that let's see if we got the wrong screen up. Okay, a little bit. Nintendo Switch 2 reveals seems to have hurt Steam Deck sales. To me, it says the Switch 2 reveal appears to have impacted Steam Deck sales, causing it to drop from number 3 to number 47 on the Steam charts. The Steam Deck has consistently remained in the top 10 weekly Steam charts, making this the first time the console has fallen out, so I feel like this is like to be expected to me.

Mark Trobough: 38:59

I think this is one of those proves that you know you can have multiples because they're going to do different things, but you know people that want to play the tindo games like most people aren't going to, you know, play them illegally or torrent them or something like that.

Brandon Hurles: 39:13

like it, yeah, it might be technically underpowered but people are still going to go buy, buy this console yeah, 100, I think obvious market for it for sure, like you think we talked about this before you think of you've got a PC gamer who isn't a console gamer, but he still. He still owns a switch for Nintendo games. You know what I mean. You might be a PC gamer all day, but you still got a switch there for them.

Mark Trobough: 39:38

It's one of the things, if you can afford a PC and say a steam deck or a rogue ally without expensive and say a steam dick or a rogue ally with how expensive those are. You can afford a afford a switch which is cheaper than maybe a playstation xbox, if you have a strong ally. If you have bucks like a pc and you've got other consoles, you can afford another switch like money. You're not hurting that that badly for money yeah for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 40:00

Uh, yeah, it seems to be the case. It's always like uh, I've got either a pc or I've got a PS5 and Switch, it's always, and Switch is added to it. So, people, you know, if you're a gamer, you've usually still got a Switch for those Nintendo games which you know a lot of people are like you know, I got to play my Pokemon, I got to play my Zelda, whatever it might be. This doesn't surprise me at all, though it obviously is, you know, apparent that that is the the case, because if it's the first time it's dropped out of the top 10 since been out and the scene deck's been out for quite a while, that's a sure sign that, yeah, that's legit and then I just because I I brought it up I brought because I did see leaks earlier this week about it do you think we'll have a zelda game at launch?

Mark Trobough: 40:45

but it's like a remake because there were rumors coming around that maybe like a like a wind waker hd could be coming to the switch, potentially like a switch to like around the same time. It would be cross-platform. But you get like some of these older games because they have been slowly bringing older games back. I don't think this, this, this game, necessarily needs like a remake or remaster, like some of the old game boy games and stuff like that, but like just finally porting over the wii u version of this game well, to me it's like uh, it came out in hg on the wii u, so it's like give me some 4k at least going on here well, yeah, upscale it, but you don't really need to do a whole lot behind.

Mark Trobough: 41:19

No, you don't get a whole lot to that, um, but you think this is like. This is like a new game from you know I mean most of most of the wii u games had some kind of upscaling from from the wii u to the switch. But do you think like this is like a realistic, like rumor?

Brandon Hurles: 41:34

um, I want to say I don't know, because there's also been rumors that hey, we're getting a new 4k version of breath the wild, like this has been a rumor for a while for the switch but that would kind of like with this it doesn't really you're not remaking the game, you're just kind of upscaling the graphics to make it look better.

Mark Trobough: 41:55

Yeah, I don't think they really are going to put that much. I mean, obviously they get a lot of money, but like it's one of those things where it's like a lot of games just get a upscale version of graphical fidelity, ideally some frame rates, and it just runs smoother on the switch too. Like you don't need to go in and change a whole lot of stuff behind the scenes. Like the game for is more or less fine how it is. You just need to fix some of the performance stutters. The game obviously had limitations of the hardware lss would do that.

Brandon Hurles: 42:21

if they they're taking advantage of their own hardware with machine learning, I would agree.

Mark Trobough: 42:27

I'll agree with like 1440 or 4K if I get consistent 60. I'll take 1080p, if it's just more consistent, at 60 FPS all the way through the game, regardless of how much is going on screen. You just don't have any performance stutters.

Brandon Hurles: 42:42

Let me look this up because I I'm pretty sure the frame rate is locked on Breath of the Wild and Tears of the King.

Mark Trobough: 42:52

Yeah, but let's be fair. Occasionally you have dips in performance when there's a lot going on on screen. It doesn't happen often, but at times you can be like, oh yeah, I can see it's hitting the limitations of what they're trying to do.

Brandon Hurles: 43:05

Yeah, I mean especially Tears of the King, right, when you're jumping from the sky and stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 43:11

Yeah, I mean especially Tears of the King, right when you're jumping from the sky and stuff like that. Yeah, I think Tears is far more of an issue because there's a lot more going on with the game. But both of those games had issues where it's like they did their best but they're just hitting portions where it's just like the hardware was just better. It would be a very consistent, smooth performance all the way through.

Brandon Hurles: 43:31

Yeah, so I'm not getting a specific answer here, but it looks like generally people are saying 30, 30 locked in combat dense areas, it stumbles into the 20s? Yeah, definitely. There's definitely like areas where, if there's a bunch of enemies on screen or like you're just coming in like real quickly or something to the ground, like you can see a little bit of stuff going on um, I'll take the, the graphical upgrade, as long as there's no performance downgrade with that still playing.

Brandon Hurles: 43:53

I thought about dropping and just replaying it on the Switch 2 because it might be play significantly better.

Mark Trobough: 43:59

So I'm like maybe I should just drop it because I'm still playing it now, like but would you want like a Wind Waker remake on the Switch 2 if it came out at launch? Obviously it comes out on both, but it just comes out the same day the Switch does would that be something you would be like, excited for?

Brandon Hurles: 44:15

I personally would be more excited about Twilight Princess, which also got the HD remake, or why not?

Mark Trobough: 44:20

why not both?

Brandon Hurles: 44:21

it's not like it would require them to do all that much we thought for a while, right, like we were going to get a package, or at least hey, within the next year, these two remakes are gonna are gonna drop I would love. Yeah, I mean I would love to see either one. Um, I don't, I don't think it's gonna happen, though. I mean, these are like a handful of games of.

Mark Trobough: 44:40

We've got a lot of zelda games that have finally come to the switch. Whether it's the physical or it's the, they're uh, like the, like the snes, the, the nso, essentially. So, bringing some of these games over, I, I think, would be great to to get all the library in one location one way or another, whether it's the nso or you have like a physical remake or like a remaster yeah, because for a while there if you owned a wii it was.

Brandon Hurles: 45:03

It was the best place to play, like all zelda's, because like everything was on it right up until tears of the the King. New came out. Of course I would love to see it, but I don't know. I think they've got Mario Kart ready to go. 3d Zelda, I think, comes before anything else in Metroid Prime 4. I think those are big first three games I would say.

Mark Trobough: 45:26

Metroid. At this point you think it has to be good to go. It's a game that's just waiting. It's gotta be how long they've been working on. At this point you're sitting here like I mean, we're gonna find out in, you know, first week of april what's going on with it with these games. I assume people talk about a different direct. By that direct you're probably gonna know what games are coming out on it as well. When they're finally going to announce it. You'll either have gotten a direct before or it's just going to be one really long direct.

Brandon Hurles: 45:52

Yeah, derpy says I want Ocarina of Time remake with full HD graphics instead of the cartoony-ish OG style. I have seen that People have done it in Unreal and it's beautiful, it looks amazing, so it's like. I don't think they do it.

Mark Trobough: 46:11

You know what I mean because they're. I think you get too much of a hyper realistic with the unreal engine looks great, but it's not a.

Brandon Hurles: 46:15

It's not like a graphical style that I recognize with zelda, maybe more of a uh uh, twilight princess art style you think of, like twilight princess, and it's like, oh yeah, I'm going for the serious dark tone.

Mark Trobough: 46:29

Yeah, but I think that art style just ages the worst, so you want to stick with something that's more, that stands out, regardless of the hardware. It'll always look good in a stylized fashion.

Brandon Hurles: 46:40

I agree with you. I mean I think it does. Yeah, it doesn't age as well. You look at Wind Waker like you were saying earlier, the game still looks great on the gamecube and then you think of it when wicker hd. It looks absolutely beautiful like the games.

Mark Trobough: 46:53

Yeah, the art style is essentially timeless compared to what's it? Twilight princess, or it's a little bit it's. It's just not aged as well, because it went a more realistic dark round compared to a lot of these other games because even in the remakes that you get like, yeah, it doesn't hold up like one waker does, just visually you know, yeah, because what is it we got?

Mark Trobough: 47:13

uh, uh, what's it? Uh, lynx awakening, and you've got the new the, the other game, uh, this little game that came out back in september sorry, I was blanking on that one they, they stuck with. They stuck with that stylized art style that is not realistic at all. So, yeah, I would feel like they're that. That's the, that's the route nintendo would go, regardless of what anybody would really want. They've kind of made it known that's the, that's the kind of art stuff they would go if they just, completely, from the ground up, remade these games yeah, and I agree with the entertainment would break the internet if they did that with an ocarina of time remake I think.

Brandon Hurles: 47:47

Think it would for sure, and what I saw with the Unreal stuff where people have put it in there and worked really hard on it. You can play the game like that. You can actually play like somebody's ported Ocarina of Time to PC. You can run it like some crazy frame rate.

Mark Trobough: 48:07

Oh yeah, when you have have a 4090 level hardware, you can do a lot with it.

