brain trust "bite sized": the state of the industry

That cuts off really quick. Josh, you need to fix that. But, hey, guys, I'm Nate, and it's time for another bite size. But as I am very want to do, because, well, hey, I'm one of the hosts and it's my show and I'm going to do what I want and you're going to like it. Maybe you won't, I don't know. But I have asked friends of the show, Maika and Parker, to join me. We're going to have a little bit of a conversation about the state of the industry and, well, hopefully it'll be entertaining, beneficial. But mostly we're just going to have fun doing this and. Yeah. So hop on. You know, do the things hit, like, subscribe, tell all your friends. Yeah. You know, and I'll say all this stuff again. Why am I being so weird? Why do I make it awkward every stinking time? Hey, Micah. How you doing tonight, buddy?

I'm doing good, man. Yeah, it's good to be back. Yes, of course it is. Me, Micah Hendrick, the champion of the League of Mediocre Brotato chaps here in.

The podcast, the Mediocrest Dude.

Yes, I have come down from my hill to be on the podcast. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, well, we're glad to be joined by all that mediocre splendor. So I'll tell you what, your league, you are not doing well this season.

Not this year. No, not this year. I made a. I can't not say. I got to say what I did. I did the dumbest thing ever. So I just, you know, I. I won the league last year. Big whoop. This year, there's this thing called a counter pick in Fantasy Critic, in which you. You pick a game that you think is going to do poorly or not going to release this year. And so since I was so smart, I was like, oh, yeah, Kingdom Come, Deliverance got a 72. I'm going to pick that. Like the sequel. The sequel did not get anywhere near a 72. It got an 89.

87. 88. 89. Yeah.

So I've got, like a negative, know, 19 points to start off the year, so I'm gonna lose.

Well, that didn't last.

My year is already over in February.

I don't. I don't know. There's been. There's been some surprises, but. Yeah. Anyways, at some point in time, I do want to do like a. A quarterly overview. So maybe, maybe we can go back, you know, here towards the end of March and just sort of look At. At the league stuff, but that's not what we're going to do tonight, but. Parker, welcome back. How you doing, buddy?

Thank you. I mean, after all of that talk of great mediocreness, I don't even know where to go with it. So I'm feeling very mediocre right now, and I think I'll just fit right in.

I think you would really love Fantasy Critic. I think you would really love it. It's. Yeah, it is.

Hearing some of the stories, it sounds fun to just kind of, you know, take a. Take a wild swing at some stuff and see how it goes.

Yeah, I think, like, you've got sort of, like, enough insight and. But it also, like, it does require. It requires some, like, insight and some, like, kind of like just, you know, ability to think about the industry long term. But it also is just, like, wild speculation. Like, there's stuff that comes out that you're like. And everybody. Like what? Like the. I. I think I actually counterpicked in the potato Chaps. I counterpicked the Dynasty warriors game because I was like, there's no way it's going to be, like, 80s good. And then it's like an 83. Like. And so, like, yeah, Mike is at negative 19. And I think, like, I, Like, I came out swinging with, like, a negative 13.

We're both so good at this game.

Yeah, it's like, we're super good at this. Like, it. It's a way to feel super dumb and, like, being like, no, I think this. This thing's going to be really good, and then. Or I think this thing is going to be really bad. And you're so wrong about all of it. Yeah, I'll. I'll forward you a link so that you can follow. Actually, you could probably look at both the leagues that Micah and I are in.

We should have got him in at the beginning of the year.

Well, I think next year we. We probably might be able to. The fantasy critic one, though, he'd have to get on WhatsApp or something or do Facebook messenger, and he is pretty vehemently opposed to Facebook.

I think technically I have WhatsApp somewhere. Well, anyway, I could probably do it that way. Let me know next time. I'll jump in.

Maybe we'll lean on you to do this, because I think you would have a lot of fun and I think you would be a good disruptor. But again, we're not here to talk about Fantasy Critic. We're here to talk about the state of the industry. And I think the thought that one of the things I want to open up with guys is, is this. Now a couple years ago, we probably like, what was it? 2023. We probably had one of the strongest games like year end games that we'd had in a long, long time. Yeah, probably I'd say the strongest year in games. 2023 feels like it might have been one of the strongest year in games, period. But you know, and 2024, like I remember coming into that and a lot of it is like, it's just like what, what really is going to be there. But then 2024 turned out to be like, no slouch either. Like, there were a ton of really great games that came out last year, a ton of bangers. And then even 2025 coming into 2025 and it's kind of like, man, like just looking at the lineup, especially like looking at what Microsoft is going to sort of be unloading here in the next like 10, 11 months, just insane. And it's one of those things where I think in some ways the years are getting like, in some ways better and better for just games, but actually like it's getting harder and harder to keep up because it's like there is, there is no. Like, it's been said on several different podcasts I listen to and sort of different things I check out everyone's a while but like, if they stop making video games today, I would still have enough to play for easily the next ten years. Like easily. And they just keep like, dude, like, there's so much stuff this year that I'm like, I'm pumped about like Doom, the Dark ages, freaking Expedition 33 that gone it like there was a whole.

Coming out in a week.

Avowed's coming out soon. Like, I'm really curious about that. Like, it's. There is a mess of stuff coming out this year and I had like, like 5 or 10. Like 5 or 6. 5 or 10? Why I say again, I'm making it weird, but I had like five or six games I was like looking at earlier and I was like, man, this, this lineup coming out in 2025 is ridiculously stacked. I mean even like some of the stuff we've already had come out. Like Kingdom Come, Deliverance two. Yeah, again, the aforementioned Dynasty Warriors Origins or whatever that is. Like, that's Monster Hunter Wilds is coming out. Like, dude, it's. This is going to be a stacked year and it's going to be tough. It's just, it's going to be really tough to just like, I'M looking at it and it's like I, you know, it's just like. What's that? Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. That's from Little Nemo or Finding Nemo. I think that's Dory. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Anyways. Anyways. I don't know, weird rabbit trail but I wanted to have you guys on, as I affectionately refer to you to as the brain trust. I wanted to talk about some of what and, and, and we don't just have to talk about games but some of like the things I think industry wide that are going to be coming out that have shit will shake things up or like where maybe the industry is heading. I mean we know that Switch 2 is going to be coming out sometime this year that we don't. I think sometime in April. April or May. We're supposed to get like more information. So yeah, it's, that's going to be kind of a big stinking deal. That's. I mean and it hasn't been announced but a new Mario Kart is all but announced for that. I think a new Mario 3D, new 3D Mario platformer is supposed to be in the works as well. I mean and Micah, I do have to, you know we were talking about Fantasy Critic. I do have to give us credit. We did manage to pick up those, I think in both, didn't we? Like score.

I got the Mario game and everywhere I wanted to get it, I think.

And I got, I think I got Mario Kart in both of them. Yeah. So I'm not, I'm not mad about that at all. I think I'd have to check Fantasy Critic. Fantasy Critic. Sometimes things get away from me. Like I get mad because like games get snaked out from under me.

Well, Nate, it's funny you mentioned all the like we're inundated with all these games that you're talking about. Whether you're looking at 2023 or any recent. I mean there's just so many games. And then you look at like recently Matt Pescatello over at Circana released the, the data for 2024 for video game sales in the United States. And a lot of the data showed that basically the, the players are staying on the live service games of the world. The Fortnite's, the Robloxes, the Call of Duties, the Minecrafts. And there's a lot of losers when it comes to new games. Whether you're looking at the new Dragon Age, where you're looking at Suicide Squad, whether you're looking at Concord, there are a ton of losers or even, you know, games that like a good single player game that just underperformed compared to what they may be expected because everyone's always on a live service game or seemingly these days that is that sort of not power struggle that, that kind of paradigm shift that we're sort of in the middle of is going to be like the meat and potatoes of kind of going forward of how kind of where the industry ends up. I think we're going to start seeing a lot of. As much as we hate it and as much as you, we're probably going to get into the fact that PlayStation had this live service push that has been a pretty spectacular failure in most regards outside of Helldivers 2. And people will look at that and be like, man, they should have never done that. And it's like, well, I don't. How can you not do that? They had to try. Considering where the industry's going and it's. What. Part of what I'm getting at is like the, the traditional hardcore console gamer where a lot of the players on, on these consoles are of our generation, they're in their 30s and 40s and the, the kids growing up these days just aren't playing Halo and Gears of War. You know, they're. They're on the live service games and it's going to be, we're gonna. It'll be interesting to see how the industry copes with things like growing budgets for AAA single player games and how do they reign that in and make that a worthwhile investment for the company in the midst of all these seemingly just too enticing live service games that are out there. I'm kind of sort of talking generally about a lot of things, but I think this is a big key to kind of looking at the next five to six years is this push and pull between the live service and the single player games. I don't want to, you know, monopolize this part of the conversation. I'll pass it on. But that when I think about all the games you said, Nate, I still think of like, man, there's all these games and they're still not selling or there's players aren't playing them the way we think that they should, the way us hardcore gamers think that they should. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, I think is a pretty good example where Square seems disappointed yet again in the performance of this game. I know it's about to come to. Or it just came to PC and I'm sure it'll come to Xbox, but I would think that'd be one of the best selling games of the year. Maybe not just a JRPG final Fantasy a little bit, but I would think it would be much better than it did, I'll put it that way. And there's going to need to be a recalibration in the brains of the hardcore gamer to make room for these kind of games. It's not all going to be, you know, you get to your, you know, Jeff Keighley E3 presentation, whatever. It's not going to be, you know, just AAA single player banger after banger. You're going to get all this, all this sort of stuff that you, that you see these days. It's like, well, that's just another live service game. I don't know. Sorry, I'm rambling at this point but.

But yeah, I don't. Yeah. And I think this would probably be a good place to just stick for a couple of minutes because Parker, you shared a slideshow with us with Mike and I in sort of anticipation of this. And one of the things that one of the key data points is like all the games you mentioned to Micah, Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, like those are kind of like the big three in that free to play sort of like games as a service model thing. They've been around for a minute.

Yeah.

None of them is like the new kid on the block. They've all, they're all fairly entrenched. They might be like Roblox is fairly new to the console space, but it's existed in the PC in the mobile market for years and it's a titan. It's huge. It is, it dwarfs as far as engage, like engagement. I don't think a lot of people, but it dwarfs everything else. I think Minecraft in the last time, you know, when I was looking at those stats, Parker is like Minecraft has almost 50%, almost 50% of like the active users as Roblox. And like what's, what's really wild is that Roblox, you know, well, Roblox is actually dwarfed by Netflix as far as like active subscribers and users. So. But it's, it's, it's one of those things. But like Roblox is huge in that market.

It's got more monthly active users than Steam.

