The 2022 Game Awards: A Controversial Celebration, Phil Spencer’s Verge Interview & Witcher 3 Gets Next-Gen Lovin’ (TWIG 13)

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Hello, everyone. This is Lambency from TheLambencyshow.com, I'm joined here by our host of Vex Electronica, who's here to, you know, soothe you into the gaming news this week as she does the Queen's Wave. How are you today, Vex?

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Welcome in, everyone. I have a proper mic now, finally, so you are able to hear all of the weird sounds I make now in highdef. I'm surprised you haven't tried the gargle in high def yet. The gargle you usually do in high def, I mean, okay, we got to reserve that for certain points. I can't just start gargling off the top.

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We're 30 seconds into this. Fair enough. Yeah, I've just been busy this week. As you know, I've gotten a lot of things going on. I will finally reveal to you what this major project is I'm doing, which is ironic because I just hit you up with some major updates we had on our site.

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We now have a fan page.

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We legitimately have a fan page that people can literally chat. And it's a cool little feature. So obviously, yeah, you could donate. There's a message thing right here where if you record your message, we can actually download that and play it on stream. But then if you click this right here, chatroom, you'll see that it's a legitimate chat room where your messages just stay there.

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So even if we don't respond right away, we will see them and be able to get back to them. So, as you see on the 17th, I put this into the fans to get to interact even better with your favorite hosts and shows. But two days after that, I finally revealed that I've been working on something, and I've been working on something in the background for about three months now. And people aren't even realizing. It was one of the first things I started working on in the background when we first started getting this up and running.

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And within 48 hours, I should be getting Google Play developer options. And what that means for us is it allows me to create an app for our website that will appear on Google Play.

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That's iOS. That's something else I'd have to look into. But the fact of the matter is, 76% of all 76% of all smartphone users are on Android. So I'd rather go to the larger market first. I'll look into the iPhone after, but I'd rather just get what I can done for now.

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I don't want to hear that right now. I've been working hard. Okay. No, I was just curious because I'm not sure how both of those work. But I imagine that it's a lot easier to get the Google way around than the Apple way around, because Apple is really stringent with how they decide to allow things onto their platform and stuff.

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Exactly. That's great, though. That's amazing. Okay, so why don't we get this show on the roads? We're going to start off what have we got here?

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We have a lot. I know last week's episode was pretty quiet. For those of you that aren't aware, we usually do our podcast on Twitch, so this is our first rumble stream, actually, so hopefully this goes smoothly. Fingers crossed. But last week it was a pretty quiet news week.

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Not a whole lot happened and we had a shorter episode as a result because of that. But then Wednesday this past weekend and bam, everything happened. So we got a lot. So some of the big things we're going to COVID today, the biggest thing actually, was that the 2022 Game Awards nominations were put out there. Got a whole thing about that.

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Phil Spencer did an interview with the Verges podcast. I didn't put down the name, but I know it's a Verge podcast where he set the record straight on a lot of things and Embracer Group, who is a billion dollar conglomerate based out of Sweden who's been buying up video game developers as well. They had a pretty notable investor call on Thursday where quite a number of things actually happened. But some of the good news first, which is, I think, where we'll start today, the Witcher Three Wild Hunt, which came out about seven years ago. Now, DD Project Red announced earlier this week that the game will be getting a free NextGen update.

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So that means for players that already own a copy and you still own your copy, PlayStation Five and Xbox Series SX are going to get updated visuals on there. They're going to get rage racing as well as some extra graphical features and patches. PC players will get it as well. That similar patch will be coming to the last gen consoles sometime in the near future. There isn't an exact date, so those of you who are hoping to revisit the Witcher or just at least have it up to date with the current generation of consoles, december 14 is when it's coming out, so be prepared.

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Just in time for the holiday break. In other news, in a follow up to the story that we reported on last year, so there was a musician over at ID Software, which is a studio under Bethesda, and he came out last week and put a whole statement out there about the whole issue with the Doom Eternal soundtrack a couple of years ago. So last week he alleged that he had been falsely accused by ID Software studio director Marty Stratton of being responsible for the failure of Doom Eternal's official soundtrack. In his 140 word statement, which he published online, you can find it actually still on Reddit and the website Medium.com. He was basically just exercising his right to defend himself and he was like, this is not how it went down at all.

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In his original statement, Stratton claimed that Gordon had delayed the soundtrack that underdelivered, forcing ID to get the game's lead audio designer to make up for the rest of the tracks. Gordon refuted this and among numerous other allegations, he accused Stratton of not only lying about the situation, but also of offering him a sixfigure sum to stay quiet about it. Some of the other allegations that were included in there were just shoddy work schedule, late pay, up to 13 months and excessive work hours, right? Overtime hours. So in response on Wednesday, bethesda called Gordon's account of events a, quote, distortion of the truth, which resulted in It software staff being harassed and threatened with violence online.

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It said it was standing by Bethesda was standing by its employees and was ready to present evidence to back up his account of how events unfolded in an appropriate venue as needed. So I'm going to just read out that statement here and you guys can listen along. The recent post by Mick Gordon both mischaracterized and misrepresented the team at ID Software, the development of Duke Eternal, Marty Stratton and Chad Mossholder with a onesided and unjust account of an irresponsible professional relationship. We are aware of all the details and history in this matter as unequivocally supporting Marty Chad and the team at ID. We reject the distortion of the truth and selective presentation of incomplete facts, facts or inclination marks.

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We stand ready with full and complete documented evidence to disclose in an appropriate venue as needed. The statements posted online have incentive harassment and threats of violence against Marty Chad and the ID Software team. Any threats or harassment directed towards members of our teams will be met with Swift in appropriate action to protect their health and safety. We remain incredibly proud of Ivy's previous collaborations with Michael And and add that fans refrain from reaching conclusions based on his account and more importantly, from attacking any of the individuals mentioned on either side, including Marty, Chad or Mick. Now, I'd like to point out that regardless of this statement, marty did come with receipts.

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So even though he had evidence, they still had the gall to put this out. They're definitely just saving face at this point. I haven't seen Mick Gordon actually respond about this yet on Twitter, or at least didn't come up in my news feed. So I know the immediate response he had was that, no, this was a lie. And then I just saw his original statements reposted and reposted and reposted.

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So there haven't been any updates since Wednesday since this has been put out. If anything does come out though, I will be sure to COVID the rest of it here. We have some do maternal gameplay in the background there. For those of you that didn't play, it was a pretty solid game. And the footage is courtesy of MK Fire 9th over on YouTube.

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So moving along to what I think was the biggest thing of this week and just the most I know we're all supposed to know that awards shows mean nothing and they're all just basically a circle jerk for the bigger names in the industry or an opportunity to dick ride whoever you want, but I know people still hold this to whatever guard at least for now, right? So on Monday, monday afternoon specifically, the nominees for the 2022 Game Awards were announced via Twitter and their official website.

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I haven't even gone into it. I'm just over this already. Well, I was laughing as soon as I knew that I get how big God of War Ragnarok is. But the game had only been out for like five days and it already made Game of the Year. And this is where we're going to drift into this direction a little bit as well, because clearly there is a lot of bias by the people that are leading the voting committee as well as who has kind of become the front man.

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So there are over 20 categories, but the only one that anyone really cares about, let's face it, is the Game of the Year nominees. So this year we had six games. So we had God of War Ragnarok, which as Lamont mentioned, did just come out about a week and a half ago. Now horizon for bin west eldon ring plague tale, requiem three and xenoblade chronicles three. So those are your six Game of the Year nominees this year.