Brandon Hurles: 48:13

Yeah, it's crazy, it's nuts. I mean yeah, it's there, you can look it up. I can't necessarily pull it up, nintendo will come and grab me, but definitely look it up If you got a PC. I think that came out probably like 6-7 years ago or something, so that was way before the 490 even came out, so you can run it on some older hardware, but it's interesting what people do with these games on PC for sure. All right, so we got OK. So we talked about this like very briefly before the podcast. Trump's proposed tariffs on Mexico can make video games more expensive and the whole deal behind this of what they're talking about, is because all the physical media, all the physical discs, are made in Mexico. Does this have any impact, mark?

Mark Trobough: 49:08

No, well, first of all, when you're dealing with with politics, god knows there's people say one thing to get an influence, yeah, who knows what's actually going to happen. So that's like a like a wait and wait and see type thing, uh it could make.

Mark Trobough: 49:22

I see this less of a now you know yeah, right, in the great state, 51st state of canada or whatever. That's not so funny, man. But uh, this feels like more of an excuse for them to charge more, because I put a little bit lower down on the notes. Uh, because people in the industry were talking gta6, they hope it costs 100 because then we could just make that. The new standard.

Mark Trobough: 49:45

Problem is like, let's be fair, none of these studios make games that are even as good as GTA V. Gta VI could ask that much money because it's going to be a game that's that good. Dragon Age can't ask that money. It's a dog crap game. It's not good. Nobody's going to buy your game at that price point. They didn't buy it at $70. This feels like one of those other things where they're trying to find an excuse to just jack up game prices because their sales are terrible, because they make terrible games. A hundred percent they're going to they would, they're going to try to use that, but are people actually going to start paying more? Are they going to start adding ten dollars every year to AAA games? I find that hard to believe.

Brandon Hurles: 50:26

Here's my thought on this too. Like what is the crazy number of digital sales versus physical media? Now, anyway, like it was, like it's like not, isn't it like a nine, ninety percent, ten percent split now, isn't?

Mark Trobough: 50:40

it like.

Brandon Hurles: 50:40

It was like a 70, 30 or a split it might be I'll see because we looked it up a while ago where a majority of people still prefer having access to physical games well, yeah, when we were talking about like, I guess, like the disk drive for the ps5 pro and stuff like that, that's still selling out, you still I would say this if you're, if you're looking at digital games, it's going to be like a, like a sports game, like a madden, a fifa, a call of duty.

Mark Trobough: 51:06

But when you look at some of the more single-player games or more games in general, I think there's still a significant portion. There's a significant market for, for physical, whether they're going to a store buying it or not. I think there's people that's like I'll buy this game physical and I'll buy this game digital, just depending on the type of game it is so yeah, that's 100, something that I do for sure it's different from console to console.

Brandon Hurles: 51:29

So I'm like looking up here and so for like instance, for sony, it's a 70 30 split, which makes sense, but it's like, uh, it's interesting steam does the same thing.

Mark Trobough: 51:41

Steam takes like a 30 cut well at for like certain games. Sometimes they take significantly more.

Brandon Hurles: 51:47

No, I I meant like a 70-30.

Mark Trobough: 51:50

Are you talking physical or are you talking percentage they take?

Brandon Hurles: 51:55

Physical media. No, you're good. So what's the digital physical? Is it 70 digital, 70-30 for Sony?

Mark Trobough: 52:05

So that's the majority digital compared to physical right.

Brandon Hurles: 52:08

I imagine like, for instance, I can still see it being an easy 50-50 split.

Mark Trobough: 52:15

Mainly because the Switch has no internal hardware. The storage isn't physical.

Brandon Hurles: 52:21

It's like it's a hybrid handheld console. So it's like a lot of people. I see the argument that a lot of people don't want to fuss with the digital anymore, especially if they're like on the go, Like, for instance, remember the one time you you were, you had to travel and you forgot dragon age or a dragon quest, dragon quest, like at that point in time I would have been like damn, I wish I would have bought.

Mark Trobough: 52:41

I think there's a. There's a difference Like, first of all, the significantly the the actual box that come in smaller.

Brandon Hurles: 52:52

Yeah, cartridges are not that big, so it's easier to store them compared to, like, a full-size disc, even if you're just trying to save space on a shelf yeah, for sure, and I I just when I think of nintendo, like nintendo fans, like a lot of them, still want to have their stuff physically, especially when I mean it just like, for for some reason that seems to ring more true with a nintendo fan, for instance, versus an xbox fan where, like I imagine, their splits got to be like, uh, 80, 20, 90, 10, yeah, yeah, well, that's another one of those things where it's the.

Mark Trobough: 53:25

The switch went back to the cartridge. It's more like a flash storage uh, which storage which, now that the storage has come a lot up, it's a lot faster when you're loading stuff, comparing to having to read a disk. You have a hard cap on the amount of memory when it comes to loading. Obviously, moving to the SSD helps with that, especially with the internal storage, but having a flash drive eliminates a lot of the need for loading screens and stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 53:48

That's what I'm really excited about.

Mark Trobough: 53:49

Especially on an underpowered system.

Brandon Hurles: 53:51

The micro SD card express essentially runs near the speeds of an SSD, so there should be, especially with Nintendo games, essentially no load times, ideally. As far as I've seen, it's brand new technology. These micro SD cards literally just dropped. So yeah, they run at like 90 megabits per second. I believe I was just reading this earlier Micro SD card express. Just to confirm.

Brandon Hurles: 54:25

Okay, so yeah 90 megabits per second, 8.8 times faster read speeds and 4.4 times faster than the standard micro SD card. So that's huge. That's a. Those are big numbers. If it's, if it's really that faster, then that's a pretty big deal.

Mark Trobough: 54:45

Yeah, I mean just just having the uh cause. I mean, to be fair with the SSDsds and the blu-ray. A lot of it still gets downloaded, so you don't. It's less of a loading screen issue, yeah, but for something like the switch, trying to find around about with a flash drive, essentially to get around that loading thing is definitely a you know something they have to take and take into account. Compared to like you don't want people just sitting on like a 30 second loading screen, like maybe in 2009 people were used to and accepted that. Now it's you know, you have to find a way around that yeah, with that you got to.

Brandon Hurles: 55:16

You got to. You got, at least in some regards, compete with modern platforms. Um, you know there's like there's some trade-offs. You know there's something you got to compete with and like load times are definitely one that you want to. You know people value their time a little bit more these days yeah, the technology's there for it, it you.

Mark Trobough: 55:34

You had cartridges which were big and expensive. Uh, the technology went to discs. But the these, the flash storage technology has has come around. It's more affordable, it's smaller, it holds significantly more memory. So, yeah, you can, you can, you can make that, you know, a lateral back over. And it's not like nintendo ever stopped using it. You know every form of the ds essentially used the same form of cartridge. It wasn't rendering the you know this the type of stuff it was. But nintendo has that experience with the evolution of flash all the way up until the switch. So it's not something that they were just trying to like go back into blind like they. They had to have seen with the ds where the technology for that stuff was going and being like. I think the technology and the affordability is here. We can make this hybrid console work.

Brandon Hurles: 56:17

For sure. Definitely it was interesting because you got to think for a long time Nintendo was doing a console and a handheld together. You know what I mean. They definitely learned along the way, development for the handheld portion of it, development for the home console, and they just figured out, man, somewhere along the way, which is an interesting thought you think about now like hybrid console. Who would have thought of that? You know what I mean.

Mark Trobough: 56:42

Nintendo, obviously because they were on the front end of it. And then I'm sure there are some people thinking, oh, this is stupid front end of it. And then I'm sure there are some people thinking like, oh, this is stupid, it's never gonna take off. And then, eight years later, it's extremely dominant probably huge.

Brandon Hurles: 56:55

Yeah, I actually saw a video. Um, it was a clip from uh kit and krista. Uh, they do their podcast. They used to be nintendo employees and they were interviewing. I cannot remember his name, but he was one of the designers for the nintendo switch and they wanted to do the magnetic joy cons for the first switch. So, like that, that tells you right there that nintendo never lets an idea go.

Mark Trobough: 57:22

It's well, it's like we want to do this, but like, and they're doing, maybe the technology's not quite there. I wonder how long nintendo had been thinking about the hybrid. Could you, to be honest, you talk about the, the wii u with the gamepad, where it's like, yeah, they want to do it, but like, they're just, they just can't make that jump. Yet the, the, sorry, I can't. Stuttering technology's not there or it's just too expensive right now to make that right.

Brandon Hurles: 57:46

You know they wanted to do it. The game pad was like a trial for doing that like and it proved it could work.

Mark Trobough: 57:51

Now you just have to disconnect it from and put all the hardware in that that pad. Make it more ergonomical, a little bit smaller. Yeah, what is the cheap?

Brandon Hurles: 58:00

so what we were asked earlier about, uh, features for the nintendo switch that we want to see. I actually want to see this and I think it might damn well be one of the features might be that secret button that they didn't reveal in their trailer but we know exists there, but like the c button, whatever that means. Yeah, but I want to see because I love this feature. I loved the idea of if you're playing at home, you're playing on the wii u. I loved being able to use that second screen in your hand. So I would love to see the feature of being able to hey, the dock you know I can undock this still use the Switch as like a second screen for some ordeal, whatever it may be. I would love to see that again because I love that and I know it was.