Yeah, yeah, it's massive.

Nuts.

Like almost double. I'm looking at the numbers and just.

Real quick, more context. Nate Fortnite Battle Royale came out in September 2017.

Yeah, these aren't new Games like, and now they do like, so, so Roblox is model is a sort of like, it's the playground. It's like it's. You go in there to sort of play with other people's toys, so to speak, like, or make it. It's like it's a sandbox. You go in there and you build something or you go in there to play something or play with something that somebody else has built. So that's kind of like its own thing. But like, yeah, Fortnite is almost constantly re. Reinventing itself, but it is just like a massive revenue generator for Epic. Like when that, the battle royale mode really took off, I mean, that kind of became, I don't know that Epic really does much of anything else anymore, you know. Well, I mean, they obviously provide support for Unreal Engine, but yeah, it's like.

They wouldn't have to do anything else if they didn't want to.

Yeah, they, they don't have to do anything else. And it kind of like, you know, and there's like the, what I'm saying is like Fortnite as, as it exists now. Like they've done several like, refreshes and seasons or whatever, and. But then it's like you've got like, there's like a, A, a Go kart racing mode. There's like a, a rhythm game mode, there's a LEGO mode, there's regular Fortnite. And this thing is huge, you know, just like. And that is like video games as an industry make more than film, television and music combined. Right. But a lot of that capital is actually in the hands of a pretty significant minority of developers. Like, you know, when we talk about, in the console space, when we talk about things like Sony's first party development or even Nintendo and Microsoft, these guys are just getting slices like pieces, like tiny pieces of the pie. Whereas things like Fortnite, things like Roblox, things like Steam, you know. And again, it's sort of like those, those are the significant, those are the real like value generators. And it's just, but it's just weird to me that like, these are games that have been around for the better part of a decade, you know. And it's not to say that there isn't a lot of money being put into them as far as like developing or refining them, but when it, and it's in comparison to like the new Spider man or the new God of War or Final Fantasy Rebirth or whatever, like, it is getting harder and harder to sort of like peel people away from that but anyways, Parker, you know, any thoughts and sort of like, in regards to sort of like the games as a service, free to play model and sort of how it is just, it really is kind of like the, the leading edge in the games market right now.

Yeah, I mean it's. That side of it is definitely interesting. I think the, the deck that we looked at, which is Matthew Ball's state of gaming for 2025. He talks about these games, he calls them black hole games because they just have a sort of gravity to them that other games are just unable to wrestle them away from. And so you get caught in this black hole and you just, you can't get that gamer again. They're just, they're almost untouchable, basically. So it's an interesting concept and it seems to have this gravity that lasts year over year over year. And there are very few games that can do that and can sustain that. And these guys kind of were the first ones in and they created these black holes. And it's just really tough for anybody else to sort of wrestle those folks away from those games right now. I'm sure over time, like that's going to happen and we'll see how as they age, you know, maybe they, maybe they'll just hit a point where they just kind of. People just lose interest or drift away. But for now they're, they're holding pretty strong on their user base. I think the other thing that's interesting just from looking at it was, I mean, we talked about Roblox and I'll just say it is massive. It's maybe the closest thing to a fully realized mini metaverse that we have. Because metaverse was a word that was kind of tossed around for a long time. A lot of people have been trying to achieve a metaverse or monetize a metaverse. And I think Roblox is maybe the closest example we have in the gaming space to that. But even having said that, Roblox is not a profitable enterprise, which I think is kind of staggering to me, the fact that there's so much money coursing through that game and yet the people making it can't actually figure out how to make a profit off of it. So that's kind of an interesting sort of side note to just consider that even if you have just a Mega game like that, that it still can be tough to, to make money on it at the end of the day. And it's, it's a complicated and difficult industry to be a success in. And it's an even more complicated and difficult industry to sustain success in. And especially when the competition is kind of ossified into their categories. Like moving entrenched competition out of their sort of niches is just proven challenging. Just as kind of like a macroeconomic kind of environment.

Yeah. And you know, yeah, there's, I remember sort of like the thing is like Google and Apple really love these systems and we even saw some of the fallout with Fortnite and Fortnite being pulled off of iPhone idevices because of the monetization stuff where Apple was like no, we want this 30% rip or whatever it was off of everything. And Epic was like no, we're not doing that, we're not doing that because yeah, it is like that. That's free money for Google and for Apple. You know, it's like it costs like there's almost, there's no expenditure on their point. That's just pure, pure gain. And it's, those numbers are massive. And I think like you, you talked about Sony and their sort of games as a service, you know, massive multiplayer games sort of initiative. Micah. And I think that's the thing is like you know, and it's been said in other places but Sony saw the money that was coming in off of Fortnite and frankly they're the like I don't think anybody sitting at the table. It's like you have to be an idiot to not try and peel some of that off. And I think they learned firsthand how like you know, you use the term ossified parker but like how entrenched those markets actually are and how hard it is to actually peel people away and keep them and you know, another sort of bit you can even talk about like destiny. Destiny saw like diminishing returns and diminishing returns and diminishing returns and eventually like the thing is like that was probably one of the most successful long term games as a service models for years upon years upon years. I remember the GDC talk the, that oh, what's it? I want to say Justin something gave and you know he's talking like, he's talking about all the ways that like you know they're, they're shifting the paradigm and they've found they've cracked the key to games as a service. And then years later it's like well you were just right, you were sort of at the tip of a wave and then the sort of, the floor fell out and, and I think for. And again it just, it's kind of interesting because it seems it's like one of those things where I think in the video game industry as. As enthusiasts of the industry so often we're sort of like these things seem permanent, permanent, immovable, like untouchable until. But there's usually it's. Until they aren't you know like Destiny for the longest time just seemed like absolutely unkillable. But it did like I mean like you look at the concurrent players now where it used to be, you know 80,000. You know it's like 10 now 10,000 concurrence on steam which is still incredibly helpful.

But I was just doing a quick Google search to kind of illustrate Parker your point about live service games being this black hole and just go through the extra heads real quick. Like name like what's the most recent huge live service game. There isn't one.

Gentian Impact maybe.

I'm glad you said that. That is the example I went to. How old is genshin impact? 20. 20. It's five years old. That's not new. Like it. The.

The.

The like the stranglehold they have on this market is almost. It's. It's too like the Call of Duty is the Roblox the again you know Call of Duty and Apex Legends for the adults and Roblox and Minecraft for the kids however you want to call it. Whatever. It's a. It's a stranglehold to where like you got the concords of the world. It's like the Helldivers is like well man, just how lucky did you get? You know. And that's not even like this crazy ongoing live servicing that was just sort of a blip on the radar and you would consider them. They would consider themselves lucky Again. These games just don't pierce the again. It takes something like a Genshin Impact this Chinese driven, you know to be. To kind of pierce through that wall.

And that even like Mihoyo versus other stuff where it's a zenless zone zero hasn't had nearly the impact. Is that Wuthering waves or something? I think that's them as well. And it's like those haven't had nearly the. The sort of the punch that Genshin did. And it was like it was at that and yeah it's just kind of inner. I think it's interesting because you know we do want to talk about like all the new stuff that's coming out but like the. The. The reality is like moving forward unless something significant sort of like pushes things or moves the needle like it's going to get harder because you have these entrenched these ossified sort of these institutions in the industry that suck up a lot of the time and energy and money of gamers.

Well, this conversation, I think is adjacent to a different conversation that I don't know if we want to transition. But I mean like the death of the console, people are always hypothesizing, they thought it would happen this generation a decade ago and people are thinking, well, maybe the next generation will be the next one. And I think these two, like the proliferation of the live service and the narrative of the death of the console are interwoven to a great degree.

And we will. I do think that's like a good sort of spot to like sort of spin out on. But I'm always, I've just got to kind of throw this out there. I'm always really hesitant when, because I remember the, the death of the console thing was like mobile gaming was really sort of like spinning up and you know, that, that was gonna, that was gonna kill the box and that's not what happened, you know, and so it's like, I think we're getting closer to maybe sort of a boxless era. And I do think like in some ways Microsoft, I think is a little more prepared for that than Nintendo or Sony. Sure. But at this, I mean, I mean, well, and we'll just talk about like the end of the box sort of like what's, what's coming next. And it's like it. From all intents and purposes it does seem like, you know, Microsoft is sort of leading the charge and getting like, you know, it's every. I think most people kind of like rolled their eyes when they saw everything is an Xbox, you know, like, like the advertising campaign.

Well, part of why I think it's tied together is because of the generational thing, you know, guys in their 30s and 40s that we, who grew up with it, that's just how they want. But that is no longer like, I can see it in the young K. Like I've, I've got kids age 9, 9, 12 and 14 and they, they simply would not be interested in it if I didn't kind of indoctrinate them, so to speak. My son does great with like playing a bunch of different types of games. We just played through Hollow Knight together and he loved it. One of his favorite games ever. But most kids aren't like that. And so I think generationally speaking, the, the 12 and 14, 15 year olds today have very little interest in getting a console compared to us when we were 12, 13 and 14.

Yeah, I mean maybe it's. But like the, the numbers and that's the thing is like the numbers for all like. Well, Sony, Sony's PlayStation 5 and the Switch are still sort of outpaced. I think the PlayStation 5 is currently outpacing the PS4, although projections do sort of say maybe not hitting the same because that's the other thing. The PS4 is actually still in production. So but I think currently it is like sort of outpaced. Like if you look at where they were at the same time in their life cycle it PS5 is outpacing PS4. Switch has just been a phenom. Phenom and Xbox is kind of like kind of petered off. But yeah, I mean I definitely think there's going to be a push. The paradigm is shifting. But, but yeah, I, I mean so let's talk about like the, the death of the console and sort of like its imminent demise and. Or it's in my opinion not so imminent demise. But I think you know, in talking about this we do have to just talk about Microsoft, right. And like they're really within the last year. I mean with the ABK acquisition it marked like just a massive turning point for the Xbox brand where we've even seen in the last couple, couple Xbox Live review, what's their preview coverage thing called, their internal, like here's the games coming. Is it developer direct, is it dev directs, whatever. Like you know a lot of like almost all of the first party stuff that they talked about. They, they within that direct they also said it's coming to PlayStation which would have been unheard of a year or two ago and they've just really sort of leaned into the just becoming a publisher now. They have committed to another generation like another, another box, so to speak. We don't know what that's going to look like. The last time when it was Phil Spencer and was it Sarah.

Sarah Bondon.

Sarah Bond. And what's the, the third Knucklehead Greenberg. Not Green.

Matt Booty.

Matt.

Matt Booty.

