The Game Awards: A Night of Controversy and Disappointment (TWIG 16)

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Welcome to The Lambency Show, I'm Lambency, joined here by the one, the only Vex electronica. Vex. How are you doing today? I've been better.

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It's actually been one of the worst weeks in recent memory for me, to be honest, but it is what it is. I'm really excited to just become a nerd on tonight's show. How about you? Nerd. Nerd alert.

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Anyways, week in gaming, and we have a lot of news to COVID So much so that we can't cover it all tonight. Unless we want to be here for about four or 5 hours. I'd be up for it, although I'd probably kill myself afterwards as I've been up since 04:00. A.m., why have you been up so early? It's Christmas season and I still got to get the work done for the back end of the site.

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Got you. I am sleeping on average about four or 5 hours right now. That's it. But you got to do what you got to do. But like I said, we have a lot to COVID So without further ado, Vex, I'll let you take it from here.

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All right, I just like to point out, did you read the notes next to some of the videos I e the brackets that say, remember to loop. Yeah, those are kind of, like, obvious if it needs to be looped, though. Okay, got you. I'm not one of your students there, Vex. Okay.

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Because you often forget, so I put it there. It's not that I forget, it's that I don't expect you to put things like start at 1343 because some clubs are the relevant part.

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Okay. Actually okay. Yeah, let's jump into it. Oh, wait, actually, no, before we have to before we jump into it, I have to show this one little clip I meant to do. This is more of a funny thing that someone left us on our podcast.

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So here we go. Oh, yes. Okay. Don't tell me. I'm going to have to refresh the page.

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Yeah, let me refresh the page. That's fine. I can do hi, it's the old buddy Admin from the Interweb. I read your review and I'm making it weird. Yeah, read the shit out of this review.

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I liked it, too. It made me feel stuff. I'm twelve. Dangly Part, welcome in White Bear dropping $3 from the get go. I didn't even know that there is monetization on Rumble.

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Yeah, man, people can choose to drop money on your channel. I have no idea. White bear dropping $3. Much appreciated. And then we've got then we've got this one.

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I like how this is actually canole so here we go. I'm here just for the hot dog noises through the microphone. Just kidding. I just wanted to go ahead and let you guys know that you guys are awesome. Great podcast that you guys have.

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It's super entertaining. I like the different various elements that you guys talk about. I like how in depth well, research the topics or topics are done in a great format. It's well researched, it's well thought out. I like that there's some discord between both guys, but not in any hateful manner or argumentative manner.

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If there is, it's generally peacefully done. You both get your points across and sometimes agree to disagree or not, but done very class, with a lot of class. You guys are awesome. This is my favorite new podcast to listen to or watch on Sunday nights if I can't get to watch the live streams. I definitely always listen the following day on Mondays during work.

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But I do want to hear Vex make noises into the microphone, basically. So keep up the good work. I'm going to keep supporting and shouting out the channel. You guys are awesome. Thank you.

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Yeah, I was so pleased to actually see these reviews that we had received. And as you know, I had turned it. I took away a lot of the, shall we say, silent moments and tried to spruce up the audio a little bit, kept what they actually said there, had a little bit of music on it, put a background on it and threw it on Twitter to give it kind of like an atmosphere kind of thing. To show our appreciation for those who had left us a review on our fan page, But I really enjoyed these messages from our community. How about you, Vex?

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I particularly enjoyed Adventz because it made me want to change my panties. But for Canoles, when I listened to Canola, I genuinely started tearing up. I was really just kind of humbled by that. I'm happy to see that someone who is also so kind of talented, like, see what we have here in the podcast and give us such high praise. So.

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Thank you. Canole thank you, Advent, for leaving that there as well. And welcome in everyone who's in the chat. I don't think I said hello, we love you guys here over on the Lamb at Sea show, I recently just oh, my God. Did you realize we have 17 people watching?

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I had to refresh the page. I don't look at that. I try not to either and stuff. I just happened to look down at the time. Got you.

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But no, it's amazing watching this community grow, all the hard work that everybody's being put in. We do have some news, by the way. We are testing out a new co host who will be potentially taking my spot for the weekly anime recap on Tuesday. So this Tuesday, check it out as we try to ease this person into that role, which will allow me to get so much more done in the back end and Vex and I can hammer out so much more projects. You mean we can play grounded more because you won't be watching anime in your spare time?

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To be fair, I've also been wanting to write more articles and everything. I just don't have the spare time. So, yes, that's another reason why I put that out. To put a feeler to see if people would be interested in seeing the host of the Lamb and Sea Show play games together. So that could be interesting to see.

