SWITCH 2 RELEASE DATE REVEALED - EP 88

[00:00:18] Speaker A: G'day, and welcome to episode 88 of the Oceanic Gaming Radio podcast. My name is Captain Earth. It is the fourth of the third. 2024. We're back, grizz. It's been two weeks. [00:00:32] Speaker B: Two weeks. [00:00:32] Speaker A: Unexpected two weeks, actually. We didn't expect to have to take hiatus for that long, but it kind of happened. [00:00:38] Speaker B: Yeah. A few people reached out and was like, fuck you guys. Where's the podcast? I haven't heard it, so thank you if you did, you legends. But, Cap, how are you feeling, mate? Because you did have a little bout of COVID there, didn't you? [00:00:50] Speaker A: Yeah, much better now. But this time last week, I was real crook. Like, not good. It's so funny. People are like, I don't know. You hear people say, oh, yeah, Covid is just like having a cold. But sure, for some people, it is. Other people fucking cop it. Like, I did. [00:01:06] Speaker B: Energy levels a bit low, eh? [00:01:11] Speaker A: Yeah, it was mostly like a head cold with just extreme lethargy, and I was just completely shattered for, like, a week. And when you throw an energetic 17 month old in that mix, it's just not fun at all. Yeah, it was pretty brutal. Plus, I think it was really weird, like, the progression of it. I reckon towards the end of it, when I thought I was coming better, suddenly I had this cough kick in and then just got really mucusy, and I was like, what the fuck? I thought this was on its way out. [00:01:49] Speaker B: Anyway, so did the rest of the family cop it as well? Cap? Did Ted and Mia? [00:01:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:55] Speaker B: Really? [00:01:56] Speaker A: I think I copped it the worst. Mia was probably about maybe 80% of how bad I got it. And Ted had one really bad day there. He definitely gave it to us. Cheeky buggy. [00:02:07] Speaker B: Oh, really? Did he have temperature and stuff, Cap? Like, soaring. [00:02:12] Speaker A: Yeah, he had a few days when he was not doing too flash. Poor little bugger. But he took it like a champion. Still trying to do all the stuff he usually gets up to. Just really Sookie. And you know what kids are like when they're not feeling too well. But it was fine for the most part. In all honesty, it was me and me who copped it, man. It was full on. [00:02:37] Speaker B: At least you had some sick leave to take their cafe, so you can kind of. [00:02:42] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I was kind of lucky because in the lead up to the major project I've been working on, I did a few after work shit and just kind of weekend hours and stuff, so I kind of had a bit of time in lieu to work with, so they kind of just gave me a day and a bit of sick leave, which is really good. And I had to work through the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday after I got sick, and that was real tough, but I couldn't take the time. Well, I could have if I really needed to. Like, if it was dire, I could have. But because we just rereleased our app, there's been a lot of bits and pieces that I've needed to be a part of and making sure it's smoothly. So it's really difficult to take that time off. So I ended up not taking it off until later on in the week, which kind of worked out really well for me because Final Fantasy seven rebirth came out and I was like, well, I'm still feeling like shit, but at least I can feel like shit. [00:03:36] Speaker B: And that's for your. Has your game and it's going to be about capo. Looking forward to hearing about that. Yeah. [00:03:43] Speaker A: But, yes, that's basically if you're listening and you're wondering why we were away. Yeah. Last week I had Covid and the week before that, I had a late night at work and just literally got home at, like, 830. So we just didn't have a time to squeeze an episode in that week. [00:03:58] Speaker B: So they cannot be blamed on me this time, Cap. [00:04:00] Speaker A: No, it can't be. It was literally me two weeks in a row. [00:04:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:08] Speaker A: Grizz, has your weekend been, mate? What have you been up to? [00:04:11] Speaker B: Dude, I've been real busy recently. Lots of cool band things, though. Cap, I think it was the weekend before last, me and Mikey had a gig at a venue called at Port beach in Fremantle, and it was called Freopalooza. It was like a festival of 90s tribute bands. And, dude, I think it is the highlight of my music career to date, for sure, dude. [00:04:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I saw the videos. It'll look nuts. [00:04:36] Speaker B: It was great, dude. [00:04:37] Speaker A: You guys sounded really good. [00:04:39] Speaker B: Oh, thank you, mate. Jeez. Yeah, look, I reckon I've never, ever had an adrenaline rush like that before, ever. And it makes you wonder, like, I was seriously, dude, for days afterwards, I was still feeling, like, real from it. Yeah. Just buzing big time. Yeah, it was great. I love that. It was excellent. [00:04:56] Speaker A: How many people, Derek and punters wise, were there? [00:04:58] Speaker B: I think so. They sold out and the capacity was 850. [00:05:04] Speaker A: Far out. That's so sad. [00:05:05] Speaker B: And I reckon that there would have been probably somewhere near that when we played. And just like, everyone was just so into it, man. Like, everyone knew all the words, just pumping. It was great. [00:05:16] Speaker A: It's good because when you're doing cover gigs like that and you're selling out a show of that capacity. You know that people have bought tickets because they want to see that shit. You know what I mean? [00:05:28] Speaker B: It's true. [00:05:29] Speaker A: So good. Yeah, you know, everyone's going to be super into it, which is great. [00:05:33] Speaker B: So we've actually got two more this weekend, Cap. We've got audio slave on Friday night at the amplifier bar in the city. Is there anyone who is in Perth? There is tickets on sale for that if you want to come watch me play in an audio slave tribute band. And then on Saturday night, it's the offspring again on the Saturday at Amplifier bar. So should be pretty good fun. But we played Cave house, Caves house last night, cap, so we were down Dunsborough. [00:06:00] Speaker A: I love Caves house. [00:06:01] Speaker B: Day trip, dude, it's so good. How good is it for kids, though? I haven't been there for years now, but yeah, super family friendly. Lots of young kids and families and kids kind of go play out the front and yeah, just a really cool vibe. Great little. [00:06:15] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a top spot and I mean, that part of Wa is just awesome. [00:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah, nice weather too. Kind of surfy vibes in know. It was good. Yeah, that's been me recently, a lot of music, but I have been playing some video games, some new video games. So I'm really looking forward to telling you about some of those I've actually been playing. The one that I want to talk to you about is the last epoch, which is the actual rpg which got its full released on Diablo like February. The Diablo like. Yeah, and they had a bunch of issues on launch, but yeah, I've given that pretty much the full day today and kind of working through that and yeah, looking forward to giving you a bit more of a rundown on that, mate. [00:06:59] Speaker A: Yeah, wicked keen to hear that one for sure. I've actually got a fair bit on my gaming plate as well. I think it's going to be a pretty big section, so we better jump in, mate. Before we do anything, just want to say a big thank you to all of our wonderful listeners, the legends that listen at home every week from Spotify, whether it be there or elsewhere. We appreciate you guys immensely. Thank you for continuing to consume this little podcast of ours. We bloody appreciate it. And for all those legends that listen live every week, you too want a big old thanks to you. Appreciate you immensely. You can watch this show live on Twitch. Tvoceanicgamingradio just jump in the chat 07:00 p.m. AWST on Monday nights and yeah, you'll see us here doing our thing. It's freaking awesome. [00:07:50] Speaker B: We're doing it. [00:07:50] Speaker A: Swear. Now, other than that, just want to say a big thank you to our wonderful Patreons as well. Those Legends come out every week, put some dollars in our pocket, and we regurgitate that as TikToks and other such things. So appreciate you guys. They are the following legends. I'm Asukai, Moosey, Cajun, Runt, Lee GD, Jlibs, Brendan Strops, and Slatos. Appreciate you, legends. Good on you. [00:08:16] Speaker B: Good on you. [00:08:17] Speaker A: Appreciate you. All right, well, grizz, big old gaming quest log fairly large. I mean, it's not out of control, but, well, it is pretty big, in all honesty. But we'll get through it. We'll get through it now. All right, let's start from this top here. Okay, so, bit of context. A few weeks ago, we were talking about how all of the Xbox fanboys and Xbox adjacent gamers were losing their minds because there were rumors that Xbox was going to be going basically shared platform, probably losing their investment in hardware, all this other stuff. And yeah, basically the Internet went Cray cray and people were losing their minds. And so Phil Spencer had to do a podcast with some of the other kind know brass of Xbox to let everyone know what the fuck was going on. Because I think it was a bit of a knee jerk reaction in reaction to, I guess, like, stoked fires. Grizz, people were not stoked. Everyone was losing it. It was like. [00:09:31] Speaker B: Sell their xboxes and do all sorts of things, mate. [00:09:35] Speaker A: It was pretty full on. So basically, they've gone and had this podcast, and we've gotten a really good overview of what Xbox's kind of movement forward is going to be. And I guess what they're looking to kind of achieve in the next, say, I don't know, five to ten years. Grizz, would you say as is roughly kind of where they're going? We'll just start from the top here, Grizz. Basically, the first one is just generally their exclusivity. So they're kind of going to be releasing most of their titles platform wide, across multiple platforms, not just the Xbox PC family. That seems to be probably the way that they're going to be going, and have been moving towards that for a long time. But they have explicitly stated now that's kind of their intention from now on. So when this first came out, they were mentioning that four titles were going to be made multiplatform in the very near future. Those titles have since come out to be the following pentiment, which is now available on Switch, also to be available if not now on PS five as well. We've also got grounded, which is that survival game by Obsidian. I believe that is going to be coming to Switch and ps five from memory in the next kind of, I think it was 16 March or something along those lines. The other games that they're looking at was CFS is going to be coming to PS five as well, and they seem exceptionally excited. And I think the dems are probably like, shit, yeah, we're going to get a fresh injection of players, you beauty. So that's a nice one. And the other one, Grizz, was hi fi rush. So that's going to be coming out on the 19 March for PlayStation five and I think also switch at some point soon as well. Those are your immediate ones. [00:11:30] Speaker B: Immediate ones. They did kind of say as well, cap, that they've confirmed that Game Pass isn't coming to PS five or Switch and that it will just be kind of these standalone releases that they see fit that will come across. So I found that quite interesting as well, Cap. We'll kind of theory craft that might be something they might be looking to do, releasing the game pass on other platforms, but they did confirm that that wasn't the case. [00:11:55] Speaker A: I think they would like to if they could, but you got to think about it from, I guess, Sony's perspective and Nintendo's perspective, it's not really in their interest to enable that on their devices because they're not really getting a cut of the sales or anything like that. At least if they do, I mean, at the end of the day, if they release these games, the four games that they've got coming out, hi fi rush, yada, yada, yada, on these platforms, then through their marketplaces, they get a cut of whatever sales they make. So it's kind of in their interest to do that that way, rather than enabling Xbox to have a library of games on their system that they don't really get to curate or do anything with, you know what I mean? So they lose that