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Now of all of those, three of those, like half of those actually are PlayStation exclusives. Ellen Random and Plague tale were cross platform and Xenoblade Chronicles. I believe that's a Nintendo exclusive. Right? I can't remember off the top of my head, but very well could be.

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Okay, I know Xenoblade Chronicles broke a ton of records, like, it did extremely well this year. Same with Eldon Ring, Eldon Ring's parent company from software, they had a 1200% boost in profits just because of Eldon Ring launching earlier this year. Playto requirements are doing pretty good. I did a review of that game as well on our website, laminysshow.com the Lambdency Show, because if you just put in Lambdentsyshow.com, it doesn't exist. Okay?

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Thelaminsyshow.com thank you for correcting me. So if you want a more unbiased review that doesn't focus around the fact that it's not 60 frames per second, you can go check that out. Ragnarok now, I know God of War has just historically been one of the more popular and bigger IPS. I know that is definitely a staple for PlayStation as through, what, four consoles, all console generations now, there's been a God of War and they've always done very well, not just critically, but the fan response has always been very good to them as well. Ragnarok however, this is just my opinion based on what I'm seeing in terms of gameplay as well as what everyone else is saying because I don't own a PlayStation system.

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But it seems like God of War Ragnarok is, in summation, more or less a copy and paste of 2018 God of War. And on top of that, it seems to have horrible pacing. It lacks a lot of innovation and it's basically a glorified movie, which, if you remember if we take it back to I don't even remember which episode I want to say, like episode eight or nine when we were talking about all the developers running from God of War ragnarok, which I call them a bunch of pansies, especially when they're not even in the same genre as God of War. I specifically stated about how one of these days God of War is just not going to hit the way that God of War hits. And all these people are going to look stupid because you're already showing us you don't have enough confidence in your own product.

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But then to turn around, watch that fail after hiding, it's going to happen. And it's going to happen sooner than people think because God of War Ragnarok, like, how many can they actually make and make it fresh and exciting? Let's be real. They pretty much set themselves in. So unless they completely change everything, add a whole bunch of new characters and timeline, let's just put it like this.

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God of War is not Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy is literally just a plethora of games where every story is different, like completely. God of War is not that. It's the same story being retold in different ways, or so it always seemed to me personally. So to see the fan feedback as opposed to all the reviews, which, come on, let's be real, we know a lot of those are bought.

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We know what happened with IGN where they changed their logo to be God of War related, which sign that maybe they've been paid for. We know that they will not take reviews that they don't agree with. And if you don't give them a good review, they will not give you any pre release codes in order to try the games. It's not a shock to me to see that a game that's critically acclaimed by all the guys who are reviewing it is not doing as well as they had hoped in the fan interest. But just like everything else, everything is bought and paid for.

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So of course, within a week of it being out, it's already up for Game of the Year. And it hasn't even been a whole week. I think that's the biggest problem I have with this. And a lot of people are trying to defend this decision, saying that, oh, people actually have a chance to play it. Now, the Game Award nominations, they usually put out a statement before they make the official announcements telling people this is the cutoff date for games that you can submit for a nomination.

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So this year the cutoff date was actually on Friday. But they made the announcements on Monday. And between Monday and Friday, we actually had a slew of games come out, which honestly, if we're talking five days only, they definitely could have met the requirements for some of these nominations at the very least, right? I'm playing through Pentament right now and I'm really enjoying it. That came out before the cut out date, I think so far.

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It definitely holds up in terms of audio quality because it's around sound, man. Like it carries. But even just there's indie games that came out too, that could go under the indie developer and indie Game of the Year categories as well. So this is a problem I had with these nominations this year. To be fair, though, I think this year was also up until, let's say, September.

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Realistically, it was a pretty slow year for games. We had a couple of releases in January, February, and then it was pretty quiet the rest of the year. And then suddenly the fall hit and we got a lot of releases, right? So in terms of games, I think there were some slim pickings for Game of the Year. But at the same time, God of War title, we already know it's going to be Game of the Year nominated, right?

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See, personally for me, I don't like their cut off for the whole Game of the Year, though. Like personally for me, I feel that for example, if you're going to do Game of the Year, you do the awards in December, right? But you have a cutoff. You have to have that game. And it had to have been out for at least two months in order to have a chance to be nominated.

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If not, it can be nominated the following year because this whole within a week of the announcements, it ain't that, chief. It's just not it, you know, and they did the same thing last year. A lot of people brought this up. They did the exact same thing last year forza Horizon. Five dropped pretty good.

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Racing simulator three and four were okay. To me, I think two hit home. This felt a lot more like two. And a lot of people were shocked that that wasn't even nominated for anything despite being before the cutoff date and being eligible for at least the sports and racing simulator section of the nominees, right? So in kind of looking into what is the history of the Game Awards.

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So Jeff Keeley, who is a, I'm sad to say, Canadian journalist. You all know what Canada is like. She could say that she's Canadian. I'm allowed. So Jeff Keely, he is a gaming author and journalist primarily since 2013.

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He has been the frontman, essentially and host of the Game Awards. So he's a hardcore PlayStation fanboy. And even if he hasn't said it outright, he certainly hasn't shied away from showing his love for PlayStation. This can be seen in several instances from just the way he dresses to the fact that he at the time had a very good relationship with Hideo Kojima. And he even had a cameo in Death Stranding because he was a hologram in that death stranding was a PlayStation exclusive at this time.

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He also has worn PlayStation themed sneakers to a couple of the award shows, which people have pictures of. And he was also one of the first people to try out the new PlayStation Five consoles before they came out in late 2020. Right. So. He's also been equally vocal with Jim Ryan, who is the CEO of Sony North America.

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He's been equally vocal about this whole activision Blizzard acquirement by Microsoft as well, which, if you guys don't recall or haven't heard it in our previous episodes, I'm not saying this in defense of Microsoft, I'm saying this more as Sony's been crying about a lot of things that they don't need to cry about. Right? And we'll come back to this later because Phil Spencer did touch on this in his interview. On top of that, since he took over, there hasn't been since 2013. So now nine years.

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Nine years, there has not been a single Xbox related title that has at least gotten a nomination for Game of Year. Now, this is not, I don't want to be in defense of Microsoft year because in my opinion, especially with the last console generation, I've had an Xbox One, the releases were pretty lackluster. I was just about to say I haven't had an Xbox until about a year ago, like I was without an Xbox for about seven years. But generally speaking, when a game is critically acclaimed or just doing really well and fans are really liking it and it's exclusive for one or the other system, people hear about it. And I don't recall hearing much on the Xbox having exclusives that did particularly well.

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So if there was a game that was on the system that did particularly well and got nominated, it was usually a game that it would be like a Call of Duty where it's available on everything or something along those lines. I agree with you there. I just think Xbox has been lacking quite a bit in terms of AAA development in the last decade. They really went downhill when they decided to put Bonnie Ross in charge of Halo and we all saw how that turned out. Gears was not good either and even the creator of Gears came out and said, what the fuck are you guys doing with our IP after he left?

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But if we're talking outside of AAA though, xbox has been really on the indie drive the last few years. And especially when they started buying up all of these studios, they were buying up indie developers and the indie games they were making were actually critically acclaimed. So I'm surprised that if Stray can get a nomination, why weren't some of these indie games a couple that come to mind is Cuphead. Cuphead was an Xbox exclusive for a while that was critically acclaimed and it did very well with just gamer audience as well, like normal audiences. Ore and the Blind Forest was huge as well.

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That was an Xbox exclusive and that was an innovative indie game performed extremely well for Xbox. Forza Horizon Two is another example. I thought that was a beautiful racing simulator. Absolutely beautiful. They really hit the nail on the head with that one.