Mark Trobough: 58:47

And I know the trailer was more like a CG render, but based off what they showed us with that, the dock looks even smaller than what we had with the. With the switch, one looks very thin, like there's just nothing there.

Brandon Hurles: 58:57

Bigger. I think it's just the switch is bigger. I actually don't think the dock is much smaller. It could be. It did look a little.

Mark Trobough: 59:04

but I had the same thing where, like I, want there to be more hardware in the actual dock. You can have a significantly upgraded hardware, though that adds more to the cost overall. Right, Looking at the trailers, like I don't. I think they're going to stick with what the, with what the switch did, but they're going to be a little bit more. Uh, they're just going to try to be a little bit more ergonomical and and shrink it down Like they don't need this big bulky thing equivalent to what the switch is.

Brandon Hurles: 59:26

like they can, they can slim it down it makes you wonder what that c button means, because I keep thinking it means something about connect the, connect to the, the dock, and use it that way, I feel like, because that wii u feature that was the best part of the wii u right, right, there was was that being able to have like a secondary screen for whatever it might be, might be your store like your in-game, you know, storage.

Brandon Hurles: 59:47

It might be a map, it might be. It might be your in-game storage. It might be a map. It might be a second screen to actually use with the game. It could be a lot of things. I like that feature for the Wii U. I did like that a lot. I thought it was really cool. Definitely be interesting to see, for sure. So we've got you see, about the McDonald's Pokemon TCG stuff.

Mark Trobough: 1:00:10

No, I think I actually missed this one, unfortunately really okay, so I actually share this, uh, everybody watching. I've been to mcdonald's like two days so sorry, has been cold.

Brandon Hurles: 1:00:23

You eat fast food every day, no, so here's the. Um should be able to see it there. There's the uh three boxes for the new pokemon. Tcg mcdonald's collab got rayquaza, which is obviously the coolest one there. Uh, charizard and dragonite pikachu. Uh, just the boxes are pretty cool. People are, oh my god, people are stupid. So people are backdooring these. I pulled up on. I'll see if I can pull it up now. I don't know if I can or not this quick, but I saw one sell. Somebody backdoored a whole case of the cards. $1,500 is sold. I'm trying to see if I can pull up that sale, sale. But uh, I sent it to lucas. I don't think.

Mark Trobough: 1:01:12

I said that to you, mark, earlier in the week, I don't think so I I get a lot of stuff, so sometimes I just I I see it and forget to follow up on it um, yeah, I don't know how to do, you're on the desktop.

Brandon Hurles: 1:01:25

As far as all sold items, yeah, I don, I don't know. Anyway, I saw a whole case already get backdoored out of the restaurant or wherever warehouse, whatever it might be, and it sold for $1,500. So this article is basically telling us here. It says promo packs are selling for up to $1,000. Online Trading cards have only been available at McDonald's locations for one day, and this was published two days ago, of course, so we're covering all this week. Recently, demand for Pokemon cards have been incredibly high, with specialty shops even reporting break-ins. So people are insane, people are insane. You saw some of the video footage of whatever this latest Pokemon TCG release was, where people were like swarming and grabbing them, grabbing handfuls of them.

Mark Trobough: 1:02:12

Yeah, they're acting like literal children over some over over something that's gonna be very easy to find. Like they're gonna get restocked. Like you know, you need to chill down this is how bad it was.

Brandon Hurles: 1:02:23

I saw a 12 minute compilation video of people doing this and this is all for this. Whatever this latest uh journeying together, whatever it's called, I can't remember. Um this new box set, whatever cards.

Mark Trobough: 1:02:39

Um yeah, it's definitely interesting, um who are all this is gonna open my cards right now all that's gonna lead to our store is clamping down on, on a massive restrictions on how much you can buy. Because, like it's just, it's ridiculous, like you open the doors and you have grown adults just running to the back to to scalp them. Essentially, yeah, it's wild, it's, it's just wild, like are you gonna? Get to these stores be like all right, one per person, that's it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:05

Come back tomorrow I mean they're cool, but it's like I mean almost makes me not want to care at all.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:11

That's how I kind of feel about it it definitely makes it harder, because you're like this is just like it's bad to look, because a lot of these people aren't even fans of it. They just it's a. They just see it as a means to win and make money.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:20

That's all it is yeah, yeah, I don't how many of all these people that are doing this are trying to get there because they can immediately turn around double the price online to make a quick buck. For people that are impatient and can't can't find it in themselves, knowing that eventually it's, you're not gonna have a problem finding it in stock I'm thinking about wanting to go try to get one, because there's just this one.

Brandon Hurles: 1:03:45

It's not even shiny, it's just an umbrion, like a pretty basic looking card.

Mark Trobough: 1:03:50

To be honest with you, I mean a lot of the cards. Most of the cards are relatively inexpensive and even some of them there's like maybe a handful of cards that are gonna be triple digits.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:00

Most of the cards you can get under under ten dollars yeah, most of them aren't worth anything at all, like uh, because I'll buy.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:05

I might buy a box or two open. I'm not going to complete a set. If If I really cared to complete a set, I'll just buy the individual cards. It's faster and it's cheaper, especially if you don't care about the, if you're not going to grade them, you just want to have the cards.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:18

Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of lost the magic for me, because this stuff's been going on for a while.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:24

But now it's a gotcha. There's constantly new sets every three months coming out, so like having like a master set or just a complete one of every card. You know it's not the easiest thing to do in the world, but it's just something that it's fun periodically. But you know, if I get it, if I get it, if I don't, I don't, whatever.

Brandon Hurles: 1:04:41

It's coffee said best, it's FOMO.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:44

I mean that is, but it's just opening the packs. It's just something fun to do periodically, save up some money. You know, if you get something that you, that you want, great. If not, you've got cards to play the game with. That's it's a trading card game.

Mark Trobough: 1:04:56

At the end of the day, you buy some stuff, you can have duplicates, you go, you trade with people to try to like finish a set or something like that, or just get the cards you want. Because I think I see a lot of people want to talk about the cards like completing a set, whether it's one of every card, or like a master set, which is harder and harder because there's just so many cards. You know you might I see a lot of people talk about it's easier, like if you're trying to collect something specifically, I want every I don't know mu imaginable or every dust clops out there of every set. Or you're going after certain cards, like I just I'm going after certain trainer cards or something like that like find something niche to collect, because like collecting every single card, every single set like that's just not realistic.

Mark Trobough: 1:05:35

Unless you're just going to buy the cards individually, especially like if you go to a convention where they do that, buying the boxes and just ramp blind opening. You're going to spend thousands of dollars on each set to to try to get every single card.

Brandon Hurles: 1:05:47

Yeah, try to get every single card. Yeah, at this point I've gotten to where it's like yeah, I kind of want these cards for these Pokemon. I really like I've got like a top five. Yeah, I've gone through it a hundred times.

Mark Trobough: 1:05:57

If you go into it as a financial investment, you're not going to have fun, you're going to probably be let down. You're probably not going to make the money unless you're sealing. If you're holding on to sealed product, that's the only way you're going to make money with those cards that's sealed product that you either scalp when it first comes out or you have to wait 10 plus years for it to actually have value down the road.

Brandon Hurles: 1:06:22

Yeah, I saw a picture of a girl laying at home on a literal pallet of these things and I think she had said there was like 400 boxes so she spent some. However much they are, how much do those boxes go for? Like, the, the like the is it? The trainer box is usually 56 a box so if you got 400 on that, that's several thousand dollars, a lot of money I would say on them and I'm like what the hell?

Mark Trobough: 1:06:51

so what's that 400? Oh, we'll just say 60 dollars all right about 24 000.

Mark Trobough: 1:06:59

Yeah, it's crazy and she spent around that and that's. That's like a. You spent this. If you're trying to, first of all, yeah, maybe five years when it's out of print, you can sell them for 20, 30, 100 more. Yeah, it's not even that it's. Can you sell all of that when the time comes, or are you going to be selling some here, some there, and you might sit on this for for a few decades before you, can you know, fully empty it out, because the price might go up but that means there's less people willing to buy it yeah, my guess is like 100 and you don't care, you know like.

Mark Trobough: 1:07:28

Spending like $200 on a box that's a few sets out of print or a few games out of print. You can make money. People will pay for it, but how many people are going to pay for that price? And then maybe you've spent $24,000 and you only net $5,000. Was it really worth?

Brandon Hurles: 1:07:47

it. Was it worth it. And it's like trickled money too. It's like, oh, I sold one box set this week. You know what I mean.

Mark Trobough: 1:07:54

The best you have is to scalp it at the very beginning and you're trying to sell it before the restock comes in and it becomes and they're about to release the next set.

Brandon Hurles: 1:08:03

How about just not scalp at all?

Mark Trobough: 1:08:05

I'm like there's so many sets. The only other set that's hard to find is the 151 sword and shield set. It's still not impossible people selling it, but that that's a very specific reason. People want it, because some sets are obviously better than others for certain cards. But it's like you know, eventually you'll buy those and you could still find them for MSRP yeah, I still see them selling, though above MSRP the 151, because people buy them and resell them online.