control that they have. And also monetarily, it's not really in their interests. Right. So I can't see it happening anytime soon. But hey, for example, right now you can use Xbox Game Pass on the Steam deck. If you just download a browser, does. [00:13:03] Speaker B: It run well or not? Does it do it all right. [00:13:05] Speaker A: It's not too bad. It's not too bad. Well, I will preface this with if you do it this way you can only play the streamable kind of stuff. So like streamed games, which is fine, but there's a little bit of latency there, as you would imagine with any streamed kind of cloud related stuff, but there's no way to kind of have them natively download. I think you might be able to do some jerry rigging of the Steam OS, but I couldn't be fucked with that, it was too much work. [00:13:38] Speaker B: Yeah, there's some things you can do, I think, to make it better streamable, right? Like there's a bunch of little programs and things you can do. [00:13:47] Speaker A: It's pretty open source, and if you want to spend the time tinkering with it, you can. But yeah, look, moving back into this, clearly they're not going to be able to get game pass onto these consoles, which is not a surprise. But yeah, regardless, we can expect exclusivity to kind of slowly peel away for Xbox, which is something they've been motioning for ages. Really, Grizz? I think the whole idea of having game pass out in general is kind of a movement towards that. But Phil Spencer's explicitly said, look, he doesn't believe that exclusivity is going to be a huge part of the industry in years to come. And I kind of agree with him. I think that you're probably going to find that developers just silo under larger companies, because over time, I think we will move to cloud streaming and cloud stuff because the rest of our entertainment is moving towards that. It might take us ten years to get there, it might take us longer than that, but I think inevitably we'll probably move towards that. Once the infrastructure and that kind of stuff becomes obsolete, like having your own hardware, it's like, well, to do that, when I could just have this little dongle I click into my pc and stream 4k ultra high resolution gaming. Yeah. If and when that becomes available, it's going to be a no brainer, right. [00:15:15] Speaker B: Which is going to happen inevitably. It's going to happen, mate. [00:15:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it will eventually, I guess. [00:15:21] Speaker B: Also, Cap, I don't know if you said this, maybe you did, maybe you didn't, but Spencer also confirmed that at this stage, Starfield and Indiana Jones are not included on that list of games coming to other platforms as well. Correct. [00:15:36] Speaker A: But it'll happen, right? [00:15:39] Speaker B: Do you reckon? Will? [00:15:40] Speaker A: I think eventually. I think inevitably though, they're basically locking an entire market of money away from things, right? And we're seeing so much economic uncertainty and risk in the gaming, especially the AA big budget game sector. I just can't imagine it being a good idea not to enable PS five owners to play your game. And that's probably going to be a significant chunk of money if a lot of those people who own that console buy the game, right? [00:16:14] Speaker B: I'd imagine people would buy that game. [00:16:16] Speaker A: Surely, and we are losing developers in layoffs left, right and center. So if they're not exploring these revenue avenues to kind of maybe try and plug some of these leaky boats, I'd be very surprised, right? So I think maybe not immediately. They probably want to squeeze as much first party sales as possible and keep as many of those sales, get as many of those on their primary hardware as possible, and then move along. Because we know, again, this is another thing that's come out of here is people were kind of connecting the dots incorrectly, as it would seem, but connecting the dots thinking that, oh, well, looks like they're exiting the hardware market. But Phil Spencer SL has since coming forward and said, look, that's not what we're willing to do. In fact, we are looking to our next console, which is in development right now, is going to be the largest, and this is their quote, the largest technical leap you have ever seen in a hardware. [00:17:22] Speaker B: So I feel like that's something that they're always telling us, though, right, cat? I feel like that's quite a standard line between the generations on these consoles. [00:17:32] Speaker A: Maybe that kind of jump is inevitable, right? Because I feel like every time it's going to be a bigger jump, because naturally, your curve of power in terms of hardware power, it's not quite linear. It's probably close, somewhere between exponential and linear. And so, of course, your power jump between each console generation is going to be bigger than the leap before. So it's kind of redundant saying that because, yeah, the processing power between the PS one and the PS two was x, and then between the PS two and the PS three was x plus three. Of course there's going to be a natural gradient upwards, but regardless, he wanted to say, hey, that's not what we're doing, we're sticking in the market. [00:18:22] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think this was really timely, Cap, because there was a lot of rumblings around and a lot of negative kind of bits and pieces coming out of that initial early press release. So it's nice that they put some of this to know. Interesting as well, Cap, that alongside this, that they also stated that all the first party Xbox games are going to be on game pass from day one, which is something they were saying. And alongside that, they said that there would be ten first party games coming out 2024. Sounds like they keep them busy, Cap, but I don't know. What do you reckon? Do you think these will be of good quality? [00:19:00] Speaker A: Look, I don't think they'll all be kind of Indiana Jones Starfield level titles. In fact, I'd say you'd be lucky if Indiana Jones maybe is the only one in that ten of that size, because I'm not really kind of thinking of any off the top of my head, but they've got a lot of sort of small developers under the umbrella of the Xbox Microsoft family now. So I think you're probably going to be seeing a lot of kind of that maybe mid to lower indie tier. And in all honesty, Chris, realistically, those games do better economically than most. You know, when you think about the money it takes to create games that level and caliber or size, it's much more lucrative, I guess, because the conversion is much better. Whereas with AAA's, and we're going to talk about it later, but aaas are just in a whole world of hurt at the moment, and it's just so difficult to really pull off a project of scale. [00:20:06] Speaker B: You know what I mean? [00:20:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I think ultimately it's going to work out for them. [00:20:10] Speaker B: It's a bit of a risk, isn't it, capo? We're seeing some of the big ones, they're spending a lot of money on failing, which we will get to a little bit later. Talking on some of those, capo, very much. [00:20:22] Speaker A: Absolutely. So I guess kind of overall, Grizz, I think Phil and the rest of the upper echelon of Xbox have kind of just resounded what they're already doing and have been doing for a very long time, and basically just reiterating and just being like, hey, we're not really doing anything different. It's just we're doing this still. And I think that's what. I don't know what I expected. I maybe expected, to be honest, I wouldn't have been surprised if they're looking to exit the hardware side of things. Yeah, I wouldn't have been surprised because I don't know how lucrative that is for them. And at the end of the day, I kind of feel like maybe their market was to get more in the subscription service side of things. But ultimately, here we are talking about the fact that they're not. So there you go. But regardless, I think it's interesting, grizz, because when you compare what's happening at Xbox, there's a lot of these rumblings happening at Sony as think. When you think about the two companies, I guess in the last five years, say Xbox has been kind of moving away from the really aggressive exclusivity games on Xbox. Xbox gaming moving more towards I guess like a shared Xbox PC kind of family and slowly releasing titles out beyond that umbrella. But Sony, you kind of always think about being this first party kind of thing. But in the last few years we've seen a lot of their games come to PC, which is pretty new for, you know, kind of to different success depending on the title. Some of those releases have been fucking shocking. But realistically, Sony's kind of doing the same thing. I mean, to the point where in their recent earnings call, their current chairman said they are aggressively working on multiplatform as well, specifically pc. So that we might eventually see the same thing come to Xbox maybe. [00:22:32] Speaker B: I feel like PC, sorry, Sony has this a little bit more of, kind of like a structure where they release a game on first title on PS five, full price game, $120 and then a year down the track or something like that, it'll roll out to pc. We saw that with God of Warcat, we saw that with the Horizon forbidden West and Horizon games as well, amongst others. Whereas I don't know, I kind of feel like Xbox hasn't quite given that same kind of vibe. They're just kind of rolling things out piecemeal. [00:23:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I think realistically, Grizz, we're going to see more cross platform, less exclusivity. I think what we'll probably see and continue to see is things released first on the console or the umbrella company console of choice to begin with. And I think we'll slowly see those IPS or new games probably trickle outwards after say six or twelve months, once they've had enough time to get as much kind of sales on their primary as possible, and then we release out. Because again, I think economically it's not a great decision at the moment. And I don't think it's going to be getting any easier for them to pull off and make money off these big AA titles. So if they want to be profitable, I think they're going to have to start toeing the line and releasing these games out and it seems that that's what they're probably going to be doing. [00:24:07] Speaker B: How hard capped is it development wise to design a game that needs to go across multiplatform? Is that something that's quite challenging? I mean, we saw Larian really struggle with. [00:24:19] Speaker A: Look, I think the biggest opposition for Larian was that they were also targeting older hardware, right, because the Xbox Series X and the PS five had the power to run the game. But then Microsoft's kind of stipulation is that any games that run on Xbox Series S also have to run on the Series S, which is the lower powered version, which they couldn't get it to work, right. So it all comes down to what your constraints are. I guess. Ultimately with this unified kind of console approach for Microsoft, it makes it a little bit more difficult for developers, depending on the game, how resource intensive and hungry it is. But ultimately, a lot of these game engines these days, Grizz, just have a fucking export to the Xbox button. [00:25:04] Speaker B: Really close to. [00:25:06] Speaker A: Yeah, literally. [00:25:08] Speaker B: Does it retain the stuff? Breaking things, I'd imagine certain compatibility stuff. I don't. [00:25:15] Speaker A: I mean, if we're talking dev, right, you probably have a few different builds and those builds would be targeted for certain platforms and you would probably spit them out, try them on the platform and see what does and doesn't work. And then you'd alter those builds to suit the platform. Depending on the game, it's probably going to be like, if it's a small indie game, not particularly resource intensive, maybe it's low poly and there's not an awful lot of game systems going on, it might be a fairly easy conversion between the platforms. The big issue is like, how do you get licensing going? It's all the other bullshit beyond that. And sometimes depending on if you run into particular development issues for the platform you're targeting, maybe that's where things start to become a bit of an issue, like what happened with Larian. And then suddenly they've got fucking Xbox engineers trying to help them to get their game work on their stupid fucking console because it's so underpowered? But yeah, realistically, it's not a huge ask. And it's in the interest