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If we're talking about kind of their big titles like Gears of War and Halo, as much as I disliked Gears of War Four and Five, as well as Halo Five and Infinite, gears of War Five was quite innovative in its gameplay, design and mechanics. So if we're talking about innovation, which I think should be one of the top things, if you're nominating someone for Game of the Year, I would argue that years of War I would be up there, could be up there story wise. No characters, no everything else. It takes off the boxes pretty well. That game played fantastically, smooth and beautifully.

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Yes, it just seems and even this year, Xbox hasn't had any triple A titles. A lot of people came out of defense of Halo Infinite. I'm like, bro. No, halo infinite was lackluster at best. As a long time Halo fan, and as someone who played all the games many times over it's, halo Infinite was bliss.

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I literally just played it for the sake of getting the achievements once I was halfway into it seems to be the gift that I've got from a lot of people who like Halo. No one really particularly liked it. Of course, some of it could have to do with the direction that they went. And who was it that they had hired that said that Master Chief doesn't even have a backstory? Now I'm a PlayStation guy, and even I know that he was basically trying to say that he doesn't have a good enough backstory or anything else like that.

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No, even I know that that's completely wrong. Right? You haven't even played a Halo game. Well, like the last time I played a Halo game, it was the original Xbox and it was just because I was at a friend's house. And all I remember is while everyone else is trying to fight each other, I'm over here with a Warthog, just having fun.

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If they shoot me, they shoot me. I was just over here like, yeah, there you go. Yeah. I don't think Kloo infinite deserves Game of the Year recognition. Maybe in terms of some of its sound design.

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I don't know. I don't think it was particularly innovative as well. It did things that other games have done and it did it half ass. Oh, no. It met the bare minimum for those other things like the open world stuff.

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So I don't think it deserves but yes, the point is that there seems to be quite a bit of Sony bias and this is even present with a lot of the more popular websites that decide to review games. You don't have to Dick ride Sony just because they have a generally good track record, right? Even Horizon forbidden west. It was the same response. A lot of people were actually surprised I got nominated for Game of the Year because a lot of people really quickly forgot about it after it launched.

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A moment, let me it was the same thing as Ragnarok in which, yeah, it looks great, but it drags everywhere else. It doesn't meet up to the hype of the first one. It's a pretty looking movie game, essentially, right? And then Stray is the other one. That's weird.

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I mean, a lot of people were happy that an indie game got nominated, but this was an indie game that's only currently available on a PlayStation system that wasn't particularly innovative or exciting. It was just a cat exploring things. And I played a lot. I think 2022 was my year of indies because most of the games I played were just indies and there were far, far more better options for Game of the Year if you're nominating an indie. Right?

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So there's clearly a lot of bias here. But again, like, you guys should not don't take award shows seriously because they are all biased. I am going to throw some of my bias out there. Scorn was fucking robbed for audio design. That's the only thing they got nominated for.

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Was it art, which is fair. That game, visually, that was another level. Quite honestly, scoring isn't my type of game, which is the only reason I haven't gone for it. But I read the review you wrote on Scorn and it shocked me that they didn't win anything.

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Specs fell in love with this game and it got one small little nomination and that was it. It should have been up for several things, from what I hear. I know I fell in love with that game. And whatnot this is where I'm saying I might have some bias here, but if you look at the pillars of a good game, especially for modern gaming, the audio design in that game was something else. I don't think YouTube videos do justice for it.

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If you ever decide to play Scorn, I know it's limited to Xbox consoles right now, but I think that's only for about a year. So if you decide to pick up Scorn, play it with a good headset on because it makes a huge difference in the gameplay experience. Huge difference. Hearing all those squishes and shit, it's something else. But I'm blown away that they weren't at least nominated for audio design, of all things.

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Right. So, yeah, that's where we are with the Game Awards. So they will be live on December 8 for those that do want to catch it. But yeah, on top of this, for basically every other category you can think of, the same games were essentially nominated for all of those. Ragnarok Horizon, forbidden west eldon ring and plaguetail requiem as well as Xenoblade Chronicles.

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Those five games pretty much showed up in every major category that you can think of. Another one that people were shocked about too is gran turismo seven in the racing simulator one, another game that was just really lackluster when it launched back in March of this year. Nobody really cared for it. And PlayStation bias. PlayStation bias, right.

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Thank you for coming in, canoli, it's good to see you here. First rumble stream for us. Believe me, she heard you. She heard you. Can only I'm over here chatting in the background.

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Really poor today. So, moving along, like I mentioned earlier, phil Spencer did another interview.

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Yes, he cleared up the record on a lot of things, though, so, I mean, that's a good thing. But at the same time, I'm in the same boat as like, bill, you don't have to keep doing an interview every other day. It's okay. So before we jump into that, there was some other interesting Xbox news. So if you guys aren't aware, both PlayStation and xbox in recent years have really been cracking down on online players in terms of safe spaces.

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So Microsoft released its first ever digital transparency report to reflect this for the Xbox platform, specifically reviewing that the company took proactive action against throwaway counts that violated its community guidelines 4.78 million times within a six month period. I just like to point out that three of those were me.

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I've lost some great gamer pictures because of that. So the report, which provides information regarding content, moderation and player safety, covers the period between January 1 and June 30 of this year and includes a range of information, including number of reports submitted by players and breakdowns of various proactive enforcements, meaning temporary account suspensions taken by the team. Now, in comparison, this is a jump from 4610 back in the July to December 2021 period. If you guys aren't aware, I don't know if it's the same on PlayStation, so lamb and seal have to let me know. But on xbox, when you choose to report a player, it will give you like seven or eight reasons why, including like death threats or harassment and all of that stuff.

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And there's another way you can fill in the thing, but essentially you can fill out the other thing and not put anything. Let me get this straight. You want to know a PlayStation does this too? Okay, so I have no idea because I don't go and report people. I don't really see the point in it unless they're literally threatening to do something crazy like, I don't know, suicide bomb or some shit like that.

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Whether I like their speech or not, I believe in free speech. I may not like them, I'll just mute them. The few times I have reported people, it's been for cheating, it hasn't been for anything else, and it's always been on. Well, yeah, there's always that. I will report for cheating, obviously, but.

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I mean, as far as what they're trying to do now, you know what I mean? Like, he hurted my feelings. I should go report him. No. So anytime.

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This is why I actually have Smurf accounts. I have Smurf accounts just so I can play online shooters. Because if I play online shooters on my main account, I get a suspension, like, within a couple of hours of playing that game, because I'll have rare occasions where I actually go be Smote and people can't deal with that. So that's how I've lost my two greatest gamer pick profiles. So I only go on my Smurfs now to play that.

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But I played Row Company earlier this year with my husband, and within 2 hours I got a suspension notice because we were just going ham killing people. Same thing with Rainbow Six siege. Again, I went on like, a ten to two kill death ratio in just a casual match. This wasn't even like, a ranked match, right? Someone reported me for that.

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So it is what it is. But I don't like this whole extra step to make spaces safe. If you can't deal with the Internet, you shouldn't be on the Internet. It might coincide with what I had spoken about before I had semi spoke with you about it, but I had also made that whole article about the Department of Homeland Security signing that contract to try to make safer spaces online, because apparently people are recruiting kids for violence and terroristic means and all that other stuff. Their quote is not mine.

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And then I brought up the whole fact that we all know what this really is. It's a gross overstep by the government, and nothing ever been verified. They've been beating the same drum for as long as I've been alive about how video games cause violence with no correlation. No correlation has ever been proven. So we all know what they're really doing.