Matt Booty who. I wonder how he still has a job. But you know the last time there was that thing and they said no, there's another box coming and it's going to be the most powerful console you've ever seen kind of thing, you know, technological leaps and bounds. And so they have as far as we can tell committed to another box. And so it's probably at least one more generation with them and frankly I think that they might sort of move into like there will always be An Xbox brand platform or console type thing. Like right now, like handhelds are kind of like. So this is kind of the thing is that where I'm going with this is I think there's been a resurgence in handheld markets. The Switch was just an explosive device, right. And it sort of showcased this. You can have a console experience on the go, but then, you know, you can use it at home. But then you have Steam coming out with the Steam deck, which is a little more boutique, it's a little more technologically savvy. It's obvious it's a higher price point, but they're sort of like taking that concept and they're sort of like ratcheting it up. And now there is, there are rumors that Sony PlayStation brand and Xbox are both talking about having dedicated handheld software. Sony's kind of tested the waters with Portal a little bit, I think. Although that's not really handheld, that's not like dedicated handheld. That's. I love my Portal, but it does, it's a very limited use case, you know, But I think actually instead of a death of the console per se, I think portability is going to become more and more of a factor of an issue. And I think that sort of the boxes that we're used to, which are these high fidelity machines that, you know, like, we're going to push for having that in a smaller package and we might even take some compromises on some of that performance just for the portability factor. I mean, that's what the Switch tells the market, is that it doesn't have to be the most powerful piece of tech, just has to run the games. The games have to be good and it has to work. And so I think, you know, when we talk about the death of console gaming, I think it's just gonna, it's moving more towards, it's going to be a lot more handheld focused. That's, that's my, so that's my take on like the death of the box. But Parker, you know, is Micah. Micah spun us off in this direction. So what do you think?

I think it's probably going to go just more toward an open ecosystem. I think the walled garden model is probably what's going to go away because I think there's always going to be a market of folks who want a game, but they just don't want the hassle of quote, PC gaming. And if you can make that easy and at a reasonable price point for people and especially if you can throw on something like portability, I think that everybody's going to go after that. And so we're going to see sort of a race to see who can become that sort of like black, you know, kind of like we had with games as a service where it was folks were figuring out what the new model is and then the first one to get there kind of wins the prize and they can't get unseated after that. I think that's what we're starting to see. But just with a handheld hardware is that the first to get there and really solidify what that looks like and what that means is just going to be so hard to unseat after that. And Switch in some ways already has that market and they're very much about physical stuff and physical media anyways and they've got a lot of brand loyalty there. But between Sony and Xbox and Steam and anybody else who wants to come up with something that can load Linux or Windows or SteamOS or you know, whatever that looks like, whoever can create that first and create that sort of viral moment is gonna I think just take a huge market share of the future moving forward.

And so you talked about like the, the open, sort of like the open market device. But I think like some of it is one of the questions is like so Microsoft has talked about, you know, being able to run Steam on like there's been rumors that they're sort of looking at basically building like a Steam launcher and that you can play your Steam games on your Xbox kind of thing. What, what's the incentive though? Because like that doesn't really bring them any. I mean unless there's some sort of like marketing deal where it's like they get like a rip off of every. I know it's like it keeps them sort of in that environment. But I, to me it's just like I'm, I. And maybe I'm just not smart enough. But where's the economic angle? Like, you know, I do think that the walled garden stuff is going to go away eventually or it's going to be a much, a much less significant factor. But it's, it's hard to imagine that because that is really how in a lot of ways Nintendo and Sony especially like that's their primary driver is like they get rips on not just their first party stuff but everything that comes through their, their like comes to their system. They get like, they get cuts on all of that. You know, physically, like physically you have to license. Yeah, you know.

I mean my thought is Microsoft is going to come up with a mobile version of Windows that just isn't terrible. And if they can do that, then you can launch everything. You could launch PlayStation games off of it, you could launch Steam off of it. And it's going to be a game pass machine first and foremost for them. So that's how they would monetize it is because it would be an easy way to play Game Pass on the go. And you don't have to sacrifice your Steam library and you don't have to sacrifice your PlayStation PC library to do it. You get kind of the best of every world in a sense. That's the way I think Microsoft would do it. Now Sony's play obviously is going to be different than that and Steam's going to have a different play than that. And I think there was, I don't remember which handheld it was, but it just came out. But they gave you options about which operating system you wanted to have. You could, you could have it preloaded with steamos or you could have it preloaded with. I can't remember if it was Windows, Linux, whatever it was, I'm not an expert on that, but you could basically have a choice. And so I could see Microsoft doing something like that as well, like pick, pick what your OS is that you want to load or if you want to have Steam pre installed on it, but you know you're going to run it off of a mobile version of Windows that's just kind of tailored for mobile gaming. That's what I would anticipate.

Yeah. And. Well, and it's like you said, the sort of, the hook there is like, you know, you've got like, sort of like it's, well, it's Game Pass and Game Pass works with it. And you're just like, that's how they're, they're going to get you on that $20 a month rip or you know, however much the, the annual subscription is. And then since you're already there, maybe you'll pick up a game or two, you know, on the, you know, just. Yeah, it's, it's. To me it's like, it does seem like it's moving more from like the big like 60 to $70 rip and away from that and more of like. It reminds me of the, the Office space, like the penny jar analogy where it's like, you know, you're taking like a penny like off of any. Every little transaction or whatever. But it's like when you've got a million transactions, that's a lot of pennies, you know, so. And like I said it just, to me, it's It's. Which is actually kind of counter to the model where it's like they're like, Sony goes for like the big rips. You know, it's like they dump $300 million into a game and they wanted to sell at least 10 million units, probably more than that, you know, but it's like, it's. Because.

Yeah, yeah, I think there's going to be some changes too, in just how the market prices stuff. I mean, we saw Nintendo dip their toes into it when they charged 70 bucks for tears of the Kingdom, which was the only game I think, that they've to date, that they've decided to charge 70 bucks for. So they. They want to get to a higher price point. Everybody wants to get to a higher price point because inflation is just crushing profits in the industry. I mean, there's another slide in that deck, Nate. I don't know if you saw it, but it, it takes an advertisement from like, you know, a Toys R us ad from 1991 or something like that and says, if these games at this price were priced in real world dollars, what would that look like? Audio Paint would be selling for, like, you know, $135.

Yeah, it was like 130, $140. Yeah, it was somewhere in that ballpark.

Yeah. So games would, if. If they had kept up with inflation or, you know, periodic price hikes, like a Netflix or something like that, like, that's what games would cost. Right now it's like 130 bucks per game. But they don't now, and that's the challenging thing. And so the other thing is, I think the industry is looking at GTA 6 to really lead the way in terms of, like, what can they get away with? And so there's a lot of speculation about, are they do 70, are they going to do 80, are they going to do 100? Everybody's got these greedy eyes. They're looking at this game saying, we, you know, from an industry insider perspective, they're wondering what they're going to charge for that game. And they're. They're hoping that they are going to charge like 100 bucks for GTA 6, because that's just going to open the floodgates for people to start charging more for.

Well, I disagree that that will open up the floodgates. I think GTA not, not just Rockstar, but GTA specifically, is uniquely qualified to charge such a price tag. If they decided to go 100, for.

Example, it's one of a handful of, you know, Devs and titles that I could think actually could leverage. Yeah, I agree with Micah.

Yeah, but here's the thing though is if, if they charge a hundred, then other, other folks can come up with a game and they can charge 80 bucks.

I agree with that. I agree with that. But I still think some people will balk at that. I think, I think almost, I think almost any gamer who, who kind of, you know, knows the industry, knows games and stuff will be like, yeah, 100 bucks for GTA 6. Sure, they, they know what they're getting. I, I, I don't think the value proposition is a problem in that case. I think you try to go flaunt around God of War, the next God of war for 80 plus bucks, people are going to laugh at that. I don't know. That's just what I think.

I, I mean, should they? No, but they will because like, and that's like the market, like the pricing in gaming has not kept up with the market. It remained really stagnant. Like it hit $60 and it stayed there for like 15, 20 years. And then yeah, you saw like the pearl clutching and the hand wringing and the shrieking when they're like, hey, 10 bucks. And everybody's like, what, what are you doing? This is highway robbery.

And then what motivation, what motivation does someone have to spend 70 bucks on a new game when like we just talked about they're embedded in their free to play, quote unquote game or they have so many games they're coming out their ears. So I'll just wait for everything to be five bucks.

Yeah, or they're using subservices to sort of like offset that. And none of these, like, Listen, I'm, I'm not saying like any of these are bad ideas. I'm not trying to guilt trip anybody who's doing these things. That's actually, you're probably being the savvy consumer and to which I would sort of say bravo and well done. Like, you know, you know, good for you, you're exercising self control. But Micah, you've been, you know, Parker and I have been sort of drawing over here about like the, the, you know, just the, the, the death of the box and the movement to handheld and everything else. And, and you did mention something like that. Yeah, I think GTA 6 is a great, like just the pricing, the pricing of games in general. Like me personally, I really hope that like GTA 6 comes out and they do sell it for 100 bucks a pop and then you get some stupid knucklehead over at Ubisoft, who thinks that they can charge 85 bucks or some whatever Tom Clancy schlop that they're just like, you know, throwing out there, and they just get laughed off into oblivion and then everybody buys it for 20 bucks, you know, a month later anyways, because that's, that's what happens with every single Ubisoft title, period. Yeah, yeah, but Micah, you know, sort of everything that we've been talking about, like, what are your thoughts on just sort of like the handheld sort of initiative and just like even sort of like looking forward at pricing. I think one of the things to sort of point out, Parker, is that if we do kind of like move away from the walled garden stuff, I think pricing gets a lot more competitive because then it's like if you can sort of shop around. Steam always has copious amounts of stuff on sale all the time. Like Sony has consistent sales now, like digitally. Like, there are a lot that's not even talking about like the, the value, like the, the physical sort of resale market or everything. But like digitally, a lot of these have like, pretty significant sales all the time. So, Micah just sort of, you know, riffing on that for a second. What do you think, sort of moving forward, the pricing does look like in a post GTA 6 world. What?

I mean, I don't know how much it'll change if, if GTA 6 triggers some kind of, you know, pseudo universal price hike in AAA games. That would be something I've. There's always a push and pull with me with, with sort of like you just said, being a good steward with your money. Josh is a great example of being a huge nerd of, of gaming and wanting to play as many games as.

You can, but also underselling how, how big a nerd Josh actually is.