Mark Trobough: 1:08:28

Yeah, it's wild. Still see him selling, though above msrp the 151, because people buy them and resell them online. Yeah, it's wild it's just, it's a really popular set, but I mean, if you want, if you just want a certain card out of the set, you can just buy the card, for very most of the most cards are pennies, pennies yeah, they're not worth anything.

Mark Trobough: 1:08:44

It's, it's like it's the it's, the it's the rare, the super rare and even most of the rare cards are under five to ten dollars, like to be fair. Uh, it's only a handful of cards. They're gonna be 50 or 100 out of the set and those are usually like the chase cards, which is gonna be a handful of cards, and that's either because of you know the type of card or type pokemon it is, or because it's a really good card. That's, uh, either looks neat or it's really good and competitive play. Why? Why certain people go after certain cards?

Mark Trobough: 1:09:10

okay, so for the vast majority of a set, unless it's, like you know, really old sets are just not not that hard to come by, if you're just buying individual.

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:19

Here's a good example. So, uh, the surging spark set which came out november of last year it's only a few months ago, um ago. Um, the hyper rare is one out of 188 pools. Uh, the special illustration is one out of 87. Um, the illustration rare is one out of 13. Ultra rare, one out of 15. Ace special whatever that is. Uh is one out of 20. So it's hyper rare. Rare, I mean, you gotta think about that. It's 188 packs yeah, that's like the odds.

Mark Trobough: 1:09:55

You could open it in two.

Brandon Hurles: 1:09:56

You could open it in like 500 that's a lot of money to spend if there's a, there's one specific card you want, for instance.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:03

Well, that's, that's a. That's an average on average. That's how many packs you'd have to open. Like I said, it just it's a hit or miss thing, but for a lot of people it's probably cheaper just to buy that individual card than to buy a bunch of packs, because for the price for some of these you could buy, you could buy like a one or two trainer box price worth to just buy the card itself.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:22

Mr Coffee said, it's not that bad of a cost. Sports cards are next level crazy. There's a set, just so you know where. One pack is valued at a hundred dollars. Whole box is around 1500 and this is 2024 pack yeah, like sports cards are are where.

Brandon Hurles: 1:10:36

If you really were into trading the money, the sports cards are insanely expensive there's a, a sports card business near me that wants me to run their social media. I was like kind of looking at some of the stuff and I was like kind of shocked at looking at some of the stuff.

Mark Trobough: 1:10:51

And I was like kind of shocked at looking at some of the prices and stuff and I was like, wow, this stuff's going for a lot of money, yeah, but there's also not a lot of people willing to pay that price tag for it, unless they pull it and then they want to sell it it depends.

Brandon Hurles: 1:11:02

Yeah, it's like and then you get into the graded card thing and it's like I don't, I don't like graded stuff. I mean like if it was for me, like personally, like there's a car is just for me and not not like a resale thing, then I don't care, because there's some stuff like where yeah, let's, because I mean there's, it's sealed preserved for myself. Yeah, it's sealed.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:25

I think a lot of graded stuff is somewhat subjective at the end of the day. Yeah, unless you're you're, if you have like zero interest in reselling your cards, I think it's a waste of money to get them graded like you get chase cards graded, because it adds value to the card, which means you inevitably would be willing to sell or trade the card down the road.

Mark Trobough: 1:11:43

If you're not willing to do that, I think it's just a it's a waste of money. At the end. They just make sure you put it, you put it in a sleeve, put it top loader and just keep it protected, essentially yeah, that makes sense that's just me I have zero interest. I don't do this for money uh, yeah I don't. I don't highly have any cards that are that expensive. I just it's a fun.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:00

It's fun to just sit down and that's why I, like pokemon tcg pocket, kind of takes that, that barrier of giving a crap about. Uh yeah, I, I don't know. It lets me bear. If you get into the cards pulling the cards, man, you know what I mean like I don't play the game.

Mark Trobough: 1:12:16

You don't play the game, we just like to pull after a while with the packs especially, you know, when you first open packs you're gonna have more new cards than duplicates. After a while you're gonna put a lot of duplicate cards, duplicate cards that are worth, you know, pennies like one, two, three cents, maybe even a lot of the reverse hollows aren't really worth all that much, maybe a quarter or something like that mr coffee says.

Brandon Hurles: 1:12:37

Speaking of grading, did you know there's a whole collector's route called collecting pokemon pca graded one, not a 10 grade but one grade I could believe it's a small hobby getting the worst rated card you can, I can see it, yeah you just need to damage the card yeah, it's just like. What can I do this car? Burn the corner, stomp on it a few hundred times you know.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:02

But I mean great getting cards. Great, it's not the cheapest. Uh, they're 0.5 grading.

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:07

I thought there was a .5 grading. Maybe it's WADA that does that.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:11

Well, it's also what service are you using?

Brandon Hurles: 1:13:14

Yeah, it might be WADA for video games. I could be misremembering, I don't know. Somebody does a .5 grading.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:21

Okay, yeah, definitely yeah because, like when you like, if you just look at psa, that I, that I pulled up, uh, if you just wanted to say send in a single card, uh, it's 25, you can just get one card graded with about a 45 day turnaround. He can grade a gamestop now too.

Mark Trobough: 1:13:38

Well, gamestop will send it into psa for you, okay, so it's kind of like say like, if you, uh, like you can, you can send cards in bulk, but you're still spending, you know, on the cheaper end of the some of the bulk, but you're still spending on the cheaper end of some of the bulk stuff $15, $16, $17 a card to get it graded if you send a bunch in. So unless you have a card that's actually worth money, a lot of the time it's probably not even worth getting cards graded because you're just going to lose money on the value.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:06

Yeah getting cards graded because you're just going to lose money on the value. Yeah, like if I send one car for 25, like if the card's not worth the money, that's 25 just to get a card graded and you don't even know what you're gonna get.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:16

Yeah, take that and take that into account and then you'll be all mad that you got a seven. It's like you know. I don't know, I mean it makes it makes sense for PSA.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:27

Why they? I get, why they charge that much. But, like, unless you're the ones grading the cards, I don't think it's really worth the money unless you have a cheese card Lucas sent in that crazy Umbreon.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:39

that's worth like a crap ton of money and it got graded a nine so it's worth even more money. It's worth like significantly more money now that uh, whatever like Umbreon's like on the buildings. You know I'm talking about that crazy rare car.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:52

It's like one of the oh yeah, it's like the shadow.

Brandon Hurles: 1:14:56

Yeah.

Mark Trobough: 1:14:57

It's like one of the more. It's one of the uh more most expensive.

Brandon Hurles: 1:15:00

Yeah, yeah, it's said those Walmart, like you know, those Walmart packs that are like kind of I don't know they repackage them or whatever they do to them, but they're like they're in like a kind of blank packaging sort of thing. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, walmart does that like it's some kind of weird packaging.

Mark Trobough: 1:15:21

Yeah, yeah, because, mr Coffee, you know about the. Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. They're going away from games because it's going more digital. But I mean, physical training always has a thing. I think it's it's for a lot of these store owners it's just more profitable. I mean even game stops doing the same thing. They're going towards the, the graded card stuff, just because that's where. That's where a lot of the money is and you know people will come in to buy the physical stuff because it's it's really hard to buy new stuff online yeah, I've actually heard about this, um, about this video games versus trading cards, because a lot of, uh, video game stores also sell trading cards.

Mark Trobough: 1:15:54

Um, and I've heard it's like a mix. They might still have the more retro physical, but they're. They're getting into the card because it just makes sense yeah, like, uh, my store.

Mark Trobough: 1:16:02

When I asked them, like my local retro store, when I asked them, they were like making more money for magic cards and they were video games and like it's a video game store well, because then you can also sell those and then you can host tournaments and it brings more people a reason to come into your physical store and then they might not spend a lot of money, but they buy some stuff here, buy some stuff there.

Mark Trobough: 1:16:22

Maybe you've got duplicates that you've traded for or you're selling packs or boxes of these older cards where a lot of these places can make the money and a lot of these same places, same stores, will go to like conventions and sell stuff where you can trade cards and just buy individual cards and stuff like that, even if a lot of these cards aren't really all that rare, you know the value might be a penny. You bought it for a few cents, you trade for it, you send it, sell it for like five cents. You do that enough. You're going to make some money here and there on top of the big value items that you can sell as well, because a lot of these stores will also just sell. They'll get cards graded, sell those cards graded. They're going to sell more for what they obviously spent on the card, but it's a whole like market with trading cards.

Brandon Hurles: 1:17:08

It's crazy you think, uh, trading cards are bigger than they ever have been, like just in general oh, 100.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:14

Yeah, I mean, pokemon was crazy back in the day. But yeah, people, let's be fair, like I think, as far as like the financial side of it. It was still somewhat limited and that that hype kind of died down through like the 20, the 2000s and the 2010s yeah, that when that, when it first came out, it was definitely like a crazy, especially for for some of these older cards you can track, like the, the 20 year prices of it and right around 2020.