of the developers to get it onto more platforms, especially again in this economic climate. Right? Yeah, but speaking of economic climate and games coming to other platforms, it looks like we're also going to be getting Diablo Four on Game pass, as we once speculated, grizz. It is confirmed coming on the 20 eigth of March, end of this month. [00:26:37] Speaker B: Wow, it's coming. So cap, what do we think here, mate? We spoke about this before, but is this a sign from four that this game is dying to see it come to Game pass and access to more people? Or you see this is a bad sign for Diablo four? Or do you think this will legitimately suck people into buying the Xbox Game. [00:26:59] Speaker A: Pass and look, I do think it's a bad sign for Diablo, and we're going to talk about the other bad sign for Diablo in a second. But I think realistically it's the first major blizzard title to come to Xbox Game Pass. I don't think it'll be the last, but it's the first. You might argue that maybe it's a good target for game pass. I'd agree with that as well. I think of all the games that Blizzard has, maybe this and Overwatch good titles. But then again, overwatch two is free, right? So I mean, you're not going to put that on Game pass. There's no point. Yeah, I think realistically it's probably not a great sign. I think the fact that they're pulling it across into there, they're not going to be making any more money off it, that's for fucking sure. So hopefully they're trying to. I guess their idea is that they're trying to target get more people into the ecosystem so they'll spend money on the microtransactions. And we are seeing with their new microtransactions. I mean, one of the new ones that they announced was a 65 usd horse armor bundle. Now, it's not purely just a horse armor bundle, but you also get some currency, some fucking pay to win. It's not pay to win, but it's cosmetic currency, platinum. Now this definitely harkens back to the old oblivion kind of horse armor days when that all kicked off. And realistically, it's funny thinking about the whole oblivion horse armor thing. That's probably the one DLC that really kicked off the whole idea of microtransactions and probably slowly enabled developers and probably more so, the overarching companies to really try and put the clamps on people's wallets. But yeah, this particular one, I think is another bad sign for Diablo. I'd love to see what their numbers are at the moment, but I can't imagine there'd be an awful lot of people playing. [00:29:00] Speaker B: You know what's fucked about this whole situation, cap, and my take on this is. [00:29:05] Speaker A: Yeah, hit me. [00:29:06] Speaker B: I think Diablo four is dead, and I think it's been dead for quite a while. And you linked a video of Asmon gold doing a quick little breakdown of this horse DLC. Sorry, this horse microtransaction thing in Diablo four. And there's like placeholder images in the store, in the Diablo four store for cosmetics because they haven't had a chance to upload the actual images of the cosmetic, which is slack. But not only that, but on the release day of the last patch, it was copying like, hardly any views on Twitch. More people watching Diablo three and Diablo two remastered than there were wild four. But the thing about it is, Cap, is they sold so many copies on launch. $666,000,000 in revenue within the first five days, reaching 12 million players on launch. [00:29:57] Speaker A: It was their biggest launch of all time or something. [00:30:00] Speaker B: So financially the shareholders are probably going, yeah, great success, jabbalo four. Fantastic. Let's just ship it off to Xbox Game Pass now and release these very expensive cosmetics and hope that, what do you call them? The whales. [00:30:13] Speaker A: I have a theory, grizz. I have a theory. Yeah, I have a theory. Right? And it's definitely not true. But I like to dream that maybe deep down under all of this, the developers are actively working against the introduction of microtransactions to the point where they're making them basically unachievable in terms of actually getting people to buy these microtransactions. So they've had an awesome launch. The game launched really well, did a great job, and then what they've done is they've had to inevitably launch all these microtransactions at the request of boards and fucking all the rest of the bullshit. And then the game shits the bed. Oh, we launched really well. But hey, because we had to introduce all these stupid fucking microtransactions, the games just died. So maybe we don't do that in the future. What do you reckon? And maybe this is Diablo Four is the fucking sacrificial lamb in amongst all this. I don't know. Cool if it was though. [00:31:14] Speaker B: Sounds fucking way too optimistic. What I actually think has happened is they realized the game is dead, but they realized there's a small dedicated player base of people that are probably going to spend $65 to get that horse. And they've gone, well, that's the price of a full price game. We'll bang it in there. What's our loss? They chuck it on a free platform. They get as many eyes on it as they possibly can. They push the store at the front of the blizzard page. They give you pop ups in game and every other little dodgy little thing in there to get people to buy the stuff in the game. I don't know, man. [00:31:45] Speaker A: I definitely feel it's unfortunate, but I think you're right. [00:31:48] Speaker B: I feel like this was a real opportunity for Blizzard to deliver a game that people really wanted. And there was a gap in the market because Poe two wasn't out yet. There really wasn't a good action rpg since Diablo Three. Well, apart from Path of Exile and other ones. And they sold so many copies on launch because it looked amazing, it ran fantastic. And then they've just snuck all this. I don't know, they haven't serviced the community in the right way to keep them going. [00:32:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you're right, mate. Ultimately, I don't think they'll ever come back either. I don't think that they can actually produce. Look, presumably there's probably like a reasonable DLC expansion coming at some point. Whether they can actually breathe life back into this ip, I fucking doubt it. But yeah, I think the fact is, coming to game pass, the fact that their MTX or their microtransactions are completely out of control. Yeah, it paints a pretty grim picture for old Diablo Four, which is a real shame. [00:32:56] Speaker B: I sort of point this out, Cap, but I feel like they have taken what's been successful in mobile gaming microtransactions, and kind of pushed this in. And it was something that you told me on podcast once was, you see those packs for currency in mobile games that are completely unobtainable. You can buy, like just an example is 50,000 gems or whatever it is in a game. It'll cost you x amount of money, and no normal person is going to be do that. But that rich prince in India, or whatever it is, that's just going to press that button, or even a kid on an iPad is going to press that button and link it. I can't help but think that this $65 horse bundle is just targeting exactly what that mobile market is targeting, which is the one off. And then that makes up for how many people that aren't going to buy that. That one person's just made up for that whole. [00:33:49] Speaker A: I actually don't think that 65 USD is a once off. The only reason they would put that on the market, Grizz, is if they thought it would sell. They'd have enough data to suggest that there will be idiots that will buy this stupid fucking bundle. And I bet you they've sold a bunch of them and they'd be fucking stoked. Like, this is the issue, right? They're not going to put it out there if it's not going to sell, right? Or enough. [00:34:18] Speaker B: The other thing that shoots me about four and the cosmetics, cap, is all the cosmetics that you can get in game by doing cool stuff don't look anywhere near as good as the paid ones, which I know that they're trying to sell it. [00:34:30] Speaker A: Classic. [00:34:30] Speaker B: But it would be great to be able to earn some that actually look pretty good. Or even earn the ones that you can get for the shop by playing again. I don't. [00:34:39] Speaker A: You. Yeah, gone are the days, my friend Grizzly. Anyways, look, bringing this back home, it looks know Xbox is just going to continue doing its thing. So don't sell your Xbox. It's going to be okay. In fact, you might even have a new Xbox to buy in the next couple of years. So get ready for that. [00:34:58] Speaker B: But yeah, the Xbox dongle, you mean. Right cat, little tv dongle? Eh? [00:35:01] Speaker A: Dude, I will buy an Xbox dongle. That would be sick. I reckon that would be. Yeah. Anyways, all right, moving along. Grizz, Larry and studios cleaned up at the Dice awards a couple of weeks ago, mate. They took home the outstanding achievement in story awards, rpg of the year, outstanding achievement in game design, outstanding achievement in game direction. And they took out Game of the year as well. Okay, so look, they did pretty well. Now in amongst all this, they had their head of publishing come on and just kind of just say a few words about winning and what it means to them and all the rest of it. But they kind of painted a bit of a picture about, I guess. And we kind of touched on it earlier and we've definitely touched on this in the last few episodes, if not more. But just the fact that the industry isn't looking too good, it's not looking too flash. And it seems like a lot of what they suggest is the reasoning for this is just the fact that one thing that they do say is that they don't have stakeholders or shareholders that they have to think about. They can go and make a decision about the game and not think about whether that decision is going to make the game money. Which is an interesting thing. [00:36:25] Speaker B: I think it's really important. Just talking about Diablo four cap and the issue with Diablo four and then hearing these guys speak out, I almost feel like they're directing this at those blizzards and activisions and other bits. [00:36:39] Speaker A: I think they are 100% doing that. They are actively calling out some terrible shit that's happening at the management level across different companies in this particular speech. And I think obviously going back to the fact that they actively say we don't make decisions where we think this could make us money in the long run. Building a community, building a player base, building games that are actually fun is going to make you the most money. That's that. And that is what it is, right? A game is supposed to be fun. How do you make a game fun? You don't try and pull the wool over your player's eyes and try and buy them into other bullshit. Some people like that. Some people do actively like playing gotcha games and shit like that. Sure. But for a vast majority of, I guess the hardcore gaming market, I'll call it that because mobile gamers and casual gaming is a completely different kettle of fish. But we're talking about the actual. The gamer gamers, right? They are going to chase the carrot where the games are fun. And let's look at the games that have done really well recently. Power world. Think about lethal company. Think about hell divers. Those games are small indie games. They've done really well because they went, here's an idea, let's pump it out. You can argue that some of those games were there to make money. Of course they are. But ultimately I guess they don't have the same. [00:38:06] Speaker B: They made money of management fun cap, weren't they? That's why they've made money. [00:38:12] Speaker A: And they'll probably have some degree of longevity for the most part. Sure they're kind of games as servicey some of them, and they'll probably have a natural decline, but I mean you compare it to Diablo four. Sure, dialogue four made a shitload of money, but I mean it means fuck all now, right? [00:38:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And look, I kind of want to save this for how's your gaming going, but the vibe between the last epoch and Diablo four for an action rpg. There's a store in that game where you can buy cosmetics, but I literally had to hunt for it. It wasn't throwing in my face at all. Didn't feel like you have to buy anything or anything else, but yeah, it's completely different approach. Yeah. [00:38:54] Speaker A: And I think that's a more natural feel. I mean realistically we know that some of these companies need to use those storefronts to try and keep server costs on and all that