Well, yeah, we all are, we all are. But, but what I'm saying is Josh is super frugal and makes wise choices with his money and gets a lot of gaming bang for his buck. So there's, there's that side of being sort of, you know, especially from the Christian perspective, being wise with your money and all these types of things. And then there's the side of the argument of, of, well, Josh doesn't do anything for the industry. Absolutely nothing, virtually speaking, you know, as far as like just monetary contributions, Josh isn't moving the needle at all. The guys who buy Day one AAA games arguably are. So there's always like a balance in me personally of like, putting money where my mouth is or putting money where like I like, I definitely want to pay, I will pay $100 for this. I want to show this developer or this publisher that keep doing this, I like it. I'll give you money. So there's always a push and pull for me personally and kind of wanting to support the industry while also being wise in my funds and so on and so forth. Where do I think it's going to end up? I don't think it's going to change much. At least, at least not this generation. I don't like I just said I don't think gta, while they could do a hundred dollars or eighty or whatever, I don't think that will be indicative of what will happen with future AAA games it will take. I think usually that sort of stuff is reserved for generational changes. So PlayStation 6, for example, like it was for PlayStation 5. That was the introduction of the 70 game. Long overdue, right? To get to bump it from 60 to 70. And if you know, Parker, like you said, inflation is completely eaten that up. It's gone beyond that to where that $10 price hike is like man, we could we have jumped from 60 to 80 back then because then we might be in a slightly better spot. But it's just, it's so I, it kills me looking at those, that 1991 Toys R Us ad, knowing that games you're getting, we're getting so much more bang for our buck. When you go out and plop down $60 for a game today versus 60 bucks back in 1994, it's just, there's simply no comparison. Sorry if you, you know, are, you know, you love older games or whatever, there's just there, there is by and large there, you know, as a general rule there is no comparison to the value you're getting as far as time and all sorts of things, engagement levels. So I kind of want prices to go up because I want the industry to be healthy. But I think what's going to happen is you're going to see a culling. You're going to see, like I said at the top of the show, so many losers. So, so, so many losers. You can see coming out of business. You can see cuts unfortunately. And that's just an unfortunate side of, of the industry when you have everyone going, you know, digging for gold and not everyone's coming home with a, with a nugget, you know, that's simply not realistic and the market can only support so much and you're starting to see the limits. I think I heard someone was talking about like I can't remember if it was. It was in that Colin Moriarty, Chess Gordon thing. I think someone was talking about, like, there's just not enough people in the world, like some executive just like there's just not enough people in the world to like make it grow to the state that we, to the place that we want it to. And I kind of agree with that. It was like we sort of. Kind of, sort of. I know there's tons of emergent markets that have yet to. That companies have yet to tap into, but we're kind of in some ways in like the Americas, you know, Japan, so on and so forth, you know, cultures that have had gaming for a while. We're kind of tapped out. Like the market is where it's gonna. I don't know how many more players are going to emerge, you know. So where, where do these companies find profit and revenue? When can they keep jacking up the prices to go 80, 90, 100? I don't know. Is it going to be more Life Service games? I, I'm not sure about that either. I just. Because we just talked about like what's the, you know, what new Life Service game is, is knocking it out of the park. You got your valorants and you got your hell divers that kind of have these flashes in the pan but nothing that they actually want. None of this long term Fortnite, Roblox like we talked about, nothing like that. So I, I don't know, is it, where is that middle ground? Sorry, go ahead, Nate.

Well, I just, I was thinking about like as a counterpoint though, and it hasn't had like tremendous success. You do have something like Astrobot, smaller budget, you know, and it hasn't had the like the phenomenal success or sales that something like, you know, Spider man did. But it's done fairly well and it's got return. And it's like I hope that some of the industry, especially at Sony, I hope people are paying attention to that and saying like, no, like granted, it's not the big rip, but it's not a complete wash either. Like it's, you know, it's sort of a more measured scope. And you know, like I personally, I hope that the, the lesson learned out of something like Astrobot is sort of a bit of a counterpoint that. Yeah, because like that's part of the problem. The budgets for these games are getting bigger and bigger and bigger, but at the same time, you know, it's. There's like the difference in sales between Spider man and Spider Man 2. Like Spider man to Miles Morales to Spider Man 2. Like, it dropped off by a not terrible margin, but a fairly healthy, like fairly significant margin each time. And it's like. And the production value, like the money that was spent polishing those games kind of went up every time. You know.

Slide sitting right in front of me here, Nate, and I'll just give you some quick numbers and then Nate or Michael, I'll let you go with your thought there. But Spider Man 2018, about 23 million in sales. I don't have the exact number because the bar graph doesn't tell me that, but it's about 23 million in sales. Miles Morales, about 15 million in sales. Spider Man 3 is like 13 million in sales. So you can see the numbers going down. Spider Man 2 compared to Spider Man 1 is about almost half the sales of the first one. But the budget. Spider Man 2018 costed about $120 million to make. Miles Morales was like $155 million to make, and Spider Man 3 was over $300 million to make. So the budget almost tripled from Spider man to Spider Man 2, but the sales were half as much in less time.

But yeah, I'm with you.

Yeah, yeah. And. But that's that. And that's sort of like what's going on in the market is that you have to turn it. You have to keep turning the volume up to get eyes to get any attention. And that's. They're. They're fighting against some of these black hole games. You know, they're. But, but not just that. You know, the, the. It's just competition is so stiff. But yeah, I, I would agree with you, Parker, that a culling is.

I'm sorry, Nate.

No, just to like.

Yeah, I was just going to say to that point, you were talking about Parker bringing up the Spider man budgets and Nate, you brought up Astrobot. That, that's my hope of where, you know, the AAA kind of space goes is they get their costs under control. We've. We've hit the point where Fidelity Technology, we've kind of. That jump from PS1 to PS2, that's not there anymore. It simply is not. So I don't know how much more you got to kind of get pushed that envelope. How many more sales you're going to get for having the cutting edge when you can crank out games like Astrobot with a fraction of the team size and a fraction of the budget. And not that everything's going to be an Astrobot or that's some sort of success. Story something like. I'm blanking on the name Hazelight Joseph Ferris. It takes two takes to something like it. Something like that. Like that is a crazy good success story. I'm sure that budget, that game was low and they've sold over 20 million. I don't know how many a ton of copies of that game. Those stories are going to be rare. But that's what I hope happens is that companies realize no, we don't need to throw 250/million dollars at this maybe on a game or two for special projects, but by and large we can, we can get away with 60 to 80 million dollars budgets and crank out a good experience for, for, for players. So that's what I hope happens is that there's a, just a general sort of cost control and people realize like we. You don't need sort of a bad example. Colin always brings it up. It's like when Elon bought Twitter and then gutted it. Like as far as like the employee base and Twitter, it can be argued, but it more or less functions the same exact way it did as before with a fraction of the staff. It's like I think a lot of.

These companies could use 80%.

Yeah. It's like that's a lot of bloat. Whether you like Elon or Twitter or X or whatever the heck. Like whatever you think about that is beside the point that there was so much bloat there that you could shave off 80% of the staff and the company and the site still functions more or less like it needs to. That needs to happen everywhere. I'm sorry, I know that sounds kind of cruel, but that's business. Like that's, that's life. You, you simply don't need. Like there's so much waste at companies. I see. I work for a large company, so I see it all the time. You know, what's the saying, like 10 of the workers do 90 of the work. That kind of thing. That's true. So I just think there's a lot of bloat at these companies that could be trimmed and budgets would be a lot more realistic, a lot more friendly to stakeholders and would put less stress on the teams to have to deliver a 10 million plus seller and all those kinds of things. So that's my hope. I don't know if that is what's going to happen, but that's my hope.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that I, I would agree too. Like, I think the, the biggest thing that I've, I've kind of thought about like in Moving the industry forward is like, I really hope these companies just sort of learn how to, yeah, manage the books better. Like it's, it, you know, when you see the rising costs and, and I think that would go a long ways towards actually sort of justifying like higher price points too, you know, and sort of saying like, no, like these companies are being a little more fiduciary, responsible and so like I would feel better as a consumer saying like, hey, yeah, this, like I'll pay 70 bucks for this, this game because I know that it's being handled well on the other side as well, you know. But yeah, it's, it's. The market's kind of in a weird spot. Just. I think it's kind of like the most fun I've ever had and the least fun I've ever had as an observer of the video game industry because it is absolute chaos in so many ways. Like just the radical shifts that Microsoft is making as just moving pretty much into almost strictly a third party publisher. The rampant, like Nintendo, they made me a little crazy because it's like just, we know the Switch two is coming. Just, just tell us about, just, just show us the stinking thing. And they're like, no, we're not gonna. And then it almost felt like they got mad at everybody leaking everything. They're like fine, it's coming. This, this is the thing. But we're not saying anything about it until we're ready, you know, and it's like, and then, you know, Sony, you know, just, they're coming off the PS5 Pro release and from all accounts it did fairly well that they've had some pretty interesting windfalls. Like, I think the thing that nobody really saw coming was like the portal doing as well as it has as a peripheral. I mean I, I knew that I was probably going to like it, you know, and, and I love it but like it's become, it was flying off the shelves for months. They couldn't keep this thing in stock. And it's, I think that's, it's one of those things I was looking at some reporting and oddly enough the Portal I think is still behind the edge, which to me it's like, is weird. But I did have the opportunity to use an edge when I went out to visit you park and I was like, this is a good controller, but I don't know if it's like what, $250 good like, or whatever it was.

It's like, it's good, it's not worth it.

But not, not at that price point and so maybe sort of feel pretty good about my, my decision by a portal. But I did want to just talk about you know, before like sort of as we kind of. And this is obviously a beefier bite sized episode. I did want to talk though a little bit about the big three and I kind of hit on sort of like key points like the biggest shakes, the biggest shake ups and moves are coming from Microsoft and Nintendo I think like Sony. Sony, well Sony, you know, canceled a lot of their like all of their, you know, games as a service initiative stuff and yeah, so let's, let's kind of like I guess wind down some of the big picture stuff and just sort of the projecting and looking at sort of like the broad scope of the industry and let's just talk about you know, Nintendo, Microsoft and PlayStation. So let's, let's actually talk about Microsoft first. And Parker, as probably the closest thing in within the three of us to an Xbox fan is you. You enjoy the system, you enjoy. Hey, no, no, I'm not trying like I'm just saying like I know that you really like your ex and you really like Game Pass. So what are your thoughts on sort of like where Microsoft seems to be heading and just sort of like yeah, just, just tell us what you think about Microsoft right now.

Yeah.

So.