Mark Trobough: 1:17:38

2019 is when the price for a lot of these cards start shooting up and getting more expensive it's crazy man, I think, just like all hobbies have had a big upswing. But a lot of people kind of like us. They maybe grew up in the day collecting Pokemon cards. You got older, you lost interest in it. Now that you're older you've got money, you get disposable income and now you're like, oh hey, this thing's still here, let's get back into it, type thing.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:02

For sure, for sure. We've got Banjo-Kazooie. Composer has zero hope for new game. So they said Composer has worked on the original Banjo-Kazooie. Grant Kirkhope has revealed he's not hopeful for a new game on the franchise. On social media, kirkhope stated he has zero hope for it. He said I've said it before, but I have zero hopes for another Banjo game. Plus, all you diehard fans would instantly hate it and slag it off. No matter how good it was, it never works. That's what he said.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:37

Yeah, which is unfortunate.

Brandon Hurles: 1:18:38

Yeah. Yeah, it's a bummer to hear, but I feel like I disagree strongly. I feel like now we've got a bigger chance.

Mark Trobough: 1:18:48

It just needs to not be a nuts and bolts situation yeah and you have to like do something new, like with that, what kind of what astrobot did you have to like get creative with it. But I think there's still a market for it's just one of those things. As long as you're not well, you're not dealing with, uh I mean our fox fans who just hate everything. That's not Star Fox 64.

Brandon Hurles: 1:19:08

Right, yeah, Um, yeah. So you just saw Astro bot 3d platformer game of the year Huge big deal. Um, you saw Reggie just come out this week saying that he loved the game. Reggie fees may, so like that's a big deal, you know. So that's a big deal. Obviously, being a Nintendo guy, having been the head of Nintendo of America for a long time, my body is ready, so I definitely think it's actually we've got a bigger chance for it now and I feel like Microsoft's a little more open now to using the Rare property. I guess I feel like the potential is there more than it was five years ago.

Mark Trobough: 1:19:53

You just need somebody at the top to be willing to pull that trigger and say let's look into this.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:00

Yeah, I'm a little more hopeful too with Microsoft after this Direct, which we're going to talk about here in a little bit. But I do hope that the property does get some kind of something, because I mean it's. It was a good franchise man, those banjo, kazooie banjo. Those are two great games. Nuts and bolts was like you could say. Some say like the mechanics of the game were kind of ahead of its time. It was basically tears of the kingdom as far as the building and stuff. But it just didn't work for the game at the time because it was just a poorly done version of that gets a lot, a lot of a lot of nothing in that game.

Mark Trobough: 1:20:31

But I mean that's assuming they would even use him. I don't know how much inside stuff he has into the game, but at the at the worst case scenario just means in the immediate there's not people, they're not talking about. It doesn't mean in a few months to a year they they couldn't be talking about bringing it back the tight shift for this stuff all the time too.

Brandon Hurles: 1:20:48

It's like it's really hard to predict, but I I do feel like that there's probably a bigger chance that we do get it um now than like, say, five years ago, where it was like nobody cared about 3d platformers, it was just a nintendo thing, you know. It was just.

Mark Trobough: 1:21:03

I do think I don't think he's kind of doing something that makes sense. He's tempering expectations as in just because this was a big thing. Don't just get your hopes up and then to be let down because nobody talks about it, because these studios never came out and said they were even looking at it. You're making assumptions based off of games that have come out that this could be a thing and it still could, but in the immediate future nobody behind the scenes is talking about it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:21:32

Yeah, I agree with Mr Co, still could, but in the immediate future nobody nobody behind the scenes is talking about it. So yeah, I agree, mr coffee is kind of a bummer that it's in a loss of rare connection, but I mean it was. You know.

Mark Trobough: 1:21:37

Fortunately microsoft bought it up and then data reach out I think I think they should reach out to microsoft about either a partnership or trying to repurchase rare to just get those ips it'd be interesting because I mean like even think of sea of thieves and like the stylized look of it even is more of an I mean they don't necessarily need that game, but there's a lot of old games that were on nintendo consoles that, let's be fair, microsoft isn't doing anything with these ips you're not doing anything.

Mark Trobough: 1:22:03

Yeah, that's a problem right, like either get the studio maybe you don't care for it or some kind of partnership where you can start bringing these ips back over, because it's not like they haven't played nice in the past before.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:12

Yeah, but will microsoft let it go, because the cfds, I'm sure, is making quite a bit of money for well there's some negotiations.

Mark Trobough: 1:22:20

Maybe you just want the ips, or it's a partnership where rare will start. They'll allow them to start making new games to put on their console.

Brandon Hurles: 1:22:28

They were such a Nintendo-heavy studio. We look back at the crazy amount of games that came out on the NES Super Nintendo 64. There was a crazy amount of games I didn't even know about.

Mark Trobough: 1:22:42

But it's also the same issue of nobody that made those games is still at Rare. It's just the IPs that you want. If you're going to go back and revisit these IPs, you should reach out to people that will actually have a proven track record of making games like these, or you try to find people that worked on these games to come back and lead a development of it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:02

It'd be interesting to see. I would love to see a connection back there, like when banjo kazooie came to smash, like that was a really big deal. It was like, oh, maybe that gave a little more hope for a new game because people were really excited about it, was, like, you know, brought the name up again and nothing really came of that, because I forget when he came to smash, but he was one of the later characters right, I think so.

Mark Trobough: 1:23:29

I've never been heavy into Smash.

Brandon Hurles: 1:23:30

I can't remember all that well, yeah, so speaking of Nintendo, we got three new Switch Online games and these are three SNES games. So we've got Fatal Fury 2, super Ninja Boy and Sude Hakun yeah, satoot Hakun, which I believe was actually a Sateleview game, if I remember reading correctly on this, which was be interesting to see. I had to confirm that I think it was a Sateleview game, which he didn't come out and say or anything.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:10

I'm not sure I've never played any of these these games. Unfortunately never played fatal fury 2. No, I was never been to the fighting game stuff, so it's not a game I would have played haha, man, come on, unfortunately, I'm sorry.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:23

Uh, it's a little disappointing, disappointing. Yeah, so it was for the Super Famicom add on the Satellaview data casting service, november 2nd 1996. So that's a huge deal. That's a Satellaview game being brought over and it's like nothing's being spoke of it. Yeah, so I think it's cool. Fatal Fury 2 is really cool. Yeah, they're showing the trailers there.

Mark Trobough: 1:24:46

Yeah, fatal Fury 2 is really cool.

Brandon Hurles: 1:24:47

Yeah, they're showing the trailers there. They got a little trailer for it. Yeah yeah, fatal Fury is a pretty classic fighting franchise. It's interesting that it's just randomly number two. I don't know, do they have?

Mark Trobough: 1:25:00

the first one. Then again, I don't know what licensing Nintendo has to do to get these games on the system behind the scenes.

Brandon Hurles: 1:25:07

Yeah, I don't know either. This is the first one, though. It's a really good game.

Mark Trobough: 1:25:13

It really brings back memories. Yeah, because it's a Super Ninja Boy, just that old art style that you used to get on these old consoles.

Brandon Hurles: 1:25:21

Yeah, it's an interesting one too, because it's got that. That. What am I thinking? Uh, earthbound style first oh yeah load when you hop into the enemies, but then you jump into this side scrolling like combat. It's like really weird.

Mark Trobough: 1:25:39

You got like this overworld map yeah, but it's like a I don't know some some nostalgia for like simpler times, uh, the create the, the creativity they did with the games, how colorful they tended to be, maybe not heavy on the story, but it was always something that was a little bit more. It's the obvious puzzle base, but you had a little bit more optimism back in gaming where games were just something that were just at large, just something you would just have fun with.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:05

Yeah, I mean, look at this, it's such like a weirdo game, but it's like something different. You know what I mean.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:10

You still get that it's nice, bright, colorful. It's not not a whole lot of games that did the super dark, eerie, uh environment.

Brandon Hurles: 1:26:18

Yeah, yeah, it's cool stuff it's good to see, always good to see new uh games brought over. Especially we know it's being brought over to the switch to pretty much. So that's good, uh, good to see. And then we've got, um, yeah, so I guess we kind of talked about earlier the 100 spike in the gaming stuff there um, so kind of touch on that, uh, all right, so let's see what this one is oh, I brought this up only because we were kind of talking about it and I did see this earlier this week.

Mark Trobough: 1:26:52

So there was a report I think it was at thegamercom where they came out and said women and non-binary devs make up 32% of all game developers, up for 24% in 2022. And well, the comment section was kind of the way you thought it was, people just being like oh yeah, this is it, this is why games are going down this is what happened.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:15

I mean, how, how do you really get that accurate of a number though 32 like?

Mark Trobough: 1:27:20

because these studios report on on their uh uh report on their employees.

Mark Trobough: 1:27:25

Well, because they sex of all their employees. Well, because they Everybody. When you hire people, you have in your system the percentage of people that are women, male, probably black, white, non-binary. They're 100% there. The HR departments track these numbers because a lot of these studios have a push for DEI. This is one of these ways they can track them. So they intentionally track this information and they report it. They report it as a way to advertise like, oh, we're doing this thing, we've got these numbers, invest in us or buy our games, or x, y and z.

Brandon Hurles: 1:27:56

I think this is why uh ea stock is down so much ea stock down because I've been putting out bad games. Well, I mean that's part of the problem you got, and is there a?