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All right, if you believe in personal accountability, if you believe in the traditional family roles, if you believe in being the ruler of your own destiny and stuff, you are now considered an extremist, and we must silence you. All right? I specifically stated in that article there's a reason I'm sitting away from multiplayer games. It's not just because A, I enjoy single player games better, but it's mainly because of B, well, the environment is just not the same. Now, I'm not saying that I'm going out there and being super hateful or anything else like that, but it's like you can't say anything without someone getting offended and reporting you for some shit.

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And now you've got the Department of Homeland Security monitoring these multiplayer games. Like, come on, let's be real. We know who they're really targeting, and it's not for the benefit of mankind. Sorry, just by the way, I see cannoli's messages, but it won't let me respond in Rumble chat. Maybe it's because I'm new to it or you might not be signed up.

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No, I'm signed in. We'll figure it out some other time. But thank you about the mic that canole. Thank you. I'm really liking this new microphone set up as well, and I hope our listeners do on the replays.

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So no, I agree with you 100%. Latency. We also all know why they're doing all this shit. It's just to monitor us and collect more information. Let's face it, especially when it comes to Microsoft.

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They've already got government contracts and they are working on AI. So it should come as no surprise that that kind of thing is going on on their game. I specifically said it's more likely going to happen, it's going to start on Microsoft because they already have those contracts. So it's more likely they'll happen of that and then slowly just spread across all platforms exactly like a disease at this point. You can't hide from it in the technological age, unfortunately, which is sad, but it is what it is.

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You can take whatever steps you can. Right, so now to his Big Verge interview. There's a couple of things we're going to COVID This is a long interview, he said a lot in here. So the first thing, let's address the Activision Blizzard acquisition, which is ongoing, which the European Commission just opened a second line of inquiry in there they announced last week. So that's ongoing.

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The US is going to make an announcement in December, I think, or January, I can't remember the exact date, but either way, the deadline to do all of this is going to be March, right? That's when hopefully the acquisition will go through. So when asked about how it's going, spencer claimed that mobile gaming is seeing far higher growth in console or PC. And he admitted that Xbox is a very minimal presence on mobile. Quote, anybody who picks up their phone and decides to play a game would see that on their own.

[00:35:54]
He went on to say that with absence in mind, Spencer considered urgent for Microsoft to make a presence in that space. He said, quote, if we're not able to find customers on phones on any screen that someone wants to play on, you really are going to get segmented to a niche. Part of gaming that running a global business will become very challenging. So essentially, as mobile gaming grows and console gaming remains stagnant, microsoft's market share will shrink. He also concluded that it's critical that if you're trying to run as a scale global gaming business, that you meet your customers where they want to play and more and more mobile is becoming the place people want to play.

[00:36:35]
He indirectly responded to the criticism from Sony concerning Microsoft's future ownership, saying that the idea that Activision is all about Call of Duty on a console is a construct that might get created by our console competitor instead. Right. So to go into more of that, he also went on it's not about at some point I'm going to pull the rug underneath PlayStation Seven's legs and say, AHA, you just didn't write that in the contract enough. There's no contract that could be written that says forever. This idea that we would write a contract that says the word forever in it, I think is a little bit silly.

[00:37:08]
But to make a longer term commitment that Sony would be comfortable with, that regulators would be comfortable with, I have no issue with at all. So, I mean, I've long speculated that this ABK acquisition was mainly for the mobile because King, which is what the K and ABK stands for, they do the Candy Crush stuff and they rocket billions and billions of dollars. They rack up so much money that I know everybody has seen those mobile game ads where it's just unrealistic mobile games and they're like, oh, this is how the game actually is. But if you actually install any of them, it's just a rip off. Candy Crush.

[00:37:46]
That's how much money Candy Crush has made. That people are now making these high tech ads and make a game look like something it's not even close to to try to get you to play and spend money with them. Exactly. And even Activision and Blizzard, they've gotten pretty heavy on the mobile market too. Activision has the mobile Call of Duty and Blizzard hasn't shied away from, I think Hearthstone is Activision, not Blizzard, right?

[00:38:12]
Yes. Okay. Yeah. So Hearthstone is on mobile as well, which actually if you look at the numbers for that, that's also really impressive. So comparatively Call of Duty on console is minuscule, which is crazy when you consider how much money that franchise makes on console.

[00:38:29]
Right. But in the grand scheme it's actually really small speculated because I made, I think, mobile games, though in all honesty, a lot of people look at it similar to I do, where it's just kind of like you touch here, so on and so forth. It's not very interactive and I know they are getting better at technology and stuff, so this thing can actually go one of two ways and stuff. I mean, we are seeing the increase in mobile users, yes, but at the same time I don't really think we're seeing the increase in mobile users that are the type that have all the accessories you need to actually play it like it's a controller or whatever and they're playing more kind of tap and click kind of games, if that makes sense. So I'll give you a perfect example.

[00:39:17]
The final Fantasy community. We were so hyped when we found out that they were making a Battle Royale. That was Final Fantasy related. Not even that we wanted a Battle Royale, but just the fact that we could all play together and it was great. But they're already shutting down the server, citing lack of people.

[00:39:36]
And the whole reason why you want to take a wild guess, it was mobile only. It was mobile game only. Like it was not available on PC or on any console. It was just a mobile game. And I'll be honest, I didn't get it.

[00:39:51]
I never played it and I have no intention of playing it because I look at mobile games as a point and click thing. So while there are more mobile game users and teams every year, they're getting more and more. I also believe that they're not looking at games the way that I think some of these big companies think they are, if that makes any sense. I feel like they're in for a disappointment. Only time will tell at this point, right?

[00:40:18]
I mean, unless you could change the status quo in the way people think about mobile games, it is possible, but it's a tall. I think it's coming even just like accessories manufacturers like Logitech and Razor, they've even been making to come up to make accessories more for mobile gaming. Right. So I think it's going to have a peak, but I think there's a lot of limitations with mobile gaming, with the way mobile is right now. So, in that respect, personally, I think we're probably going to see more technical innovation in terms of actual mobile phones to adapt to the mobile gamer, because it's a huge market.

[00:40:58]
It's not in North America as much, but overseas it is a massive, massive market. In terms of just like the PlayStation part. Yes, that's what I meant by overseas. My certain bits in Asia, where it's just their entire culture, that's gaming for them. There's no consoles or PCs.

[00:41:21]
It's just, give me a good game and we'll play. Yeah, apple does want to get into gaming. Canola yeah, you're right. They're trying to breach that market as well. So for the PlayStation comments he made yes.

[00:41:32]
So, like I said, he's made the comment time and time again that Call of Duty will not be leaving PlayStation consoles. At first, the comments were like, oh, we're going to honor the existing three year deal that Activision signed with Sony for PlayStation exclusives and early access and all that stuff. Now, his tone kind of changed, though, as people kept inquiring about this being it went from, oh, maybe we'll keep it on, to, yes, we're just keeping it on now. Phil Spencer is just kind of like the frontman for things. He by no means makes all of the financial decisions, nor does he really have a hand in where the company or the Xbox side of the company decides to take things as much.

[00:42:13]
Right. But that being said, and I've said this many times, I believe, Phil, in this respect, I really do believe that Xbox will not run the risk of taking Call of Duty off a PlayStation. I think financially, it makes no sense. From a business side, it makes no sense. The smart move is to keep that community there and instead find another way for Microsoft to come to the Sony console and put Sony in more of a competitive corner that way, right?