Well, full disclosure, I have all three. I've got a Switch, I've got an Xbox and I've got a PlayStation. But yeah, I do actually really like my Series X. I think it's an extremely underrated piece of hardware and I wish more people would have bought one because I think it's a pretty great console. I was very skeptical about Game Pass but as I've had a couple years now to use it in this generation, I don't know how Microsoft makes money on it, but I don't really care. It's subsidized some finesse, some fantastic gaming for me. So if they want to keep subsidizing awesome gaming experiences for me and pay me to game with them, I am happy to let them do that. So I'm Game Pass all the way from that perspective. I think as far as the hardware goes, yeah, we've talked about it, but they're going to keep a footprint in it. But they're definitely going more towards third party publisher status, which is fine. I think they're realizing that they're just going to have to make moves that ultimately make the most sense financially for them. And so we've seen them dipping their toes a lot into Sony's pool by announcing stuff. I mean, they just announced Forza Horizon 5 is coming to PlayStation in the next couple months. So that's a big shift for that franchise to come over. We know that they're thinking about Gears, they're thinking about Halo. That stuff's probably almost certainly going to come to PlayStation at some point. That's just the reality of it. And at first I was kind of bummed about that, but as I've thought about it more, I think it's really just. It's going to position Microsoft to be very strong financially because they're making a lot of money in Sony's walled garden by putting their stuff there. I mean, the stuff that they're putting into Sony's store is shooting to the top of the charts. I mean, and it's even stuff like Grounded shot to the top of the charts when it came out, which is kind of one of those not really games as a service, but sort of that kind of a model. But. And they haven't even gotten to like the Gears games, the Halo games. I mean, they're going to make so much money when they bring halo over to PlayStation. If Gears E Day comes over to PlayStation, they're just going to make gobs of money. They're going to make a ton of money with the Dark ages coming to PlayStation Day 1. So to me, that means that, like, they're going to fill their pocketbook and their coffers and they're going to do it whether it's through Xbox or whether it's through Sony or whether it's through PC. They don't care. But this is what's going to position them to be strong for the future. And I've kind of come around to it, and I've gotten to the place where I'm just thinking, you know what? Like, they've got so many awesome studios producing so many awesome games right now. I just want them to keep doing that. Like, give me Fable, you know, the new Fable reboot. Give me another Gears of War game. Keep making Halo games, do all that stuff. And if you have to put it on PlayStation to make that future happen, like, I'd rather that than you just sort of take all your toys and go home. So for me, if they have to do that strategy, that's fine, and that's going to be healthy for them in the long run. And it's going to mean gamers win because it's more great games to play in more places to play them. So I don't really see A downside for their strategy.

Yeah, I think it, it is interesting because like, yeah, they, they sort of in the console war space, like they've seated like they don't care in a lot of ways. They don't care about the box. Micah, I, I know that you're on Twitter too. Did you see some of like one of my favorites was a dude basically took a sledgehammer to a Series X and then tweeted angrily at Phil Spencer about like the massive betrayal. And I was just like, well like I was like, okay, dude.

Like, yeah, some people, they gotta get their life together.

But hey, I could do that with my PSVR too. With Sony.

Yeah, no, I mean I sold mine. So yeah, I didn't smash it. I did the, did the reasonable thing and just sold it and got money for it.

Yeah, but it's kind of one of those things where, and I think like honestly this is kind of a place that makes sense. Like I've always kind of been pro Microsoft, but I just didn't like. And I know this is sounds weird, but it's like I wanted to see them succeed, but it just seemed like they couldn't help but like sort of like fall over themselves or get in their own way. And it honestly makes me think like, especially looking at the, the year coming up that they've got as far as the lineup coming out here in the next like again 10, 11, 12 months, if they would have had a year like this three years ago, four years ago, I think that that might have been a very different tune. But I think it was like, because this kind of, this goal line sort of kept like everything kind of get getting pushed down the field, pushed down like further on down, further on down. And then with the pairing of the ABK acquisition stuff and sort of Microsoft, the parent company seeing like, oh, Xbox as a brand made more money this month off of Call of Duty than our flagship product. Like that was like the kiss of doom. Like at that point in time it's like, well, no. And I think Micah, sort of to turn it over to you, you mentioned something in that Colin Moriarty Jez Corden episode of Sacred Symbols plus that aired not too long ago. But Jez kind of made a reference where he said Microsoft is going to be first. If they can't be first in console gaming, they're going to be first in third party development and publishing. So what are your thoughts on Microsoft so far and sort of moving into 2025?

Yeah, I think they've tried and here we are. If reports are to be believed. It seems like Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft kind of came to Xbox leaders handful of years ago. I'm like look, we need to do something like either we're going to shut this train down or you guys need to start bolstering our revenue. And that's when the acquisition of Bethesda happened and so on and so forth. It's like you said Nate, I've always sort of rooted for Microsoft to kind of like I want them to be as good as they can be. But I've, I've seldom agreed with kind of how they've gone about doing it especially here recently. So now that they're kind of, it's a little weird to think about like the end of the console wars because for now, for the longest time, for.

Now let's, let's, let's like just like yeah, fanboys will fanboy so well for.

The longest time like Nintendo hasn't really been part of the equation. It's just a Sony, Microsoft kind of fight. And to sort of see it quote unquote coming to an end is a little weird. It's not like Sega. It's unlike the Sega situation. I think though, this is the, that's the one like comparison point that most people use for Xbox. Microsoft is so much more big than Sega, it's not even funny. So it's like to compare them is a little funny. They're going to be awesome. As a third party publisher, I'm very much looking forward to the future of Microsoft as a third party publisher. Parker, I think you said it. They are about to rake in the revenue putting these games other places, particularly PlayStation and Nintendo consoles. I'm not sure how many copies of Halo, the Master Chief collection have sold up to this point, but I wouldn't be surprised if they essentially like match that when they drop that game on PS5 or/PS4 or whatever it is.

I will buy that just to have Halo, like the novelty will be so like I will be so tickled by the novelty.

I'm overstating a little bit. Let's say for example, I don't know the numbers. Let's say they've sold 10 million copies so far of Master Chief collection. I think they'll sell like five, six, seven, no problem in like a year on, on PlayStation. So they're gonna make a ton of money dropping games like Halo and Gears onto, onto those walled gardens. So I'm yeah looking at the 2025 slate fable, south of Midnight, Doom, the Dark Ages, Gears E day, you know, just on and on and on. Avowed. It's killer. It's absolutely killer. And yeah, when you're, when you're the, when you're the controller of all these ip like we sort of talked about when they acquired Activision and Bethesda, things like well, are they going to put them on PlayStation, are they going to put them on Nintendo? It's like yeah, they kind of have a responsibility to do that, a fiduciary responsibility if they want to actually make money. They dropped 70 billion billion on Activision and they need to recoup that. That doesn't happen by like you said Parker, kind of how they don't do that with game pass. That's not how you make 70 billion back. So they, they've got to get there. Just to remind listeners that is the largest acquisition in Microsoft history. Not Xbox history, Microsoft history. So they very much want a return on that investment. So yeah, you bet your bottom dollar. These games are going everywhere they possibly can and I love that future. The only thing I don't like about it is that it puts PlayStation back in their PS3 era hubris days of like, you know, what reason do we have to compete? A little bit more than I would like. But outside of that I see very little downside to the future Microsoft.

Yeah. And just for clarification, Halo Master Chief collection, according to Wikipedia has just a little over 8 million units sold that's on PC and Xbox One and series consoles. So I could easily see it doubling. Like I, I'm not trying to be but just like again I think the novelty of having it on a PlayStation machine for a lot of enthusiasts when like if it's available on PS4 and PS5 and it's not an especially tech intensive, resource intensive game so they could probably publish it on both. I could see it moving 7 or 8 million units fairly, fairly easily and they'd probably be able to. And they'll probably sell that at like was it 40 or 50 bucks now? They could probably sell that at like.

Now that's a good question. What will they charge? That's an interesting question.

But anyway, so yeah, like you know, just yeah. Sort of doubling back. Yeah, it's, it's kind of, it's sad because it is kind of, it does feel like the, a bit of an end of the era. Yeah, it's like I grew up in the, the Sega Nintendo like fanboy wars, console wars and I sort of earned my stripes, you know, so to speak, as, as a Nintendo loyalist and then and sort of seeing this, the second iteration, it's never been about just like dunking on. Yeah, I think I like the way that you said it, Micah, is I've been rooting for Microsoft. I just didn't like a lot of the things they were doing. It's like, I want you to be great. I want you to make great games. Like, give me a reason to buy your box. And they never gave me a reason to buy their box, but now I don't have to. You know, it's like because the games are going to come to PlayStation, I can play the games on my laptop, you know. You know, with a. And it's like that, it's like you said, Parker, that's a win. Because it's like more people are getting to experience those and. Yeah. So. Yeah.

And there's nothing saying that at some point Microsoft couldn't turn around in the future when they've got dollar bills falling out of the war chest and go, you know what, we're going to make another box and we're going to stick it to Sony because we just got so much money, we don't know what to do with it. So we're gonna spin up another console and we're just gonna go after it again. I mean, they would be in perfect position to do that at any point down the road.

Well, and I think like, even the viability of having, you know, and again, it's like their, their hold in the console market is really pretty minimal at this point in time. Right. They're, they're, they're sort of presence there. But you know, again, if they can grow Game Pass as like a significant, like, if they can grow Game Pass at all to where it is a legitimate threat and presence in the market. And I think that's the thing. Game Pass has never really been the, the bludgeon. It was never the nuke that they wanted it to be. You know what I'm saying? Like, I think that that was the problem. Like it's, it's the best value in gaming, but it never really. Never put the fear in everybody else the way they wanted it to. And if all of a sudden like you can sort of like, if that can become sort of a bigger vehicle and a threat. Yeah, there's like. And just be like, oh yeah, hey, like micro. New Microsoft console. Like, you know, 10 years down the road, new Microsoft console. Again, you know, just speculative. And Game Pass included, every Microsoft legacy title is available. And again, the, like the highest tiers, you get every Microsoft first party Game day one day. You know, that could be, that could be a menace. You know, it's, it's like, yeah, it's like you said, there's nothing preventing them from like sort of giving it another go. And frankly, yeah, I like to get, I like to see Sony kept on their toes. That's the biggest, the biggest bummer to me is that Sony is going to be kind of entering their PS3 villain arc again, you know, where it's like, yeah, yeah, what are you going to do?

Like, maybe. But I think this whole live service thing, they've put themselves on their own toes, if that makes sense. Like, I think they're shell shocked corporately by Concord. I think that has them just scared to death of live service games. And they lost so much money on that one title.

Can we, can we talk about. If we're going to pivot to Sony? I know we're going to talk about somebody. Can we talk about the leadership? Like the Herman Hulse, the, the, you know, Shuhei Yoshida leaving. Retiring. Not leaving retiring.

Herman Hulse getting the motion. The.

What was the guy's name? Nishino was his name. The other CEO man.

Well, and it's. I'm, I'm thinking Hiroki Totoki. He just became the Sony CEO.

Yeah, it is. Hideki Nishino is the CEO of.