Mark Trobough: 1:28:06

connection between this and these games. Maybe not a one-for-one, but you know a lot of people. It's hard to hard to not see a one-for-one, for you know a lot of games not being what they were 10, 15 years ago and the increased of uh women in non-binary people in the industry yeah, I guess that changes the.

Brandon Hurles: 1:28:26

The here's the thing. You don't have to shove your stuff in the video games. That's, that's just my my thing. It's like why this is a really straight into video games. If I was a video game developer like I wouldn't shove that in the video games.

Mark Trobough: 1:28:45

Well, they have initiatives. The problem is they're they're then hiring people that do want to push this stuff and put into games. They don't necessarily, they don't care about the success of the game. It's all about pushing the message, first and foremost, of like well, you don't like this, well, we're gonna, we're gonna make you like this. This is because a lot of people it's like, uh, that you see it as people coming in, uh, and and taking over a hobby or something they liked over.

Mark Trobough: 1:29:09

When they're people weren't necessarily complaining about it outside of a handful of vocal minority who kind of like forced their way in and then, yeah, it's, it's a whole. I mean, this is, this is the. This goes all the way back to Gamergate and Gamergate 2.0 and everything else that's going on. They, they, they people see the connection. Oh, it seems like. And then this brings up the whole issue of of gatekeeping communities, of like, should you be wide open, like to a degree, to a degree, if you're willing to, you know, conform to the community that already exists. But yeah, it's, it's just a whole mess. But I mean, it's very obvious that there's a significant portion of people that just are saying no to this outright, just because you've been burned enough times. You're not even willing to make a uh a negotiation whether you just say no to it outright. Yeah, everybody. But you know that that that percentage is growing look at a couple of the comments here.

Brandon Hurles: 1:29:59

Somebody says really does explain the state of the industry, lol. Uh, no wonder game. Uh, the games are trash these days. Uh, and there it is. We can tell, trust me, we could tell. Yeah, so I'm just like yeah, what's?

Mark Trobough: 1:30:15

the what's the meme? It's non-binary the meme. Going out, people just like oh, I'm just, uh, I'm gonna identify, as I'm not gonna buy your game anymore.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:25

That's another thing, that kind of peaks up it does seem like the tides are starting to shift, though, because it seems like people are kind of waking up and getting tired of it.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:33

It does seem it's what we said, but forever. You know you vote with your wall, it doesn't matter what you say you know the only way these news are going to change is when they lose money because either they're going to change or there's going to go out of business. Yeah, one of the two to happen.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:46

And we're seeing it now, ea, by where the stock has dropped significantly.

Mark Trobough: 1:30:51

Yeah, and it also proves that we're seeing it with.

Brandon Hurles: 1:30:55

Obviously I don't know how Screech Shadow is going to do, but that kind of had some crap there.

Mark Trobough: 1:31:02

People don't blindly buy games anymore. People very obviously don't listen to games media anymore. It's more independent youtuber types that people tend to go towards, or they'll just read comments on people watch gameplay.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:12

Like you know, the the industry itself has shifted maybe we should get some more videos out talking about some of the well, that get a little more deeper into it. Uh, all right, what do we got next? All right, so we. So we're going to jump into the Xbox developer direct now, which was kind of the biggest news of the week. So, mark, you said you didn't get a chance to watch any of this, right?

Mark Trobough: 1:31:38

Not when it's live I've seen stuff about it, but actually sitting down and actually watching the full thing not, didn't get the chance to, but for some of the games I was able to catch some stuff here and there I wish I had trailers ready to go to.

Brandon Hurles: 1:31:49

Um, whoop some of these, since we are doing this in restream, but um, unfortunately I don't have trailers ready to go that's fine, but what was the first thing they that they came out talked about was uh ninja gaiden 4, though yeah, yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:03

So that that was huge. Because they come out, come out super strong right out of the gate with Ninja Gaiden the new Ninja Gaiden and it looked absolutely amazing. They just jumped kind of right into it. The guy talked for like 15 seconds and jumped into the game. He says something like without further ado let's take a look, jumps right into it. Looks absolutely beautiful. Everything you'd want to see from a new Ninja Gaiden. Just, the gameplay looks super smooth.

Brandon Hurles: 1:32:36

You bring back that because before we had Soulsborne or Souls-like games, we had Ninja Gaiden. Right, that was kind of the gold standard of really difficult games. Right, that was it. It was up there, it was number one. It's interesting to see this come back around now that Soulsborne games are super popular and this is kind of that formula. I don't think this is entirely a Souls-like game, but these games are very brutally difficult but absolutely very rewarding. When you beat it, yeah, it feels fair. You know what I mean. The boss battles are just awesome. I'm looking back at some of the boss fights they show for this new game. It's just crazy, super bloody, super gory.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:25

I mean a whole new take on Ninja Gaiden as a whole, like taking it from what you used to be like a side-scroller to a full-on 3D game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:34

Well, we've had the 3D game, which we're going to jump into.

Mark Trobough: 1:33:39

But I mean it feels like the proper 3D game that you should have had all along. When you look at some of the early 2000 games, that's really hit or miss on some of those games, to be fair.

Brandon Hurles: 1:33:48

Yeah, and then right after that we got the announcement for Ninja Gaiden 2 Black and they remade it in Unreal Engine 5. It looks really good. It definitely looks obviously lower fidelity from this new game coming out. This is an old game that came out in 2008 or something, I can't remember, but it looks really good. It looks for Unreal Engine 5 and what they've done to it. It looks really good and it's out now. You can play it now.

Brandon Hurles: 1:34:19

It came out yesterday during the Direct. So that was really cool to see An instant drop. So they said, let's give you this to hold you over and this game comes out in the fall of this year. So not that far realistically For some of these showcases it's like you don't even know if it's coming out in a year. You know what I mean. Like they show the game and you don't know when it's coming out. So that's really cool to see. So I started playing it yesterday. I played I don't think I played like an hour of it, but it loaded up to check it out and looks beautiful it's really cool it looks, oh, yeah, so definitely.

Mark Trobough: 1:34:57

The game actually is pretty good and they do a lot of justice for it yeah, for sure, I'm definitely excited, but uh, at least the ip is still getting love a lot of these old, old games that got dropped a while ago yeah, for sure.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:08

Mr coffee said ninja gaiden on ps vita is a technical marvel. Yeah, it is really good. Yep, I had it on vita too. It was really really good. I thought it was. It was thought it was awesome. Um, a big ninja gaiden fan brutally hard games, but very fun. Then we had uh, what's this game called? It is something southward battle.

Mark Trobough: 1:35:31

Yeah, south of Midnight, south of Midnight, yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:33

South of Midnight. So this is the one where it was like a lot of people were like this might be the stanker of the direct. So my problem with this game is the frame rate that it shows is absolutely horrid. So it's supposed to be a mechanic of the game. It's supposed to be able to switch it on and off with this weird frame rate.

Mark Trobough: 1:35:53

People assume it's just an excuse to just not optimize the game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:35:58

Because you just look at the trailer, I mean, especially when we get to some of the later parts, it's like really really bad, it looks horrible, but they're saying it's a mechanic of the game. To me it really bad. It looks, looks horrible, but they're saying it's a mechanic of the game. Um, I don't, to me it doesn't look interesting um based on like if.

Mark Trobough: 1:36:12

When I looked at, the best I could think of is the old stop motion type of graphics yeah where the the nature of it forces it not to look. It's it's kind of stuttery on purpose, but like it doesn't look like a stop motion type of movie or game. So like I get the stylistic choice but I don't necessarily agree with it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:36:32

I don't think it makes it look any better yeah, and it's supposed to be, uh, like um, it's supposed to be a take on like um, southern america, so like uh I forget what area it was saying that it was it was based in, but it's like a, supposed to be like a, you know, southern America type vibe for the game I forget it or Oklahoma, or somewhere.

Mark Trobough: 1:36:54

Oh, you mean like deep South essentially is what I would go with.

Brandon Hurles: 1:36:56

Yeah, like a.

Mark Trobough: 1:36:58

Georgia, alabama, louisiana type thing. Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 1:37:00

Yeah, that would be more so one of those areas of those areas, but that's what it's supposed to be. I don't know, just the mechanics of the game just didn't look all that interesting.

Mark Trobough: 1:37:11

That's the weirdest part.

Brandon Hurles: 1:37:15

Just doesn't look all that interesting to me. It's supposed to mimic stop motion. Yeah, I get that. When it gets from stop motion to gameplay it's just so jarring it ruins the flow. Yeah, for sure it comes out in April. So it comes out like real soon. I mean it's coming out on game pass. So like I'll check it out and like give it a go, for sure I'll do it on stream or something like that. It gives me an excuse for a stream. So it's like I'll check it out and see how it is. There's no excuses when I get game passed and I guess give it a go. But I just have feeling it's going to be the one I won't connect with and the only one from this showcase, because the other games look awesome. So next we got, we've got hold on. I'm trying to pull it up here, just lost my page. I think it's called.

Mark Trobough: 1:38:01

I'll just let this play. I don't know if they're going to show it oh yeah, it was four games. No, that's the studio. It's going into the game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:38:08

let this play. I don't know if they're going to show it. It was four games. No, that's the studio. It's going into the game. Sorry, it's a little misleading. Yeah, no, you're good. Yeah, so Sandfall Interactive is a studio. Let's see what the game's called. I can't remember.