[00:42:44]
Because as it stands, and we covered this on a previous episode, sony does outweigh Xbox quite a bit when it comes to original IPS and exclusive IPS, it's literally like a 20 to one ratio. So they have the upper hand. And that also explains why Microsoft has been buying up all of these studios. But he's made it very clear that we're not planning to end this deal anytime soon. I'm going to believe still here.

[00:43:16]
I'm going to believe in here. All right.

[00:43:20]
I will reiterate my point, though. He also has some comments about Star, if you guys weren't aware. I will reiterate my point I have made before, though, is this goes back to even if they keep Call of Duty on PlayStation, xbox is going to permanently have all the exclusives because PlayStation is not going to pay a competitor to get exclusive because all the exclusives that PlayStation had before, they were paying for. They're already doing that, though. They're already doing already they're not very great then.

[00:43:59]
Sony's already paying four things. Let's face it, okay? Look at minecraft. They're still paying money to Microsoft to have minecraft. That's not to say Xbox is like, you have to sign a deal or anything.

[00:44:09]
But the money is going to Microsoft now, right? Because they own Mojang on top of that. I don't know if you checked out what the PlayStation Plus editions were this month, but one of them was a very big Bethesda title, well over a year after the acquisition happened. Where do you think the money was going to get out of? Place Station.

[00:44:29]
Okay, so to answer your question about the Mojang, so on and so forth, yes, but PlayStation is also getting money. It's not that they went out of their way to pay Xbox money. You're thinking about this all wrong. They're not going out of their way to pay Xbox money when they already had it on their platform. People are spending money on their platform and just some of it is going over to Xbox.

[00:44:53]
As far as them owning Activision and Call of Duty, that's a completely different story because while they'll still get the games and they will still get the revenue and all that other stuff from people buying the games itself for the PlayStation platform, and you know, that currency they buy, some of them will go to Xbox. That is completely different than going to Xbox. And I'm like, hey, I want an exclusive. Here's $40 million. Make me an exclusive, all right?

[00:45:23]
There's a big difference between transactions that have to run through multiple sources versus, hey, I need exclusive, so here's money, all right? Because it was already there. Those are two separate kind of things, and that's what I'm getting at. So, again, like I said, xbox, PlayStation is not going to go out of the way to go get exclusive if they're going to have to pay millions upon millions of dollars to get these exclusives to a direct competitor. Okay, he made some comments about Starfield as well, which was supposed to come out last Friday on November 11, but has been pushed back indefinitely to an unknown date, the last I recall.

[00:46:06]
But it's on the timeline to come out sometime in 2023. So he's confident that delaying it was Bethesda's was like a good move on Bethesda's part. It's going to be a Xbox exclusive. Two for those that were unaware. He said, quote, we have experienced shipping games too early.

[00:46:25]
But in hindsight, when you look at a game like Starfield, which has taken so long and so much investment in new IP from the team, the decision to give the team time to build a game that they feel they should be building is just the right thing to do. Starfield and Redfall, which is going to be another Bethesda game that has an Xbox exclusive as well, which are our first big Xbox games. With ZeniMax, Bethesda's parent company, coming into the team, I just wanted to make sure those teams felt like they had the support they could get from Xbox. Maybe feel some of the benefit of being part of a larger organization that has revenue streams and other things going on that would be helpful. So he also went on to say that he's very aware that Xbox has been lacking first party games, this new generation, and even towards the end of the Xbox One generation, and said Xbox gamers should be excited for 2023 because there is a lot in store in both AAA and indie titles coming now.

[00:47:23]
Also remember a couple of months ago there was an image that came out of Phil Spencer in a room. There was first of all a white Series X on a shelf behind him, which was, oh no, that was different, that was a Logitech commercial. Sorry, they dismissed that as rumor. But then he did another interview where he had a little box on the shelf behind him and this had been identified as Keystone, which is kind of the tiny, basically as you go kind of cloud gaming based console that they've been working on quietly behind the scenes. Now, they haven't released a release date for that at all, nor have they even given a price point.

[00:47:58]
But Phil Spencer did reveal that it's kind of been put on the back burner for now, saying, quote, it was more expensive than what we wanted it to be. When we actually built it out with the hardware that we had inside, we decided to focus in team's efforts on delivering smart TV streaming apps instead. So Microsoft delivered an Xbox TV app in partnership with Samsung last year, which started, but it doesn't mean the idea for the streaming only Xbox console is fully over. With Keystone, he said, we're still focused on it and watching when it can get out at the right cost. Microsoft allegedly wanted to aim for either $129 or $99 for the streaming device, but he said it would actually, given all the technical components that are in there and the hardware that they're using, it actually would have pushed the price closer to 299, which is almost on par with the Xbox Series S console.

[00:48:52]
So he wants to wait till there's an opportunity to lower that price, ideally, or maybe change something with the materials used. But for now, Keystone is on the back burner and they're just focusing on their partnership with Samsung now. In other news, this is not related to this interview that Phil Spencer did, but it's still Xbox related. I know a lot of people have been harping on the Xbox Series S because it does not have the capability to deliver 60 frames per second. I find this whole 60 frames per second argument to be silly because of a game runs fine and renders fine and you've got no issues.

[00:49:33]
What fucking difference is 60 frames going to make from 30 frames? If you guys aren't playing games with 30 frames per second right now and you don't like, they run fine. I haven't encountered a game where I have had an issue where frame rate is the problem. Right? But the lead producer from Flying Wild Hog, which they have a game dropping on Wednesday, which I'm actually going to be picking up, Evil West, which is a great mashup between basically it's a red Dead to meshed with left for Dead, that's essentially Evil West, so I'm pretty excited for that.

[00:50:05]
So someone asked him, like, because that game is also going to be at 30 frames per second, and a lot of people I saw on Twitter were canceling pre orders because of that. He was asked explicitly if the Series S was holding them back. He said, quote, the answer is as simple as this. We tried everything, but we couldn't guarantee 60 frames per second 100%. It would sometimes fall below that, which I think is worse for the experience than a stable 30 frames.

[00:50:30]
They also said in response to the series as no, why would she hold them back? Meaning we're not forced to make the Series X version look exactly like the Series S, so we're not limited as developers. At the same time, the Series S is an excellent market product. I know a lot of people who use it, and it's all in one box for family entertainment. So just to put another kind of nail in that coffin again, a couple of weeks ago, remember we discussed that comparison, right?

[00:50:56]
Mind I was shocked at the specs because I'll be honest, I have a Series S. I don't have an X, but I have a Series S and I have a PlayStation. And from the numbers perspective alone, it looked like the PS Five had the worst specs of them all. But from a visual perspective, visually, from what I saw, the PlayStation was a lot better. The loading times are a lot quicker, pretty much every aspect that it could perform on and perform better than my Xbox Series S did.

[00:51:28]
So that's why I was more shocked about those stats than anyone, that apparently the specs aren't as good on the PlayStation Five as they are on the Series S, because while that may or may not be the case, that if that is the case, then whatever they're using to process everything is not working.

[00:51:49]
Because, like I said, I was testing them and stuff, and just from what I experienced, the PlayStation had faster loading times and everything. Like, the graphics appeared to be better. I seemed to get higher frame rates, all that other stuff. That's not to say that the Series S wasn't doing good, because they were, but it's just it was faster on my PlayStation. There you go.

[00:52:13]
Right? But everyone is coming out. Developers. These aren't even just like journalists or anything. These are actual people making the games that are coming out and saying, we're not having issues with the series, asking, why are people complaining about this?