And he was the one who crapped all over them, you know, when he was like filling in for Jim Ryan. And I'm like, oh boy, them waters is going to get rocky. I think Sony's corporate structure is like, PlayStation's corporate structure should be nervous.

I mean, you think about like how many games they canceled. Like, that's just money that just vaporized overnight. They get no return on any of that.

That's Parker.

Those are. We know Concord was 400 million they lost for that one game. We don't know how much they lost trying to build the God of War live service game or the Last of Us live service game or the Horizon Zero dawn live service game or any other unannounced live service game that is just vaporware at this point. But I mean, we're talking tens, if not hundreds of probably hundreds of millions of dollars they've wasted on that.

And what.

That's what I was going to ask.

Would put Blue Point on a God of War live service game.

Like, it hurts my heart knowing that they were working on that and not, you know, anything else. I don't. A bloodborne remake. They probably are actually, by the way, now that their Slate is free. They're probably working a bloodborne I think to know that they weren't working on that. That they were working on that God of War game.

Oh, it hurt kind of funny. Did an interview with Shuhei Yoshida Parker. If you haven't seen it, it's extensive. It was like, like right after his retirement. It's really good. Greg Miller does a bang up job. I don't really like Greg Miller all that much, but he does a phenomenal job. The conversation is really interesting and there's stuff that Shuhei says that you're like, oh, and one of they actually talk about the bloodborne remaster and he kind of speculates or infers that he thinks it has something to do with the fact that Miyazaki is probably a lot closer to that project than like and that's why it hasn't happened. Is that Miyazaki the, the, you know, from's. You know, from's big shot collar, he wants in on that action and so that's kind of why it hasn't happened. But yeah, it wouldn't surprise but like, yeah, it's like Blue point on a live action sir. On a live. Or games as a service got a war game. Like make fart noises like, like the fact. And like. Well, I think too just, just the fact that no one had the stones enough to sit in that room and be like that is a terrible idea. Like that like it. But it was just like, oh no, this. And.

And my question is though is, did we just. Did we just get through the quote, bad Sony regime or we still in the midst. Like did they just clean house just now because Jim Ryan's gone. He was apparently one of the pushers behind the life service push, which has now been all but axed, at least as far as we can tell. Surely they'll do others. But you know, the big push seems to have halted. Is this a correction from that bad course or we. Is Sony still in that bad course? That's my question to you guys.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna say something that might be a little controversial and like Herman Hulse seems like a really nice guy. He also seems like he has no idea what's going on maybe. And this is what I'm gonna say is Horizon is good, not great. And the fact that there are like what, five projects, four projects that have been spun out of this thing. Like, you know, we're going to make an mmo. We're going to do this. You know, we did the LEGO Horizon series Like that that's asinine. That that's a complete waste of time and resources. The game is good, not great. Do I think it probably got unfairly crapped on because of its release? Like, yeah, releasing up against Breath of the Wild, that's going to hurt. Even though the game still did pretty good numbers in spite of that. Releasing Forbidden west, releasing up against Elder Dream, that's going to hurt. You know, it's like. But I think it's that those games are. They're pretty good. They're really good, but they're not S tier. Like they're like a maybe a plus kind of tier and sort of. So the emphasis on that tells me like that you're kind of like a little higher in your own supply. The other thing is like. And again, this is like sort of. Some of this is not substantiated reporting, but like Herman Hulse was the Concord champion. Like he was the guy really pushing for that. And so like I would say as long as he's in house, I think we have reason to be scared because I think he demonstrates questionable judgment at best. Like that.

That certainly might be true. I think another option is that Herman was being a yes man to Jim Ryan who had all the ideas and he yes man himself into the situation that he's into.

But that's, that's.

I don't necessarily believe that. I'm simply positing another.

Well, I'm saying. And if that's the case, that just says that he doesn't have enough integrity to like, I hear you make the hard call. And at that point in time I'm.

Like, well, yeah, one quick point I'll make on Horizon as well is I get what your point, and I mostly agree, Nate, about it's not really like, why are we investing in all? The reason they're investing in Horizon is because between the two games, it sold over 32 million copies, which is absolutely bonkers when you think about the lack of love that Horizon gets. That's a ton of copies for two games for a brand new franchise that went up against Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild, like you just said. So while the gamers might not love Horizon, it sells, which is why all these projects got greenlit, I think.

Yeah. I mean, how much? But there was a. For a while, wasn't Forbidden west like on sale for like 20 bucks or whatever?

Physically Forbidden west got screwed over because they put it in PlayStation plus too early for free. So that game, it's, it's a complete like Almost throw out that, that example. Yeah, almost. Because they use, literally they use that as like their first, first party example to put a AAA game on PlayStation plus for free. Yeah, that was the first game that they did that with and they kind of ruined it.

We regret this.

They game passed that game. They game passed that game and did not make money off of it. So they realized oh, we should not game pass our games anymore.

So yeah Parker, so we're, we're kind of over here like you know, I'm over here besmirching Sony, Sony's leadership. But what are your thoughts on just sort of like the shake ups and, and the movement here?

Yeah, I mean I do see it as quite a big course correction from the live service stuff I heard from. I don't remember which reporting outlet was but they used the term shell shocked for the corporate culture when Concord came out. I think it just shocked them. Nothing like that has ever happened in gaming. Maybe nothing like that will ever happen. To spend $400 million on a game and then a live service game, I mean live service is tough but games don't come out and then close in two weeks like that.

That can't be overstated. That can't be overstated.

That is a unicorn experience that probably just crushed the Sony corporate culture. Like I mean those people. Yeah like they got a nuke dropped on them when Concord just failed miserably. And so I think they pressed the eject button on that strategy at that point. There's going to be some stuff I think that trickles out that either they decided well we've spent too, you know, sunken cost fallacy or whatever you want to call it. They still got fair games. I think that's going to release probably not going to do much. There's, there's maybe a few other projects that they've got that for whatever reason they're just not canceling outright. But the fact that all of the games that would be maybe positioned to be most successful for them because they're leveraging their biggest, you know, Sony IPs to deliver them. They basically said no. They, they gave those projects a vote of no confidence and they canceled them before they even hit the light of day. So that tells me that inside they're going holy cow, we lost. We bet the farm on Concord and we lost the farm on Concord and we need to get back to what we do best. But the problem is they put themselves in so deep it's going to be years before they dig out of this hole. Yeah, because they dug for themselves, all.

The dev cycles for like, just looking at Bluepoint, they were what, maybe four years into dev on that God of War games as a service game. All of that's getting thrown out now. They're probably going to use maybe something from what they, you know, there's probably some tech in there that they might use moving forward, but they're starting from ground zero. And dev cycles being what they are now, opportunity cost four, five, six years long sometimes. Now, like, dude, yeah, you're not seeing anything, you're not seeing anything from any of those studios for at least five years.

And they've already got a notoriously light first party lineup. Like people have been saying for the last year and a half now, like, Sony, where are the games? And now Microsoft is actually starting to like drop bangers, you know, on their side. And so it's like Sony's got Ghost of Yote, but it's looking pretty thin on the Sony side. And knowing that they just canceled like half a dozen mega projects, like it feels even thinner now knowing that.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Crap.

I had a point I was going to make a second ago and I forgot. Oh, well, move on.

Well, you know, it's just, it's one of those things where, you know, sort of. I'm going to go back to bagging on Herman Holst for a minute. And again, from all accounts, he's supposed to be a really nice guy. And so Herman, if this ever comes across your, like, I want you to know it's not personal, but I think like, it just demonstrates like, and what I would say is like, I think what's sort of like a bit of a nail in the coffin is that prior to the release of Concord, he was a co CEO and then Concord comes out and it's not even, it's what, like two quarters later?

Six months. Yeah, six months.

It's six months later. Basically. They're like, nope, like we fixed that in a hurry. So that tells me, to me that's very clearly a demotion. That's very clearly like they don't trust his judgment, at least not to that extent. Now I recognize that he's still like the CEO of whatever content development or whatever stupid title, but it's like he has a boss now. He didn't really have a boss before. And it's just, it's, it's interesting.

I remember what I was gonna say a second. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were done.

No, I, I, I'm just saying like, so I would just say like it I think that that in and of itself communicates. I think there's merit to like that Herman's. Herman's judgment is lacking. Yeah. But anyways Micah, you were saying going.

Back to the full shell shocked panicked when Concord dropped. If you remember after some time after Sony acquired Bungie and Hiroki Totoki took over. He made some comments on an earnings call about how they were undisciplined and their cost controls over at Bungie. And he called that out specifically and kind of, you know, almost like verbally chastise them on the earnings call almost. It seemed like I can't imagine that the Concord situation. I mean it's just, it's like if you're talking about that way about Bungie, how does Hiroki Totoki view what happened to Concord is that you better know some something was going to change. It just sounds like Totoki is a much more. Well like I sort of said hopefully he'll get those costs under control. We'll get you know, a few more hundred million dollar games and less 300 million dollar games. But that, that's one thing it made me think about was again the 400 some odd million dollars that Concord just flushed down the toilet. And I'm not sure how much of that Sony's going to get to write off since the game released. But a guy like Heroku, I can't imagine he's looking at that and like that's why that game, that's why that decision was made I think because he's like nah, we're good. I'm not sure if another c. If another CEO was in power that that would have necessarily been pulled the way it was, but who knows.

Yeah, yeah, it's. I think it's, it's the, the, the two things that sort of make things really interesting in PlayStation land to just kind of keep an eye on is that one they are currently again you know they're. They're seeing a lot of like the, the PS5 is still selling pretty briskly. So there's that. But like I think in as a point of contrast is like we've seen the corporate shakeup, we've sort of seen the fallout from the Jim Ryan years and it's not that like listen, it's not that crap all over Jim Ryan. And again, you know, it's not even the crap all over Herman. Right. Because I did like Horizon. I actually was a big champion of that game for a little bit. As, as. As I've gotten farther out from it, it's like one of those things where it's like some of that was just me being a Contrarian and being like no, this game is like really, really good and everybody just kind of poops all over it. But it was like no, it's, it's. It's pretty good. And that's about all it's got for it. I like that game. I like it a lot. But I think so we're kind of coming out of the era. It's going to be interesting. All the corporate shakeup, all of the just and sort of seeing like where you know, you mentioned Bungie briefly there. Sort of seeing where. How Bungie does in all of this. Like Destiny 2 has a new sort of like model and roadmap sort of moving forward that's a lot more structured. Well we'll see like their teams got drastically cut. Marathon is going to release. So it's like. And here's the thing, I think like Bungie is an incredibly talented studio. I played the final shape and it's excellent. It's excellent. The gameplay is excellent. Right. They have it in them to make killer games. It's just so there's some big questions there. So. But like we have just questions with all the shakeups. But then I think the other thing you brought up Parker is that they've been taking heat for a couple years now about like the, the really light first party lineups and yeah, we're, we're going to be entering a dark age where it's like yeah, we've got Ghost of Yote coming out but it's, it's looking real, real thin and they, they do manage to shore that up with like you know, partnerships and you know, second part like exclusive, you know, timed exclusives and exclusive publishing. But it's not the same like if you buy a PlayStation, you know, if you're, if you're a Sony fan, you want Sony games and remasters of, of your pre existing stuff. That's you know as, as much as like you know, the last of us parts one and two are you know really you know, phenomenal pieces of tech. It's like those only. Those only buy you so much time. You know. So it's, it's going to be interesting. It's going to be I think some, some stormy waters ahead just in, in a lot of. But you know, and I'm not.