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Much appreciated, Connolly. But yes, let's get this party started. Gentley. We're going to start off with the game awards. I know there's a lot.

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First of all, outside of just the announcement and the reveals, social media was pretty salty about quite a few things. It just irritates me how people can't just be happy with what they get. But it is what it is. We'll dive into that. So let's just do a quick run through of the winners.

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I'm not going to include Esports because nobody really gives a fuck about Esports. Okay, so most anticipated game was Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, which honestly is no surprise. Zelda always brings out the fans, always brings out the hype. It did have some pretty strong contenders though, with Star Field and Hogwarts Legacy in there as well. But Zelda brings it, right?

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Best Indie Debut, which was quite surprising, I think, for quite a number of people. So the five nominees in this category were neon White, norco Stray Tunic and Vampire Survivors. Stray won this, which they also won best Indie Game. Which to be fair, I'm not saying that Stray is a bad game. I've watched the game play.

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I don't have a PlayStation, so I didn't play it myself. But of the other games that were in both of those categories, stray is not particularly innovative. So I'm very surprised at that one. I don't know if this was just people trolling online because it's fans that vote for this, but I was kind of disappointed that Stray won what it did, especially for Best Indie Game up against The Lambency Show. The Lambency Show was massive for like the first half of 2022.

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Stray, I remember, just didn't get that much hype around it past those first two launch weeks. Right? So it's what it is for me. Best multiplayer. I saw that though.

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Sorry to interrupt, but for me, when I firstly saw that, I was confused due to the fact that, don't get me wrong, from what I saw, Stray was a great game, but it was almost a resounding consensus that was great. It's essentially a half hour game. However, if you decide to explore everything, you can extend it to like 2 hours. So it's not that long of a game. And anyone can make a game.

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Well, not anyone, obviously people who have no skills in game making can't do it, but any developer can make a game that's only a half hour long. So for me, if you're going to win that kind of award, you're going to need a lot more than a half hour's worth of content. That's what I was thinking too. Okay. I don't mean to shit on Sony IPS here at all in this statement.

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But some of the games that were nominated in the other categories, including like Horizon, Forbidden, west, even, there was a lot of PlayStation fans that also said like, yeah, they were good games, but they weren't particularly memorable or great. I'm probably going to get a lot of flak for this one. But God of War Ragnarok, it did great, it performed great. But Black Friday came two weeks after release and it couldn't even crack the sales. There a lot of people after playing it to you after those first couple of weeks of hype were just like, I mean, it's a nice game, but there's nothing particularly new about it, nothing exciting about it.

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It doesn't feel as revolutionary for the franchise as 2000 and eighteen's God of War was. So I don't know if for this year's game Awards, it was just more like, oh, we don't have a lot to pick. Because at the same time developers are starting to pick up after post COVID. Right? And that had put a damper on a lot of things.

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We've also spoken before about how these game shows are rigged. So while we are reporting on it, keep in mind we're reporting on it, but we also are well aware of how rigged it is. Matter of fact, one of the tweets I put out, I don't know if you remember I said it's so nice to get representation of all three of the big companies. Sony and Nintendo provide the winners and Xbox provides the platform.

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Yeah. It was hosted at Microsoft Theater. Exactly. I like those zoom in. Microsoft provides a venue, but Nintendo and Sony provide the winners.

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Just rack them up. But back to the winners. Back to the winners. The best multiplayer was Platoon Three. That's not really a surprise.

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I think some people were surprised like that I was like, no. Splatoon Three is one of the best selling games ever on The Lambency Show. That really does not surprise me at all. And there was so much hype in the years leading up to that release. Best sports and racing game was Grand Jury's Most Seven, which also caught a lot of people off guard simply because that was a pretty lackluster entry into that franchise.

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Allegedly. But from what I want again, best sports or racing game? See, I don't know about that, but if you've actually looked at the graphics a lot of times, if you look at the graphics of that particular game like this one that came out, it's very hard to tell the difference between real life and the actual game. So maybe the graphics itself carried it, but I would have I don't think that should be a carrying factor. No, that's why I'm saying that shouldn't be the carrying factor.

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But like, look at the other people in that category were F 122, which always is mid tier for a lot of people, FIFA 23, NBA two, K 23, and Ollie World Role. Like, there wasn't a whole lot of competition there, let's face it.

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With my web page will load, I can scroll up. Hold on, bear with me a moment here. Okay. Best simulator or strategy game was the Mario plus Rabid Sparks of Hope. That was, again, not a lot of contenders in that category.