[00:52:28]
Just because one fucking guy who made a fish in a bowl game complained about it one time on Twitter. Now, everybody knows him as that guy, right? But, yeah, like I said, I showed Lamb and C the chart of just the technical specs, and when you rank them all, the Series X is the most powerful of them. But in some respects, compared to both the S and the X, the PlayStation Five is lacking. But then in terms of, like you said, graphics, right?

[00:52:57]
The PlayStation Five out did both of them. I think it beat out the Series X by a very narrow margin. Right on top of this. Now, I know our other co host, Mikey RPG gamer, disagrees with me on this. He says that Xbox fanboys are toxic.

[00:53:14]
I have encountered a very different nature, instead of which Sony fanboys are the toxic ones, not just against Xbox games, but also against their own player base.

[00:53:29]
So, pentiment, like I mentioned earlier in this podcast, it came out earlier this week. I'm playing through it, right? Not everyone's cup of tea. I will go into this saying that it got great reviews from the critics overall, but if you don't like narrative games and you also don't like reading a lot, then you won't like this at all, right? This is definitely a game that breaks a lot of the normal patterns you would associate with gaming.

[00:53:55]
And for that reason, I think a lot of people are shitting on it without even really giving it a fair shot. So on the Metacritic website, the game debuted with a critic average of 86, right? It was almost on par with God of War I launched, surprisingly enough. But the fanbase response. It's like a six, seven or 67.

[00:54:18]
So people went into the reviews and it's basically just Sony fanboys shitting on it and say, oh God, I'm just going to keep playing God or Ragnarok. That's going to be better, right? Metacritic hasn't done anything to do like to take this off because they do have a policy where if they feel the reviews are not fair or irrelevant, they'll take them down. But they haven't been doing that so far with pentiment at the very least. But the users that are playing it are actually giving it great reviews so far.

[00:54:45]
And again, this is because it appeals to a very certain gamer base, right? You cannot compare a Pentagon and God of war ragnarok. They are two very, very different games in every way possible. Right. So just an instance.

[00:55:00]
You can find that thread on Twitter. I put it here. The user name is PVone. He did some screenshots of it. If you go to Metacritic, you can find them too.

[00:55:10]
Just look at the lowest rated reviews and you'll see. So the game has been getting review bombs because of that by Stony. Like you said, that's a very niche market, that kind of game. But it's primarily text based. And we all know that people don't like to actually fully read things and get a full understanding of anything.

[00:55:31]
They like headlines, they don't mind reading once in a blue moon. But they're not going to go out of their way to actually get a full picture and stuff. So you got to give them you got to give them picture books and videos to get them to get some sort of sense. People like children treated like children. But I've always said as far as games like that where it's primarily text based, I think that would be a great tool.

[00:55:58]
Especially like for people trying to learn a second language as an adult. If they give you an option to switch the language but at the same time do it in a teaching mode. So you do something you enjoy doing which is playing video games while you learn another language. Like give me a real cool video game and I'll go learn Spanish and everything else. Come on.

[00:56:23]
That's actually something I never knew. I want to learn Spanish, I really do. However, let's be real here. I'm in my thirty s now. It's a lot harder for me to learn things and hold on to things.

[00:56:38]
I can't grasp them like when I was younger. So in order for me to do it, I'm going to need something that's going to be appealing to me. So give me a video game that's willing to teach you a second language but at the same time make it fun. And not like the elementary school kind of games where it's like, do you see the fire truck? Don't give me one of those.

[00:57:03]
Yeah, no, that's actually something I never thought of. And you make a very valid point. That is a learning medium that gaming developers can definitely explore. So jumping right into Sony news. So a couple of just little things that happened really from them this week.

[00:57:18]
So if you guys aren't aware, NFCs are unique, non interchangeable units of data that are stored on blockchains, which is like a digital ledger, essentially, which allow users to buy and sell digital products like in game items or artwork is something we're seeing a lot more happening in the gaming industry right now. Technical Difficulty, originally filed last year and published this month of Sony patent is titled Tracking Unique Ingame Digital Assets Using Tokens on a Distributed Ledger. It covers a system which can be used to track the creation of, use, modification and transfer of digital assets created within a game, and assets created based on gameplay of a video game. Individuals often find it meaningful to own or use physical items related to respected celebrities or activities. For example, fans of skilled baseball player Bay Ruth, or of baseball in general, often seek to purchase and own baseballs autographed by Ruth, baseball hit by Ruth in an important baseball game.

[00:58:16]
Trading cards depicting Ruth and the like is what the patent notes. Now, Sony suggests that a system could be used to verify the authenticity of digital assets used by skill players or popular content creators, which other players may want to buy, sell or rent. Sony also recently launched its new loyalty scheme called PlayStation Stars, which we dived pretty deep into a few months ago now, which enables players to earn digital rewards by completing various activities. However, it was quick to distance the program from NFPs, which have attracted criticism in some quarters due to the former high carbon footprint and stupid perceived to be cynical implementation. Grace Shed, PlayStation's vice president of network advertising, loyalty and licensed merchandise, told the Washington Post, quote It's definitely not NFPs.

[00:59:05]
Definitely not. You can't trade them or sell them. It is not leveraging any blockchain technologies, and definitely not NFPs. Like I said, this isn't something that is new to the gaming world. Big companies like Square, Enigs, Ubisoft, Konami, and Sega have all either considered or started working on NFC and blockchain related games, right?

[00:59:28]
It's only a matter of time till Sony and Microsoft jump onto it too. In all honesty, like, this is just the way, unfortunately, gaming is going, even though a lot of gamers are not on board with it. Now, back to God of War Ragnarok, though, which we've already spoken in length about. The stats actually came out for the sales, the physical sales specifically. And it's come out that in the UK.

[00:59:50]
At least, God of War Ragnarok is the second biggest box game launch of the year, behind FIFA 23. That means that this PlayStation game sold more boxed copies in its first week than Elder Ring, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare Two, and Pokemon Legends Arcus. Which came out two years ago now, I think, which has already been kind of the leader in terms of box copies before. So that means that so of all the box sales, 82% of those were with the order for the PS. 512 percent of them actually came from that PlayStation Five bundle that comes with God of War.

[01:00:26]
So that's actually very impressive because box has been going downhill in general for gaming. Everyone's making the switch to digital. There was also what's his name, so creative director Corey Baldock, who actually was behind the 2018 God of War reboot, he had some things to say about Santa Monica studio, which is basically PlayStation's flagship studio at this point. He said currently the studio is spread out on a lot of different things, but declined to offer specifics. So, I mean, good things in store for Santa Monica, hopefully, if you guys are interested.

[01:01:00]
There's also a bit of a leak this week too, that for Black Friday, which is coming up at the end of this week, now running from November 18 to 28. There might be a PlayStation Plus discount for the subscription service. So there was an interview that Hidiki Hideki, I might have mispronounced, that it'suno had earlier this week in terms of he's a creative director behind, like or not creative director, but he's the mastermind kind of behind the Devil May Cry franchise as well as the Bayonetta franchise. So he had an interview and he discussed a number of topics with Kichiro Toyoma, which is the creative director behind Silent Hill. And basically he went on to say that he had a lot of disappointment when it came to the PlayStation Three.

[01:01:49]
Initially discussing the tricks Capcom developers would pull off to make PS One and PS Two games look better as soon as recalled it was really about learning the hardware specs. It was strange with the PlayStation One and PlayStation Two that we could work with so many semitransparent layers. We could just pile them up and make visual effects. On the contrary, we couldn't do this on the PlayStation Three and onwards. Everybody struggled during that generation and we really felt let down.