Mark Trobough: 1:38:24

The problem is they just can't show the game. They have to show the developers doing stuff that nobody cares about. I don't give a crap about the developers themselves, just show me the game.

Brandon Hurles: 1:38:32

Expedition 33. That's what it is, and it had a weird name. Yeah, so this one looks cool. I think it looks really cool. I thought what they showed was very interesting. It looks really cool. Got an interesting turn-based style graphics like it's like uh reminds me of a metaphor.

Mark Trobough: 1:38:51

Realistically, I think like metaphor with a more realistic graphics.

Brandon Hurles: 1:38:56

Yeah, that's what it reminds me of. It's got like a really cool menu system. Just looks cool.

Mark Trobough: 1:39:01

It really looks fun, like definitely um I mean, this trailer with these developers looks stupid. But that's just a personal opinion, like I, just I care about a personal opinion. I care about the game, I don't care about the developers behind it, I don't care what it looks like they're always trying to do.

Brandon Hurles: 1:39:12

Unless you're with the whole walk-in there. Nobody even knows who she is.

Mark Trobough: 1:39:15

Let's be real. Nor do I care.

Brandon Hurles: 1:39:18

Are you making a good game or? Not yeah, yeah, I could do without the developers.

Mark Trobough: 1:39:24

Just show me the traffic, just show me the gameplay. That's all I care about.

Brandon Hurles: 1:39:28

Yeah, that does look interesting, though the graphics look really good.

Mark Trobough: 1:39:34

At least the trailer that they're showing us is good.

Brandon Hurles: 1:39:36

Yeah, the cinematics there, but what they showed, the gameplay too, looked really interesting. Definitely different?

Mark Trobough: 1:39:43

I'm not sure it definitely got a more Victorian England style. I was trying to see if I could saying definitely different. I'm not sure. Definitely got a more. What a victorian england style or time.

Brandon Hurles: 1:39:50

I was trying to see if I could uh or it's a, at the very least a more.

Mark Trobough: 1:39:53

You take the, the steampunk which takes that victoria to england with steam power, that, that kind of atmosphere game will immerse players in an original world, mixing fantasy and european bella.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:03

A poke art influences. Prepare.

Mark Trobough: 1:40:07

Prepare for an epic single-player narrative driven adventure um all right, sorry, it gave me bioshock infinite feels as far as like the, which is like a. It's a steampunk, but that's like the, the game it, yeah the style reminded me of. I had to like pull it up, like remember what it was yeah, yeah, it looks really cool.

Brandon Hurles: 1:40:26

I'm looking at some stuff on their website and the same fall interactive and definitely looks cool. Man, I'll definitely, I'm. I'm excited about this one. I'll definitely check it out. Um, yeah, really cool. I'm, I'm all up for new turn-based RPG. I mean, I still got finished metaphor but, uh, hopefully I finish that before it comes out. It's a long game, really good game, long game. And then I guess what is my favorite from this direct oh my god, the gameplay. This show for Doom the Dark Ages is freaking crazy.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:02

I just want to say the Expedition one came out April 24th. I couldn't find the video, so that, yeah, april 24th.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:08

Yeah, so that's soon too, just a couple months. But yeah, no, I was actually interested in the developers talking about this one, because when they're talking about it, like, is it actually giving information on the game? It was a little more. The other ones are kind of like shut up and show me the game type deal, but my like shut up and show me the game type deal, but my god, the gameplay for this game looks looks insane, like this takes doom eternal and it just puts on a whole nother level. So like the the scope of this game as far as like how big it is, like you got a big, they said sandbox, it's a big sandbox game.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:43

They keep expanding on on doom and keep adding to it. It's got fairly interesting lore as well.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:48

My God, yes, it's got really good lore.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:52

It's no 40K lore, which is just mind-boggling.

Brandon Hurles: 1:41:55

Yeah, I'm good on that. We were still confused.

Mark Trobough: 1:41:59

I had to go back and watch lore videos. I didn't know what was going on, and stuff like that. It's crazy I did too. Yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 1:42:08

I kind of figured out what the story Was and like what exactly was Going on, but I was like very confused. We just finished the game.

Mark Trobough: 1:42:12

We were just playing the game. We were really paying attention to what was going on.

Brandon Hurles: 1:42:14

To be fair, yeah, we were, but yeah, this game Just looks crazy. So Just the scope of the game, like the Story that they've got like actual, because before it was Like you find the story in the game, but no, this've got like actual, because before it was like you find the story in the game, but no, this has got like actual, played out, cut scenes, like full cut scenes, stuff. Like that actual story.

Mark Trobough: 1:42:33

I think it's interesting that they're adding like a shield now to on top of a yeah like evolve the actual game player, give you more options.

Brandon Hurles: 1:42:44

Yeah, it's crazy yeah, you can parry with the shield and do all kinds of stuff with it, so it's really, really cool. I mean, like the thing is like this is a prequel to doom 2016. They said that this leads straight into that game. Uh, so you'll play whatever. I forget how early it is and stuff yeah, because uh wasn't in 2016.

Mark Trobough: 1:43:01

This version of doom guy like, and he was like awoken in 2016's game, so is it supposed to lead up like how he got to where he was on that game? I guess, yeah. Am I misremembering? Am I? Am I mixing up different dooms?

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:13

no, he might. I thought I thought 2016 to place on marlon's story. Uh, doing 2016. I'm trying to remember.

Mark Trobough: 1:43:21

I played it twice and I can't remember because that one's on mars, right, yeah, yeah, because I thought, like the original, it was on Mars. And then, well, he doom guy has to get there somehow, or they discover him along with the demons, or something else. I can't, I can't.

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:34

It's been so long since I played the game yeah, doom Eternal was I actually just played it last year.

Mark Trobough: 1:43:43

I was like you're taking the story from that now you're just expanding on, I guess, what led up to these games. Yeah, like the past and stuff, yeah.

Brandon Hurles: 1:43:51

It's just really cool. But then, like they show later in the trailer, you get like into giant Kaiju, like fights and a giant mech. It's freaking crazy. And then you get a dragon you can fly around on why not? It's insane. Like this game's just crazy. It blew my mind. I was like, oh, my god, I can't wait to play this and this comes out, I think May. I forget what date, but it comes out in May for sure. I'm just like so excited for this game, like I can't wait. I think it's like May 15th, I can't remember. Oh, you saw the foot there for the giant, it was giant Heck fights. Now you're good.

Mark Trobough: 1:44:32

There's some stuff that I was trying to figure out. Where was that?

Brandon Hurles: 1:44:35

Yeah, it's just crazy, man. Like just the scope of this game is huge. Right, there is the beginning of the game. That's right. When you start the game, you get trapped immediately and put in like a jail or something.

Mark Trobough: 1:44:49

I mean, it does look amazing.

Brandon Hurles: 1:44:51

And it looks good, like everything about it looks really good.

Mark Trobough: 1:44:54

Like it's one of the few AAA games that just actually stays good, it's not. It's not getting worse with every game I get affected by stuff. I mean like the only only Bethesda IP that's actually consistently doing well.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:06

Yeah, yes, only Bethesda IP that's actually consistently doing well. Yeah yeah, it just looks so good, man, I can't wait for the game.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:15

Alright, I just want to try to wait for the yeah, there we go May 15th.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:19

Yeah, I was right Okay.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:21

Yeah, I'm really excited.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:22

Man, I can't wait.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:23

I want to play it. Ada's game comes out before the Switch announcement, so yeah, that's true, isn't it?

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:28

Yeah, it does. It's wild. I can't wait for this game. I would say three out of four games for sure, like I said, I'll give the other one a go too. I mean, those games look really good. I'm really excited. Ninja Gaiden, especially Doom.

Mark Trobough: 1:45:44

I'll be biased, like the only one for me that I really care about would be doom, the dark ages, uh, but I mean ninja guys, probably the the next one, but there's it's not a game series that I ever really played, so I think you would like especially the 3d ones because they're more.

Brandon Hurles: 1:45:57

I mean you like the souls like combat stuff, right, like kind of I mean the souls light souls like combat yeah, if you go full-on souls, I don't know, necessarily, but yeah, like the stellar blade, which is the souls light.

Mark Trobough: 1:46:10

Well, that's why I like with black, with bukong, which is a more like a light version of it, a little less punishing I would be more like my style yeah, I think it's gonna be more.

Brandon Hurles: 1:46:19

I would say it's more along that line because that came out before souls was 3d games before that was even a thing, I don't know. They are brutally difficult still, but definitely exciting stuff there. So I can't wait.

Mark Trobough: 1:46:32

Reminds him of Lost Odyssey on the Xbox 360. I don't know if you've ever played that game. I don't know anything about it.

Brandon Hurles: 1:46:38

I played that game. Been a long time, but yeah, definitely cool stuff there, for sure. Do we got anything else to bring up, mark, did you?

Mark Trobough: 1:46:47

see anything? I didn't. We got anything else to bring up mark. Did you see anything? I didn't immediately see anything else.

Brandon Hurles: 1:46:52

Pull some other stuff I didn't see anything else myself was there.