kind of shit. I get that. But if you're shoving it down people's throats, that's when people are going to get annoyed. Now I guess kind of hinging off this grizz. Obviously Larry Studios has done really well, but there's some developers that are fucking really hurting right now. It's pretty full on. Like you're seeing some of the worst layoffs that we've think you've had this insane amount of scaling before and during COVID and then suddenly we've just hit this cliff where Sony just announced that I think it's 900 jobs or something like that that they're going to be laying off. And that was recently. So 900 people, or approximately 8% of their workforce. That is a huge number for Sony. That's a lot. [00:39:53] Speaker B: Estimated that roughly 10,000 game devs cap lost their jobs. 2023. And this is across. We covered quite a lot of these stories, but Riot, Epic, Ubisoft, real layoffs across the tech and gaming field for sure. [00:40:09] Speaker A: Yeah, and even other more recent ones. We've had embracer group cancel, I believe, 29 unannounced games between July and December, which is unbelievable. We've also had, sorry, the old Covid bloody throats kicking in again. Even Bandai, basically Bandai Namco has announced as well that they've canceled five games and they're going to be moving into stricter quality control, which I think we're kind of getting that similar inkling from Xbox and Playstation based on what they've been doing recently. So we are seeing a tightening of scope and approach from some of these bigger developers. Now on top of that, Grizz, we've also had recently EA have just announced layoffs as well and they've canceled their mandalorian game that was rumored. [00:41:10] Speaker B: The FPS one is that the. [00:41:16] Speaker A: Basically be. I think what happened was respawn wanted to make another titanfall, but they couldn't convince EA to let them do it and pay for it. So I think what probably ended up happening was, well, let's make a mandalorian inspired one. And it seems like since that's happened, it's been canceled, but we will be getting the next Jedi survivor game, Black Panther game. And. [00:41:46] Speaker B: Like, it sounds like these companies are kind of almost slimming down a little bit around what they're delivering. Cap and I also think that maybe this potentially comes down to, like you were mentioning before, but AA games now not guaranteed to sell well. And if you're looking at something, and technically it's not looking that fantastic, maybe it's better to put some of your eggs in a basket that is looking a bit better and push those aside, which kind of feels like what we're seeing from some of these big, like. [00:42:20] Speaker A: Recently I believe Sony had something like eight games as a service games in development, right? Something ridiculous because I think the approach to making a game as a service game and knowing whether it's going to do well or not, you don't know until you've made it and you've put it out and you've seen what the retention is like. Right? So I think a lot of the approach is just that lack of risk aversion to putting something out and hoping for the best. And now they're starting to go, is that really the best idea? Especially since we're not making as much money from these games and the development costs are quite high and we're expecting a lot. This is the other thing, right? Is not only is the cost of AAA game development increasing, the thing that isn't increasing is, I guess, the work expectations for developers. Well, it is increasing actually. It's just that the conditions for what these people have to work in, they're not improving at all. In fact, they're probably getting worse. They're being overworked. They have to perform at a high level. And it's just, no, I guess transparency between that and their management levels and the same kind of thing happening at those levels. These ceos are still making a shitload of money, they're taking big bonuses home. These companies are still making a lot of money regardless of the fact they're laying off people, right? A lot of these companies are still posting profits, right? So fucking do the math on that one. Regardless, they're not treating their staff very well. So it's a very unfortunate melting pot of just garbage, I think. And obviously what we're seeing here is these big AAA companies cutting the fat, realigning. All I can say is I hope that moving forward this is a way for them to maybe put some more focus on the work conditions for their workers. [00:44:31] Speaker B: But I doubt it. Yeah, and it's interesting, cap, because I feel like a lot has changed right, in this space over the last couple of years. And I really think that we've seen a big kind of rise in the success from indie studios, particularly over the last five years. And games coming out of those being really successful. And it kind of makes me wonder, is there going to be a place future for these big multi shareholder companies like Blizzard, other bits and pieces to be creating these video games and making good profit? Or is it the time of the indies cap? And are we going to see this kind of trend where we're kind of witnessing indie games kind of stealing the limelight a little bit more because it's economically when you haven't got shareholders and management costs and everything else, and monetization becomes less of an issue and more about the fun and enjoyment creating a game out of passion that's kind of fit for purpose. So yeah, I don't know, what are your thoughts, mate? Is this an evolution in gaming? We're kind of witnessing as these companies are slowly just bleeding money and not creating great games. [00:45:40] Speaker A: I think the economic condition has hit a point where it's a very clear cut lifecycle that we're seeing for a lot of game dev companies. Some will remain at indie and stay that way and stay true to their indie roots, and they won't get purchased by bigger companies. Yada, yada, yada. They'll remain the outliers. You'll probably find that your Larians continue to do their thing despite being 30% owned by ten cent, by the way. But we'll talk about that later. I think what we're seeing here is your natural progression is company goes indie, they start making indie games. They maybe have one or two good games come out and they make a reasonable amount of money. They get interest from a large company, they get consumed into it. Then they start having to try and pump games out at that level, and then they just inevitably die because they can't maintain the expectations that these larger companies are imposing now. And I guess realistically, Grizz, it's interesting because I think what's happening there is the fun of game development is being lost. Because now you're struggling to keep up with someone who doesn't give a shit about the game development. They care about the dollar signs, right? And that's what's happening. We're just seeing this. The whole idea is games need to be fun. Game development needs to be fun because it's a creative endeavor, right? And so when you're constantly being hounded by big fucking execs to put pump as many fucking microtransactions into your game as possible, I don't think that's going to be very fun. That's the kind of thing we're seeing. [00:47:15] Speaker B: It's also kind of like the circle of life cap, where you see like an indie studio get bought by someone bigger, and then they turn to this corporation, then that fails. And then the dev teams from those go and form an indie studio and then make great games, do it all. [00:47:27] Speaker A: Over again, do it all over again, get bought by Microsoft, shit the bed. What's next? I don't know. Look, I think ultimately it depends on it's studio to studio, right? But I think the beauty of where we are now and the Internet and having digital distribution is that indies can perform and operate and do really well. And we're really lucky, because if we didn't have mean, we'd be dealing with fucking more Ubisoft fucking shovelware as our standard day to day gaming, which also. [00:48:03] Speaker B: I imagine it would come down to the tools at hand as well. Now, cap, you know, I feel like a while ago, really open source development tools were not something that you could know. You and I can go grab something and get some free assets and tickle and poke around in there, but I feel like that is something that hasn't always been the case. You just see a lot of companies that would design their own engines and their own development tools and other bits and pieces. [00:48:29] Speaker A: Yeah, you'll still have that, I think, because that's another way for some companies to cost save. But I think you're 100% right, is that I think it becomes the potential for hobbyist kind of games development. And then becoming a hobbyist and trying to, oh, I should turn this into a profitable little thing. Why not? This is a bit of fun. [00:48:59] Speaker B: I think the guys that did Hollow Knot and also stardue Valley are just like, that were hobby. That was their hobbyist. [00:49:09] Speaker A: Hobbyist wasn't stardew Valley. I think that guy just lost their job or something and were like, fuck it, I'll just make this game, see what happens. And then all of a sudden I think, you know, you've made it. When you are doing orchestra music shows and they're being sold out and people are going to listen to the music you've created in your game, you know. [00:49:31] Speaker B: That I would go, you know what's crazy? Like my kids, particularly Joyce. Joyce and I were playing some Stardew Valley, but whenever I'm in the car now, she likes to listen to the Stardew Valley OsT just in there banging. [00:49:43] Speaker A: That's awesome. [00:49:44] Speaker B: Such a good little soundtrack, honestly. This is the song from summertime when you're in your caves and she knows all the different songs for the. [00:49:53] Speaker A: That's awesome. Yeah, but I mean, I think gaming is such an evocative and emotive experience because there's so many different senses that you're having, your visual and your auditory and you're holding a controller. And I think certain elements of games resonate with you. And I mean, for me, music is definitely a big one. I mean, Legend of Zelda music is such a big part of my life. And I remember when the symphony for the goddess go around the world and they came to Perth and I went and saw that dude and it was, honestly, I had fucking tears in my eyes because it was just like my childhood was being put on a stage in front of me and played and it was just filling the space around me. It was just crazy. And so, yeah, like music and stuff like that is just so important. But hopefully we can still continue to enable indies and other people who I think ultimately hold the torch for first and foremost, gaming should be fun. And I think realistically, because game devs don't make an awful lot of money when you compare them to regular software devs, making games should be fun too. So I hope that they can continue to hold that torch and we can support them as gamers to enable them to continue to produce good product and also have a fucking good time doing it. [00:51:20] Speaker B: It's great to see Larry and kind of up and definitely supporting what you're saying. Cat around building games that are actually fun is going to make you the most money. That's it. And that's what we want. That's what they want, just needs to be done. [00:51:39] Speaker A: All right, Grizz, moving along now. We did get rumors a little while back that the switch two might not be too far off. Now, we have since received more information suggesting that we're probably not going to get it till next year. In fact, early dates and rumors again, this is all rumors, but presumably I think we're getting close to that launch window, probably. And maybe some of these rumors are probably fairly on the money. Now, video game Chronicles has noted that. I can't remember who reported this one in particular. Looks like it might be Nikki, which is like the fucking stock or whatever. They have released a report saying that the Switch two will be targeting March of 2025. Now one of the reasons they are suggesting that this says basically it's been like a delay. They've reported that there's been a delay in when they expected to release this new console. And the reason for that is I believe they're worried about shortage for Switch two component and obviously being able to get them on the shelves in time for Christmas, right? Yeah, so I think initially they're probably looking at Christmas. They've had to since shift that to march. So not particularly surprising given the kind of, again, climate