[01:02:16]
He explained further that he noticed a real difference between the development of Devil May Cry Three on the PlayStation Two and Devil May Cry Four on the PlayStation Three. The shift came right between DMC three and DMC four. For me, we were told that we couldn't even replicate what we had done before. For five years, all we had done was work with semitransparent layers to make games look cool on the PlayStation Two, and once the PlayStation Three came out, we couldn't even think of that technique. I think developers all over the world struggled.

[01:02:46]
In other news, he mentioned as well that he's working on a sequel to Drag His Dogma, which I know is a huge hit for PlayStation players, and they're actually working on a 10th anniversary version of that game of the original as well, which is available on Steam. So as we mentioned earlier, Embracer Group had a pretty big investors call earlier this week, and there were a number of things that came out in there. I think the one that was most notable for a lot of people was Dead Island two, which was scheduled to come out in February of 2023, has been pushed back to April 28 now, so it'll be coming out in the spring. I mean, this is no surprise, at least to me, because this game has been in development for about a decade now. And even between the footage that we got in, what, 2014, compared to the footage that we got just a couple of months ago, they looked basically the same.

[01:03:40]
There was nothing different there. So I think we're going to be getting just I think I gained some tank. In all honesty, it will sell a lot of copies because Dead Island has a fan base, but it won't be received very well. So. On top of that, they did announce as well some issues with So Volition, which is the team behind the recent Saints Row remake that came out back in August, which also did colossally poorly, is now being broken up and absorbed into Gearbox, which is the main studio behind the Borderlands franchise, which is also currently owned by Embracer.

[01:04:16]
So this comes on the same day that Volition released the Bright Future update for that Saints Row reboot, which was on Thursday, which fixed several hundred bugs present since the game's original launch. Fans who enjoy the Saints Row Volitions move places the future of the franchise in doubt now. And even once the financials came out because the sales records were really weak for that game as well, they did say that they don't know if there's going to be another one in the works even then. So I don't think we're going to see a Saints Row for a while after this one. Now, we already know that a lot of people that are working under a couple of Embracer studios, such as, like Crystal Dynamics, we know that they've already branched off to help Microsoft specifically on the Fable reboot.

[01:04:59]
I imagine these people will also just kind of be delegated to whatever studios Embracer has. They didn't specify what will happen. They do employ Volition to employees, about 150 people right now. So I don't think they're all going to lose their jobs. They'll just be moved elsewhere.

[01:05:14]
Now, a couple of months ago or not a couple of months ago. I said a few weeks ago, actually, the company did launch an online questionnaire as well, specifically asking if people would like to see a Legacy of Cane remake. And compared to their older surveys, which would get 10 00 30 00 responses, they actually got over 100,000 responses to this. So there's now kind of they're confirming it, but it's not officially confirmed. It's unconfirmed but not officially confirmed.

[01:05:44]
There we go. That there is a legacy of Cain remake in the works now. So have you played Legacy of Khan at all? Legacy of Kane? I have not played, I don't even know what's about.

[01:05:54]
Do you know what that game is about? I'm assuming the Legacy of Kane is about no, I'm assuming it's about someone named Cane in his legacy.

[01:06:15]
Okay, I'm going to look into this now because I know that it's a very popular franchise in general. I know that it hasn't had a game come out in a while. So I figured for those that are listening to our fans of the franchise, they might enjoy that. Now some other news. In terms of this investor call though, there were some big moves in terms of financing for them.

[01:06:37]
So in a statement that is titled, quote, turbulent times create new opportunities. Basically it's set out to say that given that the way the world is in terms of geopolitical and economic and social issues right now, they are looking to essentially reformat their entire company. On top of that, they're also looking to either scale down some of the partnerships that they've made and start divesting some of their portfolio as well. So I think Embracer is starting to, I guess, feel kind of the economic times that are going on right now. And I'm sure that the tanking with Saints Road didn't help either.

[01:07:24]
So I imagine they're just kind of doing a full overhaul of what they should be moving on forward with. Right. We also did get some news that Crystal Dynamics has, I guess this wasn't from the Embracer group investment call, it's kind of separate. So Crystal Dynamics came out and said that it's codevelopment work on Xbox's perfect Dark reboot is progressing extremely well. Crystal Dynamics and Edo CEO Phil Rogers who provided an update on the project during the Embracer group's earning call, said that everything is going pretty well with that reboot.

[01:08:01]
There's no date on that one either. I know that Perfect Dark remake is in the upcoming section of Xbox's Roadmap, so I wouldn't expect that any sooner than 2024. Now it wouldn't be a gaming news podcast for us if it didn't include LSTAR or Rockstar. I should say Rockstar, but we're calling them LSTAR on this podcast.

[01:08:26]
So remember back in September there was a huge GTA Six leak and we got apparently some code in there. We got tons and tons of images and we got a minute and a half roughly of clips leaked online. And these are all early development clips, so just keep that in mind if you decide to go looking for that. It's in no way a reflection of what the game is expected to look like when it's published. But now allegedly parts of GTA Five source code, specifically its scripting functions, were leaked online.

[01:08:58]
According to DSO Gaming, parts of GTA Five source code were uploaded to GitHub and soon were taken down by a DNCA issued by Rockstar. However, you can still find some of the code pretty easily online and I can confirm like as late as yesterday or as recent as yesterday, I should say. You can still find links to that on Twitter, so I'm sure you can find it somewhere if you want. Now, it's worth noting that the lease code is only part of the source code that you're probably familiar with. Reading back in September, I couldn't actually find a clear cut outline of what parts of the game were in the source code.

[01:09:34]
So if anyone finds that, I'd be curious. But this is one of those things that it could damage a company potentially because we also know more or less based on the GTA Six leaks that happened, that they are using GTA Five source code to do GTA Six. So who knows if this will actually finally push back development on that game. Rockstar has been pretty adamant on saying that those original leagues didn't do anything to production, but at the same time, we didn't even have a general launch window. So for all we know, it did delay things, but they just don't need to be forthcoming.

[01:10:08]
I'm pretty sure that's exactly what happened.

[01:10:13]
We talked about that too. I remember when the leaks happened, we discussed this, so I'm pretty sure they pushed it back. But yeah, they don't have to be honest about it. In the weirdest Rockstar news I've read, though, in a very long time, allegedly, Rockstar games turned down the chance to make a DTA movie starring Eminem.

[01:10:36]
God, from Eight Mile to Vice City. They probably would have been a Vice City movie too, is the thing. Well, that's what I was assuming. But like if you've ever seen the movie Eight Mile because that's like the last movie I've seen Eminem in. That was the only movie.

[01:10:53]
I mean, he might have been in other things as like a guest, you know what I mean? Or like a special appearance. But as far as actual acting, I think that was the only movie he's actually been in. I could be wrong, but I think it would be hilarious if he went from Eight Mile, which might be was a big success, to Vice City. Go from the slums of his neighborhood to the slums of Vice City.

[01:11:17]
There he wrapped his way up to the top. You can pick up mom spaghetti at shops, too. There's not many things we know about his mom, but we do know she makes spaghetti. There you go. Kirk Ewing, who is a friend of Rockstar founders, Sam and Dan Hauser, says that a Hollywood agent came to him with a deal back when Eminem was at the height of his popularity.

[01:11:40]
In the early to mid 2000s. He says brothers were offered $5 million, $5 million for rights to a movie starring the rapper by top Gun director Tony Scott. So there was actually some talent behind this alleged movie. Kirk tells a BBC podcast, Bugsy Malone's Grandest Game, but Samhauser told the agent that they were not interested. Essentially what happened is I think at the point it was still in Sam's mind that it might be something that he wanted to do.