You can see they don't really know how to handle the whole move into PC as well. I mean just trying to even figure out the whole like do we make people sign in with their PSN account or not thing has caused them a huge amount of heartache over there and so like they're trying to even get outside of just the walled garden box thing by going PC themselves. But it's, they've got some catching up to do with, you know, Microsoft and in that space if they want to.

Play in those waters, the PC hand wringing about like, oh, I don't want to sign up for a Sony account. Like I'm like just like, just roll my eyes like blah.

Like there's like you say that but the network went down Friday night and was down for like 24 hours. And hey, if you were playing on PC, you'd be pissed if you were required to have a login and you couldn't log into a PC game because PSN was down.

Yeah, but it's like, you know, people, it's, it's not that big a deal to sign up for another anyways. I just think it's a lot of melodrama and you know, PC master race histrionics.

But I don't, I don't care that much myself. I'm not a PC guy. But I mean it's, it's. There's been such a large outcry that they actually forced Sony to backtrack on their policy. So that says something.

Yeah, but, so last but certainly not least, big N is it's a presence. I mean like the Switch has done historically well for them. Sort of just, you know, we're done sort of bagging on everybody else and sort of bemoaning the state of the industry. But Nintendo Switch 2 is coming out and boy howdy, I'm going to say this is. I really wanted a PS5 Pro and I know both of you guys managed to secure one and good for you. And I'm not even jealous at all. That's a lie. I am still really jealous. I still want one. But I've got to be honest, the hardware that I'm most excited for this year is Switch two. Like, I like Nintendo games and I like my Switch, but I don't turn it on nearly as much because it's just, I'm. I'm not like hardcore like frames elitist. But I need solid frame rates and Nintendo games don't always give me that and I am very aware of that sometimes. And the fact that I'm going to have a fairly beefy A lot of the preview coverage people are speculating this is going to have about the power output of the Xbox One x or the PS4 Pro. So it's not quite sort of punching at the same level that the Series X is or that the PS5 or the PS5 Pro are, but in a handheld package. That's significant. That's some serious juice. And there's gonna be. You're gonna see a lot of games that I think were held back, you know, from. From release on. On Nintendo consoles, like brought forward to the Nintendo Switch 2. I don't like the. The naming convention. I really think they should have gone with Super Switch, but I understand it. So I'm just saying Super Switch would have made you a lot cooler Nintendo. But I get it. You don't want to be cool, you got to be savvy. So, Micah. Well, we'll start with you, man. Like Nintendo Switch 2 or just Nintendo in general? Like what, what do you kind of like, what do you think about their trajectory and kind of what they've got going probably coming in the next year?

Oh, well, the next year. Answer that part first. Oh, it's going to be phenomenal. It's going to be a banner year for Nintendo. I'd be shocked if it wasn't. Especially if we get the games that we think we might get this year or in the next 18 months after launch of the Switch 2. Yeah, it's going to be a killer, you know, next several set of months here for them. One thing, I'll go ahead and mention this now before I forget. I saw Andy Robinson over at Video Games Chronicle tweet this, and it's basically, I can't remember all the names, but, you know, whether it's Miyamoto or basically he listed off like eight guys that are like elder statesmen that like the OGs of Nintendo and how he listed their ages, he's like, you know, 72, 68, 71, 69. Basically, this is the last generation that all these guys are going to deliver. Like, this is the last. Switch 2 will be the last console of the OG Nintendo regime as we know it. And after that, there's a high likelihood that these people will be retired. And so part of me is kind of sad thinking, like, wow, this is truly the end of an era. We might not have the same Nintendo going Forward after Switch 2, which is a little weird to think, like, kind of how they've always been on their own island, doing their own thing and rocking out, just, you know, just being great. So I look at Switch 2 and I'm thinking, you just said, I don't love the name, you know, Super Switch would have been better. You know why they went with Switch 2? To prevent confusion like they did with the, from the Wii to the Wii U. And I think, I think they've, I think this group of elder statesmen wouldn't have done that had this not been their last console they're going to put out because they want to make money to retire on. I'm not that they're not already stinking rich, but they wanted to do the safe thing and they're, they're gonna. It, it will, it will be perfectly safe and it will be. It will do perfectly fine. But that's one thought that I had was just like, man, this is going to be kind of the end of an era for Nintendo in this generation of consoles. Whenever the Switch 2 comes out and, and runs its life cycle, the next iteration will be from a different group of gentlemen, you know, and, and ladies.

Well, at least, at least pretty, you know, and again, it's like those seven or eight guys that it kind of, they rattled off there like, you know, some of that leadership structure may still be in place, but, you know, the likelihood is that, you know, a good chunk of them are going to retire or, you know, dare I say it, you know, shed this mortal coil. And so it is unlikely. Yeah, that we have. And that's a leadership structure that has sort of been more or less shepherding Nintendo since like the N64 GameCube era.

It makes me wonder, you know, at what point will that, that quality that we always attribute to Nintendo, at what point might that go away as we know it? Maybe it won't. Hopefully it won't. But it does make me kind of. It gives me some pause. Like, man, I wonder if the Nintendo that we all know and love is, is going to be changing maybe over the next 15 years or something like that. Getting more kind of direct about the Switch too. Man, this is going to be. I mean, what Nintendo did with Switch was paradigm shifting. It's almost like, like, well, duh, like a hybrid console, like something that you can do handheld and on your tv. It's like, why wouldn't that succeed? Like, why, why didn't anyone think of that before? Kind of thing. And there have been variations of that, you know, but certainly not to this level, not to this success. So this thing is going to be awesome. It's just, I don't worry about Nintendo. You know, it's interesting to think about the future as far as the stuff I was just saying with generations and stuff, but I don't worry about the Switch too. I don't worry about Nintendo in the near term. They're going to be awesome. They're going to be great. They, they do enough to keep other quote unquote competitors on their toes even though they, they kind of have almost no competition, direct competition. They, I don't know. I love Nintendo obviously. I, you know, my very first kind of gaming console and memory was with an NES and Super Mario Brothers. And to think of, I'm 42 and thinking about kind of the men and women who made that company, who they are kind of potentially retiring and going away, it makes me a little sad. Sorry, I'm kind of hung up on this one side of it. But that's just one thing I've been thinking about lately with them and just thinking about like, man, I'm looking forward to the launch. I'm looking forward to the reveal of all these games for switching too. But this, this might be, this might be like the last like you know, kind of ride, you know, out into the sunset kind of thing.

I don't, I don't think though, I think kind of what you're, you're hitting at without actually, you know, saying it though is that there is a strength in that corporate culture that doesn't exist in Microsoft, doesn't exist at PlayStation. And I, I think, you know, I'm, I'm hopeful that sort of when the successors are sort of like moving on up, these people will have. So like Nintendo's corporate culture I think is, has the strongest identity and the strongest sort of like core values that I, I don't see it like being a serious deviation. There might be some, it might be more akin to like, sort of like the, the next iteration will be like sort of the jump from like the Super Mario games into Super Mario Wonder, you know, where it's like it is sort of, it's, it's a little, it's new, it's fresh, it's not a complete paradigm shift, but it's kind of, it's riffing off of what you know, but it's also kind of a little new. It's a little funky, it's a little different, but it's still sort of got some of that, that nostalgia kind of like. No, but I remember seeing that tweet too. And then I think you, you shared it with me as well. And then I saw that and it was just like, it was like, yeah, it was, I got a little over clamped because it's like these guys have defined that that handful of individuals have really shaped and defined the entity. Like growing up. I don't know about you guys, but it wasn't play video games is I'm gonna go play Nintendo. And it didn't matter what I was actually playing. I was playing Nintendo. It's like, and they, they shepherded it that they ushered that era in. And so yeah, it is like a little whatever. But Parker, you know, we're over here like feeling old and bad for ourselves. But you know, you and I have had some, some conversations about the Switch 2 and I, I think you know, and Micah, I'm going to ask you, like with the reveal, I'm, I'm actually a really big fan of the matte black. I think it's kind of like a grownup vibe. I, I, I like the look. Oh yeah. I wish I could turn off the, the blue and red LED lights things just like, let me do those like white, you know, and I'd be happy. But that's just, just me. But, but like with the actual Switch 2 release on something that's a little more beat, like what do you think of just like the, the look of it real quick?

It's fine. It's, I mean it's a, it's a bigger switch. I, I don't really have much opinion about it. I do like the kind of the, the, the blue and was that peach sort of colors around the, the analog six or whatever. Is that seem like their primary colors? I don't know. It's whatever. I don't, I don't have a huge opinion on it. I'm kind of indifferent. I was, I was doing some digging. I wanted to find that tweet from Andy Robinson real quick. Just, I can rattle off the names. It was Miyamoto71. He just lists last names. Sakamoto64, Tezuka63, Condo62, Anuma61, Sugiyama65. Nintendo fans will know these names, what I'm talking about. But yeah, that was the tweet Andy was saying, like these guys are gonna retire basically soon. But anyway, I wanted to dig that up real quick.

Yeah. So Parker, thoughts on Nintendo? I mean, you can get a little verklempt if you want to too. You know, talk about like the passing on of the torch.