wise, economically, it's hard to get these chips made. And at mass scale, there's only a few companies that actually can do this. And trying to get them to get it done for you must be very lucrative and very difficult in terms of planning. So I'm not surprised. But yeah, we can expect it a little bit later. [00:53:40] Speaker B: PlayStation was wild, Cap. Remember that? Like, no one could buy a PlayStation in Australia for the first year of its release. You have to pre order one and then go pick it up from the store. Absolutely mental. Yeah, it's crazy, Cap. I mean, I'm looking here at some stats in that article you've linked there, and far out. I cannot believe 139,000,000 units of the Switch one sold. [00:54:03] Speaker A: That is an insane amount. That is an insane amount. It's one of the reasons that Nintendo, I believe, is one of, if not the biggest company in Japan now. [00:54:15] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Huge success. [00:54:17] Speaker A: So, yeah, massively successful, but, yeah. So we're probably going to expect that a little bit later, which is interesting, Grizz, because we recently. So I think this is another issue, right. When we had the Switch release, we had breath of the wild release at the same time as the Switch. So that was a pretty fucking big title to parallel release with your brand new hardware. So realistically, given the games that have come out recently, if they were going to be releasing around about Christmas time, you need to start thinking about, well, what's going to be their launch title. [00:54:57] Speaker B: Right. [00:54:57] Speaker A: We haven't seen a first party Mario game in a little while. Maybe something like that. [00:55:02] Speaker B: Mario makers three surely would be fucking amazing. Something like that. [00:55:07] Speaker A: I reckon we get an Odyssey two or something. [00:55:09] Speaker B: You reckon? Yeah, maybe Odyssey two. Actually, you know what, cap? They tend to not do sequels of those 3d Mario games. They tend to make their own little standalone new one. [00:55:21] Speaker A: They did do Galaxy two, though. [00:55:23] Speaker B: Did they do Galaxy two? I never played either of those games. Odyssey was great. Honestly. Excellent. [00:55:31] Speaker A: Odyssey was really good, though. I think the thing about Galaxy was the gimmick of the whole planet thing running around. Right. And I think Odyssey didn't really have that same kind of gimmick. It had the whole hat throw thing. But I think you're probably right. We probably see a brand new Mario game. But, yeah. [00:55:55] Speaker B: It translates so well. The Mario maker games translate so well to know being able to edit stuff using your stylus or whatever else on the screen and do bits and pieces was really nice. Yeah, I don't know. [00:56:09] Speaker A: I could see maybe, man, I definitely think we're going to see a Mario title as a parallel release. I mean, we recently had a Pokemon direct, and amongst all of that direct, we had, like, a new anime coming out. I think there was some shit to do with the sleep game that they have. There's some new terror raid battles for Scarlet and Violet and a bunch of other shit that's happening on Unite and the trading card game. But one game that they didn't announce was a follow up to the Pokemon Legends series, so that the last one was Arceus, which was that kind of like cross survival open world thing that they had going on. And this one's going to be called Pokemon Z to A or Z A. So that's apparently announced for releasing in 2025. I estimate maybe that might come out roughly about the time of the Switch, too. Maybe. But I think they're going to need a few games to release alongside. [00:57:13] Speaker B: They're going to need a couple. Well, maybe that's part of the delay as well, Cap, to give them time to develop those games on release. But I guess we are stuck now, Cap, or at least presumably stuck with the Switch one until this date, which means we've talked about it many times in this podcast, but being quite underpowered and Nintendo game devs having to design games to fit the specifications and how difficult that is. So that's probably one thing that's going to be a bit of a pain in the ass that at least another year away from a Switch to maybe a bit longer. [00:57:46] Speaker A: Yeah, we've definitely bashed the Nintendo one to death on its lack of graphical processing power, but it does kind of suck that we're going to have to wait a little bit longer. We don't even know how long it's going to be at this stage. It's all just rumor, but I think that the Nintendo Switch has been out for like what, eleven years or something like that. It's been a long while, so I think it's definitely time to move on when we'll get it. God, give it to me soon. It does make me wonder, Grizz, based on the fact that we don't have an awful lot of idea of what might kind of co release with this console if and know it gets announced all that kind of stuff. Again, this is all rumors, but it does make me wonder if maybe they do go heavily down the road of backwards compatibility, which I really hope they do, because I think that's going to be an important selling point for Nintendo. I think they're going to really struggle to upsell people onto a brand new console and completely separate the Nintendo Switch one from the Nintendo Switch two, I think they need to probably unify that experience a little bit, but they might run into the same issues that Xbox has been having with, for example, Larian having to freaking create a game that works on the series s and X if they have a similar approach. And you have to make sure that games run on the Switch one and two, what effects that be? [00:59:26] Speaker B: Really interesting, cap, right, because I feel like through the generations of Nintendo consoles, the actual infrastructure for the physical game cartridges has changed over that time. They've tried many different things from the old big Nintendo cartridges to disks in some of the games, Wi and everything else, and then into these small cartridges for the Switch. And I wouldn't be surprised. Know, maybe they stick to those, but maybe they're smaller. So then it kind of thinks in my mind, or how is physical game copies for the Switch going to work with backwards compatibility? Can you then redeem something online to allow you to download a digital version of that game or something like that? But I think that's going to be something that's going to be interesting because I can't imagine they're going to keep the size of those chips, especially with how technology has advanced in that time. And I'd imagine it maybe shrinking or even changing a bit. I don't know. [01:00:19] Speaker A: Maybe, though I do find one thing about Nintendo is they're very good at artificially creating things that maybe don't need. [01:00:30] Speaker B: An adapter or something for. [01:00:32] Speaker A: I could just see them keeping the chip the same size, in all honesty, because realistically, I guess if you're, I kind of think about those leapfrog fucking tablets, and you can get cartridges for your leapfrog tablets for your kids. And the whole idea of that is the idea of having this cartridge thing and that goes in and out. It's like a proprietary thing. Nintendo has always worked towards having proprietary ways of controlling the medium by which they deliver the software. And that's worked really well for them in the past. The Wi had some proprietary fucking encryption, so that it was really difficult to, what do you call it? Emulate the Wi at one point. And they've had that issue with suck, don't they? [01:01:27] Speaker B: Like, they don't run particularly well. [01:01:29] Speaker A: I think they run okay now, but it was really difficult to crack them and reverse engineering the unencryption so that they could actually play them was really difficult. And so I think Nintendo, their approach to doing cartridges and stuff, it makes it that one extra little step more difficult to get emulation working and backwards engineering shit because they kind of put like this stop gap in front of people. And Nintendo loves making sure you can't emulate shit because they want you to buy their shit, right? So I can just see them keeping their cartridges. [01:02:04] Speaker B: Okay, so maybe they keep the cartridge. All right, so then it will. Well, look, I agree with you, by the way, cap. I think that they need to have some kind of backwards compatibility, but I also look the way that they're running their Nintendo subscription service now, and under that subscription service, you get access to retro games like Nintendo Super Nintendo games and a bunch of other ones that kind of form part of that. And I would imagine that you would hold that same subscription, and then on your switch to that, you get access to those same titles. So I'd imagine there would have to be some kind of technical backwards compatibility between those that I wouldn't imagine you'd get a separate Nintendo Switch subscription for the Switch two. [01:02:48] Speaker A: Look, I wouldn't have thought so. I think they'll try and unify a little bit. I think they'll still be very Nintendo about the way they do things and just be like, oh, sorry, we're Nintendo. We don't know how the Internet works. It's like, yes, you fucking do. Just fucking sort it out, will you? [01:03:00] Speaker B: You fucking make good point, man. Because they did have dedicated wi store and stuff and all those things, and they seem to just slowly supersede and get rid of those over time. [01:03:09] Speaker A: Yeah, and it's kind of like feigning incompetence, and it's like, guys, come on. You guys can make a fucking normal system. You're being dickheads about it. But look, yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens. Regardless. I guess we'll wait and see when they inevitably and eventually kind of release this bad boy. Now, Grizz, we haven't spoken about this together yet. [01:03:38] Speaker B: This could have been a whole episode, mate. Just on this one topic. [01:03:41] Speaker A: It could have been a whole episode, but I figured, fuck it, we'll just squeeze it in here. Should be right. [01:03:45] Speaker B: Jesus. For an elder Ring podcast, Cap, that's pretty disappointing, mate. [01:03:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Look, we didn't get an awful lot of details out of the new trailer. We did get a little bit of an interview with Miyazaki, but I just thought we'd touch on the major points and maybe we can deep dive into it. Maybe next week a little bit more. Excuse me. But, yeah, basically, they shadow dropped. It wasn't quite a shadow drop, but they very quickly announced, hey, we're going to be releasing the reveal trailer in two days. And everyone shat their pants in unison across the world, and we all sat in our dirty dax for those two days. So in the end, they released the Elden Ring DLC trailer, and it is a doozy. Oh, my goodness. It looks so fucking good. [01:04:35] Speaker B: They also revealed the date that the DLC will be released, cap, which is coming in June 2024. So if you're looking to finish battles, gate three, I. E. Me, got to do it before that date so we can jump into Eldon ring, get your. [01:04:50] Speaker A: Shit together big time. So, yeah, it's looking pretty good now. They've announced a bunch of collectors editions and stuff that you can get. But it looks like basically if you're an elden ring law aficionado, you're going to be following in the footsteps of Michela, who is kind of alluded to. The idea of Michela is floating around in the base game. They're one of the demigods, child of America, who is the main demigod, who's basically set all the events in motion. Michela seems to be like the golden child and the do gooder. And there is this land of shadow that we're going to be finding a way into. And it looks like there know, I guess, a billion fucking YouTube law videos about how this egg that Mogue has and this hand coming out was going to be the entry and people are arming and arguing about whether it would or it wouldn't. And it turns out, yes, that egg with the hand poking out is going to be how you get into the land of shadow. [01:05:57] Speaker B: I remember when we did our first pre debrief, post finishing elden ring cap, and we both thought that that would be the DLC entry just because it was a little bit of out of place and it was like a static location. After you killed that boss, that egg would just sit there with the hand outside. It seemed like something was missing kind of there in that piece. So not surprised by that. But also it's cool. It also means that the entry to the DLC is