[01:12:10]
Kirk says basically he was phoned at 04:00 A.m. By an Ellie producer with an offer. He said Kirk would have gotten Eminem to star, and it was Tony Scott film, 5 Million on the nose. Are you interested? He phoned Sam up and he said, listen to this.

[01:12:24]
They want Eminem in a Grand Theft Auto movie with Tony Scott. And all he said was not interested and hung up the phone. To be fair, I think it'd be hard to make a not hard, but the genre of film that would fit GTA has been done time and time again. So it would have to be pretty innovative for them to make that a fresh take as well. Given the trend that we've seen with video game movies and TV shows, we know that they don't really care about the source material.

[01:12:56]
They just care about that name. When was this whole thing pitched? So this would have been in the early to mid 2000 and M story then because it's only been really the last 15 years where literally they just started disrespecting the source material. Because in the early two thousands when they would take something from one genre or one source of media and move it to another and stuff, they usually did a pretty good job at trying to bring it as close to the source material as possible. So I don't think that has anything to do with this particular situation.

[01:13:38]
I think that they would have done it. They would have stuck with the original source material, maybe going out the rails just a little bit to be able to make the video game more movie like, but generally speaking, keeps the source material because that's the time frame it was in, you know. Bro, did you watch the Doom movie? I mean no.

[01:14:00]
Did you watch any of those? You mean the recent ones? No, just the first couple of ones. I think the first one was fine, but it's still deviated a lot from the original source material. This is grand theft auto.

[01:14:16]
They don't need to deviate, all right? Everything that's in the movies is in Grand Theft Auto, all right? You want crime, it's got it in spage. You want drugs, it's got it in spage. You want hookers?

[01:14:32]
Guess what? It also has it in Spain.

[01:14:40]
Listen, Eminem could have easily had multiple kinds of crack, if you catch my drift. But in positive movie news and this is where I guess we're going to close out tonight's show. I was hoping this would go a little bit longer, but internet things. During an interview with Collider, director Francis Lawrence explained how Netflix has given him free rein to tackle a BioShock movie as he feels fit. This is honestly the first update we've had on this movie in a very long time.

[01:15:09]
I'm still very skeptical about how it will turn out because, let's face it, everything did you play through the whole BioShock trilogy legacy? I've never even played any BioShock. Just disappointed. You could be disappointed all you want. You're the expert.

[01:15:23]
You're the expert. I'm just more into, like, the retail side of things and the political side of things and things along those lines. There are things I know of, but I know what my strengths are. Okay. I think you just go out of your way to try to shame the guy behind the scenes as if he isn't making everything run in the background.

[01:15:46]
All right, listen, how far do you think you can push me, Bex? All right? I'm not the one who take it outside where it's fucking freezing. Okay, to be fair to be fair, since you're talking about, like, politics and stuff, I do recommend playing at least Bio. You know, you play all three.

[01:16:11]
I think the third one was the weakest of them, but all three of them are very heavily inspired by the works of A and Rand and reflect a very dystopian society where there are some authoritarian overtones. So, for those reasons, if you're interested, I do recommend the Bio. Shocking. But back to what I was saying. So, yes, basically, he's been given free rein to do whatever he wants.

[01:16:36]
He said, quote, basically, me and Cameron McConomy, who works with me and Michael Green are going to do what we want to do, which is great. A lot of it is staying really true to the game itself. And we're talking to take two interactive and Ken Levine. Ken Levine is the mastermind behind BioShocks. I think it's one of the best games ever created.

[01:16:56]
He said it's also, I think, one of the most visually unique games ever created. The other thing, and one of the things that always appeals to me, is very thematic, also very true. There's real ideas of philosophies underneath the game property. And it's a really, really thought out. A lot of games may have a great world of some kind, or they may have a great lead character or they may tee you up for great pieces, but they don't really have the ideas and they don't have the kind of weight and gravitas that BioShock has.

[01:17:25]
The sort of combo of real ideas and philosophy is mixed with the unbelievable aesthetic with it. Honestly, just him saying that about BioShock, I mean, still, it gives me a little more hope. But again, given where BioShock Four is going, I just have no hope for that game at all either. But, I mean, little bit of hope for the BioShock movie, which honestly should have been a TV show. You can't fit all that into a movie unless they make it a trilogy of movies or something.

[01:17:53]
So that's all I have for episode 13 of this Week in Gaming. You've got some announcements in terms of the weekly anime recap, correct? Yes. We moved the weekly anime recap from Mondays at 02:00 P.m. Over on Twitch to Tuesdays at 02:00 p.m.

[01:18:09]
Eastern over on Twitch. Don't ask me why. The host said it better for him. And if that's what he wants, as long as I'm available, who cares? So the weekly anime recap is now Tuesday at 02:00 P.m.

[01:18:23]
Eastern. If you go to our website, if you could leave us a review, that would be great. Good review, bad review. Tell us what we're doing. Good.

[01:18:31]
Tell us what we're doing bad. I'm always open to feedback. I told Lamenessie. This too. I'm in this podcast for the long haul, and this is basically my baby now.

[01:18:39]
Creative side is my baby, technical side is his baby. But I'm all in this. So if there are ways you feel the podcast can be better, things that we can drop, maybe things that we can watch you say that now if somebody decided to be a smart alec and be like, yeah, can you drop the technical guy in the background? I mean, if that's what the people want. I mean, fine.

[01:19:02]
You go ahead and do the streams out in Canada with your Internet. I can't say shit because my Internet's been bad all week. But not as bad as mine, though. At least you can have a conversation over discord. Well, I got it up to go.

[01:19:14]
I currently have it going like ten megabytes per second, up and down. But I'm supposed to have like 120 to 140 download and 30 upload, and I'm currently at like ten and ten. And you saw that picture earlier. I was at nine megabytes per second download, and I think it was like under three upload. Yeah, mine has been kind of on the prints all day because of this incoming storm.

[01:19:48]
I've been pretty quiet on Twitter today as a result because I just can't fucking load shit at all. Even the YouTube short you sent me earlier, I couldn't load it to actually watch it. It's just like, this is what I have to fucking live with, essentially. That's all until I moved to the US. This is what I got to deal with as well, though.

[01:20:09]
Back to reviews, if you can also leave us a review on Spotify. If you listen to us on Spotify. Pretty pleased. I will personally send you an audio clip of me gargling into the mic if you can do that for me. Thank you.

[01:20:21]
Is this like the beginning of her adult career? You heard her first on this week. He gave episode 13 Nexus feedbacks. No. Anyone who watched me on Twitch when I was a Twitch streamer knows that I'm fully ready into the adult ASMR part of it.

[01:20:41]
It could have been a career Avenue we've been considering for a couple of weeks now. And so we've been talking in the background about doing a third podcast segment where we call Dex's ASMR and all she's going to do is just be like just cargo on the mic.

[01:21:02]
Here's a brief preview of what to expect if you do leave a review, take that as you will. Sounds like you have a fair amount of practice there, folks.

[01:21:20]
All right. Yeah, that's all we have, I guess. Are we going to try and do a rumble stream? Are we going to do Rumble again next weekend? See how this goes?

[01:21:29]
Yeah, why don't we do it again next week and stuff? We'll do rumble again. We're trying it out. We're not quite sure yet. I do know that I'm going to try to download this and at least get the thought up on Twitch so people don't think we just completely failed.

[01:21:45]
Even then, if you miss it, the re uploads are available on the streaming services regardless, so at least you're catch the audio side of things. Yeah. Alright, so that being said, that is going to be the end of this podcast. We hope you guys enjoyed this podcast, and until next time, enjoy yourself. Alright, thanks.

[01:22:06]
Gargle us out.