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess I'll make one quick comment about that, which is the thought of Nintendo without Miyamoto, I mean that's kind of like Disney without Walt Disney in my opinion. Like, I mean he's, he's been, he's the og. He's there from the beginning. He's helped them launch the biggest franchises. He is the de facto face of it and he's kind of the, the Willy Wonka brand ambassador for Nintendo. If you're gonna sum it up with one picture, it's going to be a headshot of Miyamoto, at least in my book. So the, the thought of, the thought of, you know, Miyamoto not being Nintendo, that would be sad. But I'm hoping that those guys are training up a new generation of folks to think like they do and to embrace the Nintendo philosophies of gaming. Because I think that's really, yeah. What sets them apart and helps them not just be another voice in the industry, but to be something really special and really unique. And I hope they don't lose that identity as they move into. Let's just do more Switch stuff because it's successful. So there's that piece of it, the Switch two. I don't know. I think it's poised for success, but I kind of feel like it's probably going to be a bit more muted. I think it's going to be hard to top the Switch. Just the runaway success of the Switch. The expectations are higher. I think a lot of it's going to come down to pricing too and how people feel about buying a new Switch. If you can convince parents that this other thing that looks like pretty close to the thing I already have for my kid who's already got a ton of games on this Switch, like, do they really need to upgrade to that? You know, kind of like it was a little slow for the PS4 to PS5 generation and half the people are still playing on PS4. I think you're going to see a lot of that with the Switch. Like it's going to be a different calculus for everybody in figuring out when and how and why they want to upgrade to the switch 2. And so, you know, a lot of that's going to come down to games or unique features on the Switch 2 that are going to upsell people into that ecosystem. And I don't know if they're going to do a great job at that or not. So, you know, we'll, we'll have to wait and see. But I'm hopeful for them. I don't think it's going to be like a Wii U disaster for them or like a gamecube disaster for. I think they're poised to do success. But is it going to be rocket fuel success like the original Switch? I, I don't know what do you.

Guys think the price of the console will be.

400?

I think anything more than 400 and you're. I think they would be justified in sell like in pushing for a 500 price point. But I think any especially in with market inflation and everything else. But I think anything more than 400 is probably going to just like the optics on anything more than 400 is probably going to be something that they don't.

I think they would like to push even for 350 if they could get there.

I think if they could get away with it. But I think with like the juice that they're actually jamming into this thing. I think 400. I don't, I don't think that they like Nintendo has notoriously sort of been since the GameCube. They have just been like we are not taking a loss on hardware ever again. So I can't imagine. I think as they don't mind not like the thing is like the Switch was notoriously cheap and they sold it pretty cheap as far as like you know, luxury electronics go. But the Switch 2 is going to have like a little bit more, you know, again juice under the hood so to speak. And I think that that's gonna necessitate maybe a bit of a higher price point. Yeah, I think 400 at least. I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see it go above that. But I think at that point in time you are going to start really running into friction because of sticker shock. That's just me.

I think you are probably right. I think it's probably 400. Yeah. You know the original Switch launched at 299 at $300 which was $100 cheaper than the competition, quote unquote of the PlayStation and the Xbox One. And yeah, this one will come in at $100 less as well compared to competition.

Now do you think though that will. Nintendo hasn't embraced the price drop for any hardware at all. You know this iteration of the Switch. They've done some bundles and stuff like that which are kind of like. Do you think that's going to initiate a price drop for any switch hardware?

Oh, 100%. Yeah. I mean this obviously Nintendo loves the Switch. That's why we. They're so. They're waiting so long to announce the Switch too is because the Switch keeps selling so 100. Yeah, they're going to drop that thing to 150 whatever if they get down to 99 for a switch Lite or something like that. I mean buckle up like for real, like, like 200.

200 for a switch? Yeah, like 250 for switch overhead.

Yeah. And I think what Parker said is right as well. There's going to be a little bit of a PS4 to PS5 malaise, you know, as far as like getting people like, well why do I need to get my kid a new switch when he's got this perfectly good one here? It will be backwards compatible. They've already said that, I think so that won't be a question. But yeah, but Nintendo won't have a problem selling them obviously the hardcore audience will, will that could make up their sales for the first two or three years and they would be fine.

They're still, yeah, they're still going to fly off the shelves. It's just that I don't. Yeah, I don't think it's going to be like. I think you use the term rocket fuel, Parker. Yeah, I, I don't think it's going to be meteoric.

Yeah. How will it hit that, Will it hit that critical mass that the switch did? Yeah, I don't know.

Well, and it, and that's the other thing is it doesn't like this. The original switch was kind of novel and this isn't. And so that just that in and of itself is kind of gonna, you know, offer not friction but it's going to be an inhibitor. It's going to sort of like, you know, drag on some of that, you know, because novelty is like the new and sexy sells every time.

But handheld is a much more contested space now than when switch one before.

Well and that's the other thing though too is yeah they are entering into actually a more contested. Now granted they sort of defined that space in a lot of ways but it's now like they do have stiffer competition with all of the handheld PCs, the steam decks. And again like we talked about earlier, Sony and Microsoft, there are fairly credible rumors that they are both eyeing that market again, you know, with renewed interest. And so the thing is like too is like I don't think you can go, you know, just even in thinking about the price point, I don't think you can go much past four or maybe $500 like just because at that point in time you're getting really close to like Steam Deck numbers like price points and the Steam deck is probably a be like a beefier machine, you know, and a more flexible machine. So I don't, I don't know but.

I think they're trying to keep it a little more family friendly and to do that, that Means you just gotta be a. At a lower price point than everybody.

Yeah.

Else. So I think 400.

Yeah, I agree.

But I mean, New Mario kart, new Mario 3D platformer.

I heard rumor that there's going to be a remaster of Breath of the Wild at launch.

I have heard a rumor. The. The rumor that I heard is that there is an unnamed Zelda remaster. If it is Wind Waker, I will lose my mind. But, like, that. That alone will be enough for me to be like, nope, I need it. Like, that'll be like Invader Zim. I had, like, you know, jumping up on a desk and screaming, I have a mighty need. Kind of like, for me. But. Yeah. Well, what I've heard is that Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are both probably going to have some sort of, like, performance upticks. And that's just. That's just like. That's a software update. Like, you can patch that in. So that's.

That's the question. I wonder. Like, it. I. I don't think they're gonna do that because it's Nintendo. I don't think they're gonna be like, yeah, here's your patch for Tears of the Kingdom. It's gonna work better on the Switch. I think they're gonna sell you a switch 2 version of tears of the Kingdom, I think is what's gonna happen.

Maybe. I don't know, like, because that kind of. They do like to do that. But that Nintendo doesn't even know what.

Patches are.

Not in there.

Hey, that's a good thing, because their games mostly come out in very good shape.

Yes, agreed. Yeah.

Unless it's Pokemon. Yeah, fair enough. Those things are just broken, janky messes, and it doesn't matter. And they're not going to fix them because they still sell 30 million units and day, and they don't. It's broken. It doesn't. Doesn't matter. But anyways. Well, gentlemen, you know, it's. It is getting late. We have really sort of run the gamut here. We talked some big picture stuff. We talked some little picture stuff. I bagged on, you know, a Sony executive. Is there any. Anything sort of before we really close out the conversation, just like anything that you really wanted to get off your chest about the industry or did we manage to sort of, like, you know, deal with most of your comments, questions, and concerns that.

Think the one thing I would. Go ahead, Micah.

No, no, no, no, no. Please go ahead.

I was going to say just kind of finishing up a thought on Nintendo like, I hope they don't also lose some of that Nintendo quirkiness. And they have this sort of philosophy about. I almost would call. They call it something. There's a specific Japanese term for it I'm not remembering. But the concept is basically lateral innovation where they take a very matured. I think they call it withered technology and they just expand it almost sideways where they take something that everybody else has and knows and is very familiar, but they just come up with new ways to use it that nobody's done before. And so I'm hoping Switch 2 isn't like just an iterative improvement in the sense that it's just a little bit faster Switch. I hope they come up with this sort of like that lateral withered technology approach where they put some wrinkles in there, they put some really cool Nintendo goofiness in there. And maybe that's going to come through the, the mouse functionality that we think is in the. Is in there that's going to allow you to do some really cool stuff with like PC SIM or first person shooter stuff or just weird goofy like, I don't know, Mario Paint 2 or something. Just something really cool and wild and different and fun that we're just not even explicit expecting that's going to come out of them. That's what I hope they don't lose with the switch 2. Give me something like, yes, you're preserving your base, you're playing it safe, but don't play it too safe. Nintendo. Give me something that's really wild and creative that nobody's expecting out of this machine too. That's, that's what I'm hoping for Nintendo. And that could be what fuels that continued success for them beyond just the. Okay, it's the second version of the same thing I already have.

So, yeah.

No, I mean, as far as, like, is there anything else that we didn't discuss I want to bring up? Not really. I've got some notes here and we kind of hit almost all of them on, on the, on like the big three and stuff. Yeah, it's like you said earlier in the, in the episode, it's an exciting time to be like a pundit of the industry, so to speak, and kind of just watch it all unfold, rent some, unpack precedented times as far as, you know, how old we are as an industry, where we're headed, what's happening with our primary game makers and publishers and console creators. It's all very interesting. So I'm fascinated as ever. But yeah, I agree with you Ever since like Activision kind of, or excuse me, Microsoft kind of went on a spending spree, it's been extra fascinating to me to kind of watch all this, like, where are we headed here with all this stuff? So it's fun to. Fun to unpack all this with you two guys. So, yeah, I had a good time.

Good. Yeah, I. I don't have anything. I just think like, like I said, it's. It's one of those things where anytime I think about games industry, I always, I'm always sort of gobsmacked. Like when I look at the lineup for the, the games releasing in a year and it's like. And then you hear there's nothing to play, there's nothing. I'm like, what are you talking about? Every time I hear that or read that somewhere, I'm just like, you're insane. You're a crazy person. Certifiable, like you need help, stop it kind of thing. But then it's like, it's always interesting. And I think like the last couple years, it's like you said, Micah, ever since Microsoft really started, like, you know, just buying everything in sight. And it got really wild West. And at first it was like kind of scary because it was like, I don't want them to gobble up something that I really love and cherish. But as we've gotten further along, it just, it's kind of fun to just sit there and like, watch it all unpack. Like, you know, at the end of the day it's like, I know it.

Sounds weird and it's probably really nerdy, but like, I literally remember like where I was when I saw that Microsoft bought Bethesda and my mouth was agape. I was like, you are kidding me. Microsoft just bought Bethesda?

What?

I was like, what is happening? Little did I know.

I think I was working and you actually sent me a text and that was back in the days of like trg and I just remember like the firestorm that was like the TRG comments at that point in time and just like, yeah. Was insane.

Yeah. Anyway, fun times.

I was, I was gobsmacked when I found out that Phil Spencer was actually eyeing trying to buy Nintendo. And the fact that it would have been cheaper for them to buy Nintendo than abk.

Oh my goodness.

Well, that's, that's assuming Nintendo would have sold. I love that story where they're like, hey, we'd like to buy you. And they just got laughed out of.

The room from like the 90s or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

It's like we like to get into video games. We want to buy you. And Nintendo was just like, like. But anyways, anyways, guys, it's been, I've had a good time, hopefully you guys had a good time. And listeners, hopefully you guys had a good time. But that said, it's been a bite sized and until next time, do the things.