Mark Trobough: 1:46:58

Uh, I thought I saw something else about another game, but I didn't know. I didn't think it was ninja gaiden, because I thought we were talking about it, about the the one chick who they say they they nerfed her, nerfed her assets that was ninja gaiden, but that was for ninja was that ninja black? Yeah, okay, yeah, I couldn't remember if it was.

Brandon Hurles: 1:47:17

It was from the same game or not yeah, that was the one where it went from. You know the game, the unreal ninja 5, and her boobs got smaller, just barely, like I was like but I'd like squished together so the internet automatically doesn't, doesn't like it obviously.

Brandon Hurles: 1:47:33

I felt like they were I felt like they were stretching on that one a little bit did didn't look much different for me. It was a quick screen grab from the game. I was like I don't know, man, I don't think they're doing that. I mean, I don't think they are, but but I don't know, it's hard to hear. I did see something else I can bring up real quick. Resident Evil movie reboot is in the works, apparently directed by Zack Craigert, constantine film to produce, along with PlayStation Productions, and a revamp that will take the title to its horror roots and be more faithful to the initial games. So that'd be interesting if they actually do do it right. You know what I mean.

Brandon Hurles: 1:48:15

So going on like a long tangent with like eight movies, and I don't even know what was happening there at the end of the whole franchise.

Mark Trobough: 1:48:22

Would you be surprised if I told you that uh donkey country returns the top selling game last week in Japan? Not at all.

Brandon Hurles: 1:48:30

Actually, it just came out. It's the newest first-party Switch release. Yeah, I was going to ask you about if you're interested in checking out Tales of Grace's F remaster.

Mark Trobough: 1:48:45

Yeah, I saw that I might pick it up. The problem is God knows that I might pick it up. The problem is God knows when I would play it. The last tales game that I bought, I got stuck in like the tutorial section. I was like I I was just getting my ass kicked really yeah on tail the newest one, like the Vesperia, so I don't know which one it was.

Mark Trobough: 1:49:01

It was the last one that came out that they, that the remaster and I got, I got stuck in it and I just doesn't care. Whatever, I'm done with this. On the switch.

Mark Trobough: 1:49:07

You mean, yeah, the switch switch no, but on top of that games easy you know, if you want something else to talk about, we could talk about how much you do or don't agree with this meme, all right, I don't agree with it. I think they give ubisoft way too much credit. But uh, what get from from software is 100% true. Ea just sells you everything. But that's like. I think Ubisoft does the same thing as well. They just software.

Brandon Hurles: 1:49:40

Yeah, I for sure agree with. I'd love they kind of say it's like paid DLC and Ubisoft gives you free expansions.

Mark Trobough: 1:49:49

No, they're saying from software just gives you all the content you'd ever want, and EA's trying to nickel and dime you. I'd say Ubisoft is pretty much the same way, because it says expansion pack instead of DLC. Yeah, but it's the same thing.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:03

Okay.

Mark Trobough: 1:50:04

You know, you know they're trying to give you the full game. Software gives you all that stuff. I mean at least like the, the game itself is girthy and the add-ons have a crap ton of content to them.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:16

It's worth for sure. I mean, like the open ring dlc is pretty huge. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree with that. Good, so I'm sitting over here?

Mark Trobough: 1:50:24

I'm, I mean sitting over here just trolling, strolling x see, to see what I can't find yeah, I was checking if there was anything else as well before oh my god, did you know there's a market for just manuals?

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:38

for game manuals.

Mark Trobough: 1:50:40

Yeah, I've sold a bunch it's like a market of people just selling game manuals for like $20 or $40. Yeah, people gotta complete their games.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:46

I've got a whole giant box selling game games for like $20 or $40. Yeah, people gotta complete their games. I've got a whole giant box.

Mark Trobough: 1:50:51

I feel like for Game Boy Advance, the box itself would be the hardest thing to come by.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:55

It is.

Mark Trobough: 1:50:57

Unless you want to get a reprint.

Brandon Hurles: 1:50:59

It is the hardest thing, because a lot of people throw them away. A lot of people just throw the manual away with it too. Everybody's different, obviously. I think that comes down to people who just keep the manual in the game. Throw the box away.

Mark Trobough: 1:51:13

Yeah, I think that comes down to like what is it?

Brandon Hurles: 1:51:16

I was forced to throw the box away, as a kid.

Mark Trobough: 1:51:20

Of course it wasn't designed to last, but is it a sin to use a reprinted box? Repro box. People do that all the time, assuming that you advertise like it's repo, but realistically that's the only way you're going to find a lot of these old cardboard boxes.

Brandon Hurles: 1:51:35

There's a lot of repro boxes and people just do the OEM manual and game put it in there.

Mark Trobough: 1:51:41

I think some people do it because it's like why spend a lot of money on a really damaged box compared to I don't plan.

Brandon Hurles: 1:51:53

Why spend a lot of money on a really damaged box compared to I? I'm not playing on sun, I just want the box, so just spend the cheap money for somebody that just reprinted cardboard.

Mark Trobough: 1:51:55

Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. I mean, I know some collectors might might absolutely have a problem.

Brandon Hurles: 1:51:57

It depends on the person, right, like, if you're buying it to keep for yourself, then you don't care about having. You know some, some people do. But if you're buying to keep for yourself, the repro box probably doesn't matter as much. But if you're like I might sell this in the future, I need to get an original box. I don't know Everybody's different. I would prefer to have the original box but at the end of the day, Especially if they're, I can find it, but it's like $500. I can find it, is it?

Mark Trobough: 1:52:20

really worth the money spending, especially if If you're not going to sell it on leaf green box for like 60 bucks, just the box only. And that's like on the edge of what I'd be willing to spend on stuff like that.

Brandon Hurles: 1:52:32

I would.

Mark Trobough: 1:52:33

That's assuming that it's in decent condition, not like just ripped ripped to hell you got to think like the.

Brandon Hurles: 1:52:38

The this case is going for like 300 bucks complete box now. So it's like man, it's really not that much. It's really not that much.

Mark Trobough: 1:52:46

At that point. If I'm going to get it, I'd rather just buy everything together, because I'm still getting the manual and the game in that price together. If you're buying them individually, it'd be a little bit harder to justify the cost compared to a $10, $20 repo box.

Brandon Hurles: 1:52:58

Yeah, mr Coffee said when you think about it, isn't this the endgame of retro gaming? It kind of is. Yeah, I've done everything.

Mark Trobough: 1:53:06

It's not even about the games anymore. I'm just trying to collect stuff. That's how a lot of people are too.

Brandon Hurles: 1:53:13

That's how a lot of there's a lot of people out there like that. A lot of people are just in it for the collecting aspect. They don't play the games. They don't care about playing the games, they just want to have the games, get it out as a kid, whatever put it on a shelf looks good to them, you know. Make their background cool, make their spice the room up a little bit, improve their marriage. You know stuff like that.

Mark Trobough: 1:53:35

Yeah, right.

Brandon Hurles: 1:53:37

But I think it's a. I guess one other thing I'll share, cause this just came in today. This is brand new the mega ever drive pro core, the Mega Everdrive Pro Core. This is a new. This is a new SKU from Krikzz. This takes away, like the Sega CD support, makes it cheaper, more affordable I think it's $100, I believe and then it has the support for everything else, like the 32X Sega Master System, sega Genesis, genesis, all that stuff Just takes away the Sega CD support from it and drops the price down by, I think, $150 from the Mega Everdrive Pro, which is pretty cool. So I want to dive into this a little bit deeper and post about it tomorrow. Yeah, and then this came in yesterday. That's pretty cool too. That's a Flea 2 for the Sega Dreamcast. It's hand-numbered there with 169 out of 200. Nice, pretty cool. Yeah, I'm looking forward to checking this out. It's a puzzle platformer. It's pretty cool stuff too. I think that's all I've got, mark. You got anything else for a suite?

Mark Trobough: 1:54:50

uh, no, not right now uh but I can at least leave you with a uh, a good image of a tifa to bless your weekend everybody.

Brandon Hurles: 1:54:58

I want to bless your weekends everybody I'll bless you with this that's not that's. That's a fan art right.

Mark Trobough: 1:55:06

Oh, obviously it's fan art. Okay, I was going to say that's not a game, game stuff, I mean all the games on PC now, so I'm sure you can do whatever you want, right.

Brandon Hurles: 1:55:16

Forgot, just came out a couple of days ago, right?

Mark Trobough: 1:55:19

Yeah, on the PC.

Brandon Hurles: 1:55:22

Yeah, cool. Everybody watching, listening, everybody on all the audio platforms, all that stuff. Be sure to follow us on social media for all updates and we'll be live again next week at 8 pm Eastern Standard Time on Friday. Of course, youtube, twitch, all the different socials, and then we'll be live tomorrow. What are we playing tomorrow?

Mark Trobough: 1:55:43

I have no idea.

Brandon Hurles: 1:55:44

I don't know either. I'll have to figure that out. We actually didn't talk about that, so we'll have to figure that out. But we'll be live tomorrow same time, 8 pm, eastern Standard Time. Every Saturday we are live playing different games, so I'm not sure what we're playing yet, but if you are watching live, we'll be playing something, so we'll see you all later. Have a good night, guys. Peace.