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So that's good news for Ubisoft, though, because they were betting a lot of money on that, performing well. So who knows? To you. Best family game was Kirby and the Forgotten Land. No surprise there at all.

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Best fighting game was Multiverses, which is a WB game. I'm not even really aware of that one. I'm going to be honest with the ads, but I have no idea. It's a Warner Bros. Disney, if I remember correctly.

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It's like a matchup, okay? It's like a match up. The only reason I am aware of this is because I work in a toy store and a lot of the options when it comes to license stuff is Multiverses. And I had to look it up and I guess it's like a video game or something, I guess.

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Best role playing game went to Unsurprisingly Eldon Ring, but I think Xenoblade's Chronicle was a pretty close win for that one. You mean Clinton ring? Best action adventure. Sorry. You mean Clinton ring?

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We're going to get to that. Save that because we're going to do a deep dive into that because that was another different kind of shit show. It's hilarious, though. Best action adventure was god of war. Ragnarok Again.

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God of war. Whenever it shows up anywhere, we already know it's going to scoop up awards. It was in the same category as a Plague Tale Requiem, which, by the way, you can read my review of on the The Lambency Show. That was a pretty good game, but that wasn't as action heavy as the first one was, so I don't think it was best fit for this category. Then there was horizons forbidden.

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West stray as well. And Tunic. Best action game. Bayonetta three. No surprise there.

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That one blew it out of the water. Innovation and accessibility. That was also God of War Ragnarok. I was a little surprised by this one. I know the Quarry was very good with accessibility.

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And as Dusk Falls, one of the main opening features of that game I played it was accessibility. It had a lot of features for accessibility, so I'm surprised that one didn't win it. In all honesty, I didn't like that. The Last of US, part one, was nominated because that's a remaster. I don't feel like remaster should be nominated for anything at all.

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This is what, like the third or fourth remaster? I don't know. I've lost. This would be the second remaster. Yeah.

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I can't keep track of the last of us. They're always doing some sort of cash. Grab it's nevertheless. Okay, yeah, that was definitely your best community Support final Fantasy 14 1514. Final Fantasy 14 online.

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I don't even have to look at the document. Okay. Yeah, you're my Final Fantasy nerd, so you're good. Best mobile game Marvel Snap, which is actually pretty new. So I'm surprised that made it that won so many things.

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But they advertised the crap out of that one. So I guess kind of no surprise it wasn't raised.

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It didn't come out this year. I know, I'm just saying. The best India, as I mentioned, was Stray. Again, I think Cults of the Lamb was robbed on that one. In all honesty, that should have just for innovation alone, that should have won best ongoing also Final Fantasy 14 games for Impact.

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This is where those story esque narrative games usually thrive as Dusk Falls won this one. It had a lot of good contenders though. A memoir, Blue was in there. That was a fantastic story game. Citizen Sleeper was very good as well.

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Hindsight was awesome. The only two I didn't play on that list was endly. Extinction is forever, and I was a teenage EXO colonist. I hadn't heard of those ones at all, but as Dusk Fall was pretty good, I don't know, to me it lost it a little bit in the third act, but it's still a solid story game. Best Performance this is for like voice acting.

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So this was also no surprise with a lot of these. So there were nominations for Horizon, Forbidden West, a Plague Tale, Requiem two for God of War, Ragnarok and one for Immortality, which was that? Like filmsque? Movie, game. I started it, but I haven't finished it.

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So Christopher Judge, who voices Kratos, won this one and he had a really lengthy and heartfelt speech, which I definitely recommend watching if you guys are interested. Best Audio Design my bias is going to show here. I'm sorry, guys, but Corn wasn't even nominated for this category, I just like to point out, and it definitely should have because there is nothing. The squishing in that game is just insane. The blood spatter, the gore, hearing bones rip.

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It's crazy. But this also went to God of war. Ragnaro It is what it is. I'm surprised Call of Duty Model War Two was under audio sign.

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It's not just the fact that, like you said, God of War comes out and it's automatically going to get recognition because there's so many fans of it. My issue with God of War winning is the fact that it's only been out for about a month. I really think that not even a month. I really think that all game awards, like Game of the Year, it should end within all right, if it was released two months before the game awards show, it is no longer eligible. And if it releases after that two month period, it could be eligible for the following year.

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Because what ends up happening is you get these great games that were great all year long that were just well known the entire year. And then you get the super popular franchise that comes out with a mediocre game, but because it's a big name, it automatically just squashes everything else. I've said it time and time again. I can't stand the game awards because of things like this. I don't think God of War deserves any awards, if I'm being completely honest.