after an extremely hard boss, once again, from software had not spared these obscure entries into DLC that are halfway through their video games. So if you are looking forward to playing the DLC, you will need to work your way through the game. What is it, cap? Mid game? Endgame? Where is. [01:06:45] Speaker A: I would say it's upper mid to kind of end. In all honesty, the area that mog and that is called, like, something of blood or some shit. [01:06:58] Speaker B: That fight is fucked too. That whole area. [01:07:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it is shit house. It's not fun. So yeah, prepare your angus for that one. But look, the trailer looks really good. Go and watch it for yourself, especially if you're an elden ring fan. But there's this big fucking erd tree in the background that has these veils of shadow floating down, kind of like satin draped over these trees over the vista in front of you. And then there's this sick castle in the background that seems to be catching freaking tree SAP. And then we see these images of your character going through all kinds of different little environments and it looks awesome. We get a glimpse of some of the bosses coming up, and I think they had an interview with Miyazaki, and Miyazaki said, there's ten bosses or something. I'd say there's probably more than ten. [01:08:00] Speaker B: Bosses that obviously be the ten main bosses, but obviously there's going to be all those little dungeons where they kind of use some same bosses and things throughout. [01:08:11] Speaker A: I think ten main bosses. There's probably going to be optional bosses and probably, I dare say, knowing Miyazaki and Fromsoft, there's probably going to be a secret boss. They kind of revealed the main boss to be this new character called Mesma, who seems to be another demigod, maybe related to Michaela and who's the redhead lady name, the real hard boss, the pot man. Anyways, probably related to them, maybe a sibling, but yeah, he's got a big snake hanging off him. But yeah, regardless, looks really good. Now, interesting thing about this one, Grizz, and one thing that was speculated to be people weren't sure how they were going to approach this was how are they going to deal with player power? There's people who have done a billion ng plus games at this point. Some people have just started new characters. How do we adequately provide an experience that's going to challenge you regardless of the power of your character? And Miyazaki has come out and said, well, the way we're going to be doing it is kind of similar to the way it works in Sakiro, where when you kill a boss, you get a bit of extra attack power each time. So it seems like you're going to be running around this new shadow land and killing bosses and earning power and using that to kill other bosses. [01:09:50] Speaker B: I think that is a good approach, cap, because they didn't do this in the previous Souls games or Bloodborne or anything else. But Elden Ring is a different beast because the open world nature allows you to really go away and grind your character and find better items and other bits and pieces. And I remember when I first started the next Ng cycle, I was so overpowered and the game was so much easier than it was the first round. So this is good. This kind of levels out the experience for people that are maybe looking to play Elden ring first and foremost and people who are starting new characters, and so you can't just go in there and steamroll stuff on your bloody ng 50 max level Bloke. [01:10:31] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I think this is a really good approach and I'm really excited for this. I think would love to talk a bit more about the law that's being shown in the trailer, but I think we'll save that maybe for next time. But now for a fucking treat. [01:10:47] Speaker B: I know we're not at. How's your gaming going yet? Or maybe we are, but have you started preparing for this dlc? Have you got a character that's kind of working through the game? [01:10:57] Speaker A: I'm glad you asked. Grizzly gaming 86. Yes, I have, actually. I have started a magic build because I was like, you know what? I'm just going to cheese this shit. I'm going to fucking cheese it. And you know what? [01:11:08] Speaker B: I did? [01:11:09] Speaker A: Magic's hard because they come at you that easy. [01:11:14] Speaker B: Yeah, when you're at range. Do you know the guy with the sword that does the. He's got, like, the fly through the air attack that he does with the wings? What are they called? They. Crucible knights, maybe? Something like that. [01:11:25] Speaker A: Oh, yes. [01:11:27] Speaker B: So they have this thing, as soon as you go to cast something, if they're in a certain range from you, they'll just come and poke you before you can cast your magic. [01:11:37] Speaker A: Surprisingly difficult. Seriously, I thought I was on easy street. But there's certain ways you can get around it. Like, you can cast that spell where it puts the swords around your head and then they fire off auto. And sometimes those are really good ways to deal with red spirit invaders and stuff like that because they aren't prepared for the. [01:12:01] Speaker B: All right, so talk me through cat. What spells are you running and what equipment are you using? [01:12:08] Speaker A: I have been running, well, basically, I've done all of limb grave and I've done most of the southernmost area. I can't remember what you call that zone. [01:12:24] Speaker B: Lake area. Right? Is that what you're talking about? No. You haven't been through Stormwind Castle yet. You haven't gone through Stormwind. [01:12:31] Speaker A: Okay. No Elden ring map. Let me tell you exactly where I've been. So I've done limb grave. I've done. What's this fucking joint called? God, what's the south place called? Christ, I literally just want. [01:12:46] Speaker B: With the castle right down the bottom end. And there's the guy. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. [01:12:52] Speaker A: The weeping peninsula. [01:12:53] Speaker B: The weeping peninsula, yeah. [01:12:55] Speaker A: So I've done all of Lingrave and the Weeping peninsula. So, yeah, kind of making my way through the rest of the Weeping peninsula at the moment. And I'm going to move up to Stormvale Castle and do that next. But I'm running with the astrologer build as my base build. And then I've basically been running with, I think it's called Glintstone pebble as my main spell. [01:13:22] Speaker B: Nice. Efficient. You can just fire those off. [01:13:28] Speaker A: There's other spells that are supposed to be better versions of it, and they're just not. There's one that's supposed to be like three rapid fire things, and it's like they're much weaker than this pebble that I'm just throwing at things. So why would I use anything other than this? But I'm using that, and I've got the carryon slicer for when things are just a little bit too difficult for me to get out of range. And then I've also got that other carryon thing that puts the swords above my head, so that's what I'm running there. But in terms of trinkets and stuff. [01:14:04] Speaker B: I can't remember what I've got. [01:14:06] Speaker A: I don't think I've gotten much yet. [01:14:08] Speaker B: I guess what's cool is that you can really go to town doing the Selen quest to unlock all those spells through her and get the sorcery scrolls and shit like that. That's cool. [01:14:20] Speaker A: I've done most of that so far. [01:14:22] Speaker B: Have you? Yeah. Right? [01:14:24] Speaker A: I've done literally everything on the map so far. I've done the whole lot, and it's been like, my second run through has been so much quicker, dude, me too. Ridiculous. [01:14:33] Speaker B: Me too. I'll get to it. When in my housing game and going too. But, yeah, I think because we played through it once, you definitely figure out how to play the game, how to stagger enemies and other bits and pieces. It's been much more approachable and even how like, I mean, there's been certain enemies that I'm like, nah, because I already know how fucking shit they are. I'm going to worry about him late. I'll go do this first. [01:14:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I've been the exact same thing. I still haven't fought the tree knight at the front of the place you spawn in, because I was like, man, this guy's just a fucking asshole. Later. And also, even just with summons, I'm just like, fuck it. These wolves can fucking help me out. [01:15:10] Speaker B: You might as well use it. [01:15:12] Speaker A: Fuck it. Yeah. I was such a purist before I was a father with not much time, and now I'm like, I don't have time for you to be an asshole. I'm going to sort you out as quickly as possible. So, yeah, it's kind of been like that, but I haven't had any major stop gaps or roadblocks in my play through so far. I've even done all of the prisons so far in the areas apart from the one that is the night that you just spoke about, because that guy's an asshole, and I figured I'd come back to him later. [01:15:50] Speaker B: What are the prisons? What are you talking about? The prisons. [01:15:52] Speaker A: Those big, circular things you got. So, that was the bloodhound night I killed him. And then there was another one, and then there's also the crystal night, and I was like, I don't have time for you right now. I don't want to deal with you. So I'll come back that later, but, yeah, so that's where I'm at, and I'm really enjoying it, though. I've kind of backsped off it since Final Fantasy seven rebirth came out. But maybe before I finish talking about Elden ring, what have you been? [01:16:25] Speaker B: Look, I'm the same as you. Actually put it in the back burner now because I've got a couple of other games that I'm playing, but, look, I worked my way through the whole first area. I did the same thing with you. I cleared everything, and I went through storm and castle, and, holy shit, I pissed it in. Like, I'm playing this Dex arcane build. So, essentially, it's utilizing bleed build up, and I'm dual wielding. I've got katana in one hand, and then this. I think it's called, like, a ruvia or something. This other dagger, is that a dagger. [01:16:52] Speaker A: That fires the projectile blood bolts out? Yeah. [01:16:55] Speaker B: So I have a blood bolt on one hand, and then I can dual wield the katana and use that other weapon art that you get from the castle down the bottom, which is when you cut yourself and you spray blood on people. So you got something for range. And then the spray blood is, like, kind of someone's in kind of medium range, and then the dagger is just blood build up, short range. But I'm finding it's just, like, really versatile. A lot of fun, lot of damage. The only real downside I've had is if people are immune to bleed. Undead are really painful to deal with. You just got to hack at them. Hack at them. I'm sure there'll be bosses later that are real tough, but for right now, it's very strong. But, yeah. Enjoying my playthrough the second time, I feel like I'm not slamming my head against the wall on some certain parts like I was before, and I think maybe that's because understanding how hard the fight is and like you say, if you don't want to do it, just go away and do something else and. [01:17:50] Speaker A: Then come back to it later. There's a couple of points in the game where you have to do it, but they're pretty few and far between. You've got Morgott is your first major one. And then I think after have, there's not another fight that you have to do until you go to the earth tree from memory, which break it up a like, those are the two fights I actually find. [01:18:17] Speaker B: This is interesting, cap, because I know that Mog was an optional boss, right in the first game, you didn't have to go to that area at all. But now, if people are going to want to go into the DLC, they're going to have to navigate through that area of a pain in the ass. [01:18:32] Speaker A: But, yeah, it's a rough area. I can't even remember how to. How do you get in there? I can't even remember, dude. [01:18:39] Speaker B: It's really convoluted. I think it was like in one of those underground, what that area was called, but it kind of looks like you're in space, kind of like. I think you entered one of those somewhere, maybe. [01:18:51] Speaker A: Yeah, from memory. You had to go in, and then you went to. Oh, you had to go up through, and there was like, not a coliseum, but like a greek kind of thing in there. And then you'd walk in there and you'd do something, and then suddenly you were in the other area. [01:19:10] Speaker