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And this is coming from someone who's a PlayStation fan, I don't think God of War ragnarok deserved a single award. From everything I have read, from everything I have seen, from every trailer I have looked at, nothing is new, nothing is exciting. Even the graphics aren't that much better. From their previous entry, it looks more like it's been upscaled. All right?

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The music is the same as it's always been, so I don't really see a single thing God of War deserved an award for. Now, maybe with a deeper dive, I might see something they deserve an award for. But do I see something they deserve an award for this year? No, because it's not a game of the year, it's a game of the week.

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Anyone who's listening, you can't say that I'm biased at all because you heard it straight from a ponies. Now, you're not really a pony to be a PlayStation. PlayStation. I have Xbox and I have PC, but I have been a PlayStation fan since the original PlayStation and have owned every console. All right?

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I can't say that about Xbox. Yeah, that's fair. I think I stopped to a PlayStation at two and then switched over to Xbox, and I had a PlayStation Four for a brief period, but I just never used it, so I got rid of it. Love sheet gets it perfectly. Says learning from Madden.

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Just reuse and I'm reusing assets. That's what God of war does. I think this is just a problem in the industry right now. In general, all of these major triple A titles just seem to be recycling more than anything. And they assume that by making it look beautiful or with up to date, like, gen graphics and all this stuff, that will make up for it.

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Because at the end of the day, unfortunately, that's what the loudest voices always talk about. Oh, my God, this game is so beautiful. But I don't hear anything about the actual substance of the game, so it feels like this was one of those inevitable things. That's why, for example, when this trailer, the Star Wars trailer, started playing in the game awards, I'll be honest, I muted my fucking screen. I couldn't stand it because it's an EA game.

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And EA not only botches everything and is completely cash hungry, but they have butchered Star Wars games since they have Exclusivity. All right? Yeah. And when they do finally fix what the issue is, they've lost most of their fans. Case in point, Battlefront Two.

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You remember that whole fiasco. All right? They have fixed a lot of the issues. However, about 95% of the people that have left now, I don't have the exact stats, but if I had to guess, about 95% of the people who left because of their money grabbed that they did. And those who are complaining about the issues with not just the money, but the gameplay itself, if I had a guess, 95% of those people never returned.

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The other problem, too, with Battlefront to you, was they released it as a broken game. They released it as a pay to play game, and then by the time they fixed all the issues, what, that game came around like three years ago now. Oh, battlefront two is better. It's only now just for a little bit longer than that, but it's only now fixing its issues this year. There's no reason for anyone to really come back to it when there are other multiplayer games that have come out since that not necessarily bit better or worse, but are, I guess, holding the attention better.

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Right? So, yeah. Best score was also God of War, Ragnarok. I don't think they should have won that one at all. I like Bear McCreary's music.

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He makes fantastic movie music. I've heard that in movies and TV shows. But there were some really good contenders in this category. Like Plague tale. Requiem had a beautiful soundtrack.

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Eldon Ring. I haven't even played Elden Ring and I've listened to Eldon Ring music and that was also gorgeous metal. Hell singer was unique. That was all just straight metal music that you basically had to curate sort of yourself because you had to kill enemies to the beat. Right?

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So that one should have I think, in my opinion, that one should have won just for innovation in music. But a plague tale reckon was just beautiful. I don't know. That was a personal winner for me for soundtrack, best Art Direction. I kind of disagree with this one.

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Eldon ring won. I think Scorn should have won. Again, this is my bias.

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Scorn was beautiful. Give us a fucking award, please. Best Narrative. Also God of war, Ragnarok. Again, when it came to the narration for that game, all I heard was like, these side characters speak way too much.

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That's what I heard personally. That's what I see as well. Best Game Direction with Eldon Ring and then Game of the Year, which is the big one. Right? So the nominees were a Plague Tale, requiem Eldon, Ring God of War, ragnarok Horizon, Forbidden West, stray Again, weird One and Xenoblade Chronicles Three.

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That one, thankfully, went to Eldon Ring. Again. I haven't played Eldon ring. I've just watched the footage of it. I picked it up during Black Friday, so I plan on playing it over the holiday break.

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But I'm happy at one because of all of those games, with maybe the exception of Xenoblade Chronicle Three, that one seems to be the most innovative out of all of them. So kudos to them. But that leads us to our next little segment here. I don't know if you want to pull up the clip at all, by the way. Let me see of this thing.

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I don't know if that's going to get us in trouble or not. Do we have the clip? I forgot to put it in the dock. So we can leave the clip if you don't want to. Okay.

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We'll actually play it. Okay. Before we get into it, just so you guys can get the context of what we're about to discuss. That's all. But essentially during Eldon Ring, during the from software team kind of wrapping up their stuff, just like, final play the clip.