B: The entry to it was quite hidden, and then you're like, where the fuck am? [01:19:14] Speaker A: Yeah, from memory. Yeah, it was very. God, wild, wild, wild, wild. [01:19:21] Speaker B: Anyway, that's my olden ring, mate. So carry on with the rest of yours. But, yeah, loving it, mate. Looking forward to. I probably will. I think I'm going to give last epoch a good run, and then just before the DLC comes out, I'll jump back in and get level up a little bit more in prep for love it. [01:19:39] Speaker A: I think I'm just going to slowly tick away at that between now and June and just really take my time with it and just get my build into what I want it to be and kind of go from there. But I am definitely enjoying my time with it now. The other thing that came out, Grizz, was obviously Final Fantasy seven rebirth. I have been really enjoying that so far. I've got a couple of minor complaints, but for the most part, it's just really well put together. I'll just get the complaints I have out the road. The performance mode sucks ass. [01:20:13] Speaker B: Like, real bad. [01:20:15] Speaker A: Really? [01:20:16] Speaker B: Hang on. Performance mode is the one that. It tries to run it nicely but kind of not. Doesn't use good graphics, right. So it runs smoothly. Is that essentially what it does? [01:20:29] Speaker A: Exactly. So it should be running at like, say 60 FPS. And I'm sure it probably does, but I can't fucking play it because it is so blurry. [01:20:37] Speaker B: Is that right? [01:20:37] Speaker A: All the textures up close look like garbage. I've never actually had an issue with playing performance mode before in another game, but this is by far the worst performance mode I've ever encountered. Apparently they've got a patch coming out soon to target the performance mode, but I just find it really disappointing because the graphics mode is fine, but it definitely runs at 30 FPS in some areas and look. Yeah, I can deal with that. But it would just be nice if I could play in performance because I prefer a higher frame rate than high quality textures. It doesn't bother me that much, but when the textures look blurry and shit, man, it's just not ideal. [01:21:19] Speaker B: It's almost like you need an in between cap. It's almost like you need an in between. [01:21:22] Speaker A: That's what I was thinking. Like, just make it 45 FPS, cap it, and give me something in between those two. It doesn't bother me. [01:21:30] Speaker B: Can you customize your graphics to give you the, you know how pc games, obviously you can do everything. Turn motion blur on and off, give better performance and everything else. Can you do that in PS five or not? Is it only those options? [01:21:43] Speaker A: Give you a few different preset kind of options and that's all you've got access to. And that's the same for rebirth, but, yeah, apart from that also, I think the other thing that I'm grappling with is the controls of the game. And when I say controls, I mean the fluidity of the way your character handles. It's not amazing. A lot of the time. I feel like it's kind of tank controls, bit slow. And when you get on chocobo. Yeah, just a little bit clunky. And you get on a chocobo, and chocobo is fucking like walking into shit. And you're like, oh, God's sakes. You can call on bits of terrain and they turn around slowly and it's like, oh, God, this feels like shit. But despite those two things, the game is brilliant. I feel like they've really taken it from that first initial remake and now with the added open world, it feels really good. I think their approach to the open world is brilliant because I feel like every new zone I go to is quite big and expansive. It's not huge or out of control big. Like, it's not the biggest open world I've ever seen. But I feel like the open world is nicely curated and there's things to do in that open world that I feel like I can achieve before I go on to the next area. It doesn't feel overwhelming. It feels like there's just enough things to do and all the things I'm doing in there are quite fun. Like there's combat trials and things that I can do to go and earn more knowledge of the area and find ways to do crafting and stuff and improve my crafting options. So I'm really enjoying the way they're approaching the open world because I don't feel like I'm avoiding the main story just to get all the shit done that I really want to do. Because me as a gamer, I like to tick things off. And so when I know that I'm actively ignoring the open world to do the main quest, it kind of bothers me. So I feel like they have created an open world that doesn't trigger my obscene fucking OCD when it comes to this. So it's great. I'm really enjoying that side of the game, but on top of that, the combat is really good. It's very similar to the first game. I initially had some misgivings about it, but I think the issue I was having was the enemies were kind of dying a little bit too quickly and then the enemies that weren't dying quickly, maybe. Yeah, my character is like a bit too strong, but then I kind of hit this point in the game where now they're a little bit more bullet spongy. And I can think a bit more about the combat because I have more time to think about it because there's more of a health bar. And so I'm learning the combat a bit better. And so I think I've definitely hit that sweet spot now with the combat. It's feeling a lot better now. So I'm really enjoying that and I'm just loving the new take on the story. There's so much of the same, the nostalgia from the original game, the events that happened in the original game, and you're seeing those happen again in this new 3d engine and it's awesome. And then there's things that happen in the game and you're like, whoa, that fucking didn't happen in the original. [01:25:02] Speaker B: Really? Is it quite different, cap? Like, the things that happen. [01:25:07] Speaker A: A sequence that happens at the very beginning of the game. And it is like we knew that Zach was alive. So I'm not going to say any more beyond that, but it's surrounding that character still being alive in the remake, which in the original game, they died at a certain point, and it shows you what happens beyond that certain point with them being alive. And then more shit happens beyond that, certain .2 characters, and you're like, wait, what the fuck is going on? And it seems to be all kind of coming into this parallel timelines and things converging and shit going on. So I'm really excited to see what they do with the characters moving forward. But, yeah, really good game so far. I'm really enjoying that. So I'll check back in with you guys next week to let you know how my playthrough is going. But I've got to say they have got a card game in that game called Queen's Blood, and it is a fucking banger. [01:26:07] Speaker B: It. Is it as good as Gwent? [01:26:10] Speaker A: As good as Gwent, in my opinion. I actually think in some ways it's better because it's quick. I wish they would put this as a mobile game because it's like the perfect amount of time. It's somewhere between Marvel Snap and Gwent where a game doesn't take you too long, but it's just long enough that I feel like I can just have a quick game and smash it out. And also don't feel like I'm wasting time playing it either, because the games are fairly quick. It's really well put together. Queen's blood. Love it big time. [01:26:45] Speaker B: So, yeah, really good. Nice. [01:26:49] Speaker A: But yeah, that's the majority of my gaming, grizz. Now, the only other thing I've played is hell divers, but I'm going to let you take the reins on this one. [01:26:57] Speaker B: Yeah, look, I'll start mine with that. So we did hell divers two, obviously, is getting a lot of airtime right now. A lot of people really enjoyed it. If you don't know what it is. I would say if you ever watched starship troopers, which was Capricorn night, early 2000s movie about invading alien planets or aliens invading human planets, and then you're like a trooper, kind of a futuristic trooper, where you're kind of defending humanity from these aliens, and you're kind of. [01:27:26] Speaker A: Like, dropping 1998 grizz. [01:27:28] Speaker B: Okay, so late 90s. There you go, mate. Great. Yeah, look, I think llama's nailed it there. So starship troopers mixed with Warhammer forty k. So I think best enjoyed with a group of friends. But essentially, you go on these missions to kind of repel. Well, there's actually two types of enemies. There's robots and aliens. And you essentially go out, you do these missions, and you're dealing with hordes of these massive aliens. And I think the biggest thing about it is, Cap, is it's the atmosphere. It creates the sheer amount of enemies that are kind of running at you and your mates, and you're using these different kind of setups. You might have grenades or different types of weapons that you've purchased with the currency in game currency that you kind of level up as you go through. But look, I think for me, it just created some quite hilarious little situations there. And the one I'm going to go back on is we're kind of defending this area. And Cap used this call down thing where he created a full minefield basically under my feet at the time. And so I was kind of navigating through this area of all of a sudden, there's just mines all over the floor, and I'm blowing myself up on Cap's mines, which was quite hilarious and had to be kind of reloaded back in. [01:28:42] Speaker A: But, yeah, even, like, good fun, though, moments that make it hilarious. [01:28:47] Speaker B: It's so funny, man. And he kind of use. What are those? Like, the drones? Turrets? No, the turrets killing us. [01:28:58] Speaker A: They're ridiculous. [01:28:59] Speaker B: Yeah, very strong. Great. Fantastic game. Do you think it's going to stay around for a bit, Cap? Do you think this is something that's going to be successful? Ongoing? It's definitely copying attention now. [01:29:09] Speaker A: I hope so. I think it's got the bones of a really good live service game, and I really like what they're doing with the ongoing kind of planetary situation and what's happening across the star system and figuring out where you want to do missions to help the overall war effort and stuff. I really like that. I think the only issue I've got is there's not an awful lot to do in that game just yet. It's pretty bare bones, I think. After playing with you guys the other day, I was like, I don't know if I really need to jump back in anytime soon. [01:29:48] Speaker B: So Mikey and I can't be fucked playing it again, but Kurtie really wants to have another couple of sessions and get right into it. But, yeah, look, I think it's great. And just to say the whole. So the way the game works, right, is the aliens are invading and you've got your home world, and it's like, on a map screen, a tactical map screen, and you can see where the home world is. And the way it kind of works is you're cooperatively, everyone that is playing the game is working on pushing back the invasion, and you can see how much percent you have contributed to pushing back the enemy forces, and you can kind of select the zone that you want to go to. So I wonder what would actually happen when they reach Earth. Are you then protecting Earth on that, Cap? But it would be. Yeah, I think it's quite a unique little idea for a game around managing that protection piece. [01:30:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's a lot of cool shit they could do with it, and I just think it needs a bit more time to just get some more stuff. I know that they've got some vehicles, like a mech and APC kind of drivable thing coming soon, and presumably probably some more bosses and enemy types and stuff. [01:31:05] Speaker B: The game is buggy as well, Cap. I mean, the very first map we went into, we had a bunch of hostages trying to get into an extraction point, and the extraction point wouldn't allow them to extract, so they were just all standing out the front of the extraction point and not going anywhere. It's like, fuck, come on. [01:31:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it couldn't possibly. [01:31:24] Speaker B: Bit rough, but it was fun. It was fun, yeah, I mean, look. [01:31:28] Speaker A: It'S a really good little kind of indie game as a service game, and I think it's done a really good job of capturing that starship troopers vibe and turning it into something that's really cool. It just definitely needs a bit more time to bake, I think. And yeah, once they can get that cranking, I think we're going to be looking real juicy now, cap. [01:31:50] Speaker B: That's it for hell divers, but I wanted to spend my how's your game and going talking about a new action rpg game called the Last Epoch. So I have mentioned it already, but look, this is an interesting one, Cap, because this is an all remote global indie studio called 11th hour games that have been developing this game. It was kickstarted in 2018. It's been in development for a very long time. It's been in early access for quite a while, and it had its 1.0 release on Feb 21st. Now, it's touted as being very similar to Path of Exile. In fact, I would say it's kind of stylistically in between Path of Exile and Diablo. Diablo four. I will say it hasn't quite got the graphic fidelity of Diablo four. It doesn't quite look as clean and beautiful as that game, but the gameplay for me, I think, is I'm finding it really refreshing. And it was kind of one thing. One gripe that I had with path of exile is that, I don't know, I kind of didn't really enjoy the way the approach to the passive skill tree was just way too huge. And unless you're really theory crafting and spending your time digging your brain into that game, it was quite hard to come up with something viable. I mean, you can use online guides and other bits and pieces, but kind of last epoch, I feel like it kind of gives you a balance between Diablo and that and just a couple of little details on this. So essentially there are a bunch of classes, the sentinel, the mage, the rogue, the acolyte, and the primalists. Each of those classes has specialized subclasses, three specialized subclasses per class. So I'm actually playing cap class called the primalist. And it's essentially like you're kind of like a beastmaster. So I've got a wolf and a crow that kind of follows me around and damages people, and I'm kind of buffing those up through my gear, giving them attack damage and health, and they've even got abilities. So once you have them on your hot bar, when you use them again, rather than resumming them, it will use an ability. Now, all of the skills in the game have their own skill trees. So if I've got a wolf and I'm leveling up, I'll unlock a skill tree for that wolf for that skill that I'm using. So you can have equipped five skills at any one time. And for each of those skills, you need to have filled out a skill tree for that skill. I'm finding that it's giving me quite a lot customization, but it's not overly confusing because I'm not dealing with one massive big passive tree. The skill trees themselves are quite manageable, and there's only a few different routes you can take. So it's kind of piecemealing that you haven't got this poe massive, big passive tree. It's kind of making it a bit more localized and approachable. Look, so far, cap, I know that on release they had massive issues with the launch. So basically it was unplayable online for the first week, and it copped a bunch of criticism on steam over that, got review bombed, negative review bombed, and other bits and pieces, but since then has come good and it's copping, I think, an overly positive on steam, looking pretty hopeful. So if you're looking for a four fix or an action rpg fix. I would recommend the last epoch checking that out. Giving it a whirl. Pretty fun so far. Something to play with your mates? I'm playing a solo self found, which means I can't trade any gear. There is a massive trading forum for this game. You can basically trade kind of any gear that you want via like an auction house kind of deal. But yeah. Seems pretty good cap so far. Yeah. [01:35:30] Speaker A: Rad? No, I had my microphone accidentally muted that entire time. But I was very elated by the fact that you found a reasonable Diablo four esque experience. So, yeah, it sounds really good. I like the idea of ability skill trees at the ability level. That's really fucking cool. [01:35:50] Speaker B: Yeah. So, like, I kind of did some digging. I'm using two skills at the moment. One of them is like a melee weapon swipe that damages a bunch of enemies around me. But me doing that buffs my wolf, deals more damage to people that are hit by that. So I'm kind of like finding these. I'm kind of going to summon a build and trying to figure out the abilities that's kind of synergized with that. But, yeah, really enjoyable so far. I can kind of see myself theory crafting up a build as we move through. But I've only played it today. I've only got like 4 hours in this. So I'm very fresh. I'm like level 18 or 19 or something. Apparently it's got a very well developed end game, which is what people are saying is the key differentiator between this and Diablo Four. The end game is rarely well developed and there's a lot to do already. I mean, I'm not surprised. Cab has been in development since 2018, so it's been in the oven long enough to be decent. [01:36:42] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. That's great. Wicked. Huge fan of that. [01:36:46] Speaker B: There you go. [01:36:47] Speaker A: All right, Grizz. Well, I mean, I think our game is going pretty good by the sounds of things. Pretty good across the board, so. [01:36:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:36:56] Speaker A: Glad to hear it, basically. That's brilliant. All right, Grizz. Let's fucking dive in. Brought to you by in the freaking game, Grizzly Gaming 86 Kingdom come deliverance has sold 6 million copies, my friend. That's a lot of copies. [01:37:15] Speaker B: Whoa. Have you played that game, Cap? No. [01:37:19] Speaker A: I've been meaning to, though, because apparently it's really good. But I don't know, I just haven't got around to it. [01:37:28] Speaker B: There you go. Maybe soon. Tekken eight is adding an MTX Tekken shop weeks after release to dodge lower review scores. ESRB rating is updated post release to accommodate for in game purchases. What is this? What is an MTX microtransaction shop? How is that going to drive better review scores? That's going to drive worse review scores. [01:37:49] Speaker A: Well, people often be like, oh, on release, people go, oh, yeah, and guess what, guys, there's no microtransactions, so they get an extra mark for being really good guys. [01:38:01] Speaker B: Jokes on you. [01:38:02] Speaker A: Actually, we do have one. We're releasing it after most of your reviews have been made, which is kind of scummy, in my opinion. All right, Grizz. Suicide Squad. Squad kill. The Justice League will release a new leaderboard, with the current one being completely broken due to poor balancing. So I don't know what the exact poor balancing is, but it sounds like, well, one person was saying a bug caused the burn status effect, damage that scaled seemingly indefinitely, causing Burn character builds to saturate the leaderboard. So, yeah, that'll fucking do it. Interesting. [01:38:39] Speaker B: I remember there was this bug for a while, Cap, where in your calibration games for dota two, right, it used to take into account the amount of damage, hero damage that you dealt. So people were, even if you lost the game, you could still get MMR if you dealt a hero damage. So people just picking Zeus and just get that across the board, get more calibration. A Tomb Raider fan, Cap, a good story here. Who has been officially remastering the first five tomb Raider games for the last eight years, revealed that he led the work on the official Tomb Raider one to three remastered trilogy. [01:39:18] Speaker A: Yeah, so I was working on the unofficial ones, and then, yeah, got poached by, I guess, someone at Sony or some shit. And. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Very cool, actually. [01:39:29] Speaker B: It is cool, isn't it? [01:39:30] Speaker A: I like that. All right, Grizz, we've got here that hell divers has sold a million copies and surpassed 300,000 concurrent players on Steam. I bet you that's not the case anymore. I bet you it's higher than both of those two figures. [01:39:42] Speaker B: Dang. [01:39:43] Speaker A: Couldn't tell you exactly how many, but. [01:39:45] Speaker B: Yeah, doing pretty good games. Popping Liza. PCap removed its third party DRM on Steam. I don't have a link to any more information on that. You got any more information on that? [01:39:56] Speaker A: What is basically the third party DRM software that they use? The property dervo or some other shit. It's like anti piracy software. So basically, when you have a game that is also running extra software, the game often takes a hit because the extra software is running in the background to make sure people aren't pirating the game. So if they remove the third party software that's doing the DRM, it's probably going to mean that the game runs slightly better. [01:40:24] Speaker B: So it's a good thing. Okay. And now people can hack the game. They don't care. They've already sold however many copies. Cap people can hack it if they like. [01:40:31] Speaker A: Exactly. It doesn't fucking matter. Yeah, there you go. Now Grizz, the voice actor behind the Peggy 18, just received a 200 euro check for their work, which is wild. [01:40:44] Speaker B: God. [01:40:45] Speaker A: Kidding me. That Peggy 18 voiceover is like part of my childhood. So to think that that is only just being given some money is kind of wild. [01:40:57] Speaker B: It's very wild. Absolutely wild. Okay, so in other news, spiritual successor to SSX was in the works, but not anymore. SSX cap is a snowboarding game. An old. [01:41:11] Speaker A: Yeah, old snowboarding game. I think it was on Sony, or maybe it was Nintendo. I didn't have it as a kid, but I had mates who played it. [01:41:20] Speaker B: 1080 snowboarding was surely the best. Do you remember that on Nintendo 64? [01:41:26] Speaker A: I do, actually. Yeah, I think that's the one I had, because I had a snowboarding game, but I couldn't remember. It definitely was an SSX, so I think that's the one I had. I loved that game. [01:41:38] Speaker B: Very good. Lance Dion, I think was the best guy. He was the real quick. [01:41:43] Speaker A: Lance Dion. [01:41:44] Speaker B: Lance Dion. [01:41:45] Speaker A: Name as a cracker. Love it. All right, Grizz Dragons dogma two is going to be releasing with an uncapped frame rate. [01:41:55] Speaker B: Baby, it is sexy. I'll be able to run 20 frames uncapped. Beautiful until I get my love it. Cap. Lethal company will be working towards fewer updates, but they'll be bigger. Sounds like they're taking the battlesgate three effect there. [01:42:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I think basically the developer couldn't keep up with the popularity of that game, and so was releasing a lot of little kind of updates piecemeal. But I think moving forward, they just want to be able to release big, awesome updates and not just small little ones here and there all the time, which I think is a good way because people generally come back to games when there's, like, a big amount of content rather than drip feeding it to you all the time. So I think good approach. [01:42:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. If I read a big patch notes for battlescapes, real or even dota kind of prompts me to go, oh, maybe I should go check that out. Go and have a look at that. So cool. Yeah, absolutely. [01:43:01] Speaker A: Negriz that's the show, baby. Well done. Two weeks off and we've pumped out yet another fucking banger, mate. Well done. Pat on your shoulder if I was sitting right there next to you, but yeah, just pretend it's happening now. I just want to say a big thank you to again, all of our wonderful listeners listening to anywhere. If you could do us a big favor and you're listening to this via podcast, drop a cheeky review for us, we'd really appreciate it. Be awesome on your platform of choice. Otherwise, if you want to watch this bad boy live, you can do so on Twitch TV. Oceanicgamingradio 07:00 p.m. Monday nights, australian western standard Time. You can be here in the freaking chat with legends such as kamikaze, cracker, dividable, llama, mousey, fuzz. Who else is in here? Ho and honey. I mean, Deb is in here as well. I mean, it's a fucking party. So, yeah, there you go. You can be in here, too. Again, another big old thanks to our wonderful Patreons. If you want to join those legends, you can do so by going to patreon.com ogrshow. All of our other links can be found on OGR show as a website. Just chuck that one into your freaking URL field of your browser and yeah, you'll find our discord, you'll find our twitter. You'll find a lot. So, yeah, go and check that out. Anyways, that's enough from us, Chris. We'll see these legends next week, won't we? [01:44:32] Speaker B: We will see you guys next week. [01:44:34] Speaker A: All right, peace out, Brussels sprouts. Bye.