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All right. Okay. Just play the clip. Play the clip. Okay.

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So here we go. Here's the actual clip from the Game Awards, which is what caused a whole scandal. So here we go. Supported these titles, and we create the games we want to create and do our best because of you. Thank you so much.

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Thank you, Martin. Real quick, I want to thank everybody and say that I think I want to nominate this award to my reformed Orthodox rabbi, Bill Clinton. Thank you, everybody.

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I love that. I'd like to nominate this award to my reformed rabbi, Bill Clinton. I love it so much. I absolutely love it. I thought this was hilarious.

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So a little background to this. Okay. This kid is 15 years old. He's from South America. I can't remember if it was Brazil or Mexico.

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I'm pretty sure it was Brazil, though. He's been on the Internet before. He's actually done the same trolling thing at other shows before as well. Specifically a BlizzCon event before this. He had a lot of notoriety speaking out about the Hong Kong protests, and he had actually briefly appeared on an Alex Jones podcast specifically talking about that.

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He wasn't like a main guest or anything. He was just in a clip. So because a lot of people heard Orthodox rabbi, given the current climate, with Ye saying all the things he did about Jewish people, a lot of people immediately assumed that this was an antisemitic attack, even though that's literally all the kids said he was escorted off stage after that happened. As soon as the camera cuts, that's all he said. That's how the show ended.

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So a lot of people went on Twitter, I saw, and we're just like, oh, am I being too sensitive? Or was that an antisemitic joke? Was that inappropriate? Some of these people need it. I have more balls than half the men on social media, I feel.

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How are you going to get sensitive about a fucking joke? For real? But I noticed a lot of people were up, like even just like, oh, we shouldn't give this kid any FaceTime, or just put the spotlight on him at all because he's made a Jewish joke, and that's inappropriate. And because she showed up in one Alex Jones clip, we shouldn't give him any of our time. Bro.

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If this is the case, then we should not accept anyone who's been on, like CNN or Fox, which I can guarantee you is a lot of people that the mainstream media holds in high regard. Right. I have heard so much worse from these people who are streaming right now about how things along the lines of, I hate men, I hate white people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and they get away with that. So if you want to start talking about things that you think is racist or antisemitic, when actually it's not, it's a literal joke, why don't we start talking about the actual racism that goes unnoticed? Because you can't be racist against white people, apparently.

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My goodness. Again, it's starting to come out here in Canada over the last year that you can be racist against Asians as well now, because they're amongst the highest performers academically, so they've lumped Asians in together with white people. Now, God forbid someone has a good work ethic, can actually make something of themselves and doesn't use any crutches as an excuse for succeeding. So, yeah, I'm just going to straight out say, if you think this is racist in any way, when this is clearly just a kid trolling, and even people that interviewed him, like, after this happened, admit, yeah, we all jumped the gun and assume this is antisemitic. If you're still upset over this, seriously, grow a fucking pair of balls and go outside and touch grass, please.

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Because there is nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with what he said. Nothing wrong. You're blowing things out of proportion. You're too sensitive. Grow the fuck up.

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Okay, but in that respect, we have some new merch on the website. We do pull that up and show that considering this was an Eldon Ring speech and he brought up Bill Clinton, I would like to introduce our Clinton Ring line, where we have Clinton Ring mugs, stainless steel water bottles, we have bath mats, we have T shirts, we have sweatshirts, we got phone cases. We've got it all over at the The Lambency Show. But I love this design. Bags, what about you?

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I absolutely love this. I love this. Meme only time I will willingly wear Bill Clinton merchant. I actually ordered myself I agree. I actually ordered myself both a cell phone case and a T shirt.

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The T shirt should arrive within the next couple of days. Okay, that's going to be nice. Yeah, I tried to order it, but for some reason it wouldn't send it because my region is Canada. I'm going to try that again on desktop sharper. You better order it for her and then mail it out to her or else we're going to have a problem.

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And you don't want no problems. Don't worry about that. I don't like to put those kinds of things. On my husband. So don't worry.

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He could just order it, keep it there, and then when you go out there next time and stuff, you can pick it up. She knows when that's going to be, given the things going on in my life right now. But besides that, yes, amazing Clinton ringworx. Go get it. You will look like an absolute boss this holiday season.

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Highly recommend. So aside from that, there were a lot of reveals during the game awards. There are actually 40 reveals during the show, which again, people were like, oh, there was there was nothing revealed. I'm like, how can you say there are 40 fucking things revealed? What's wrong with you?

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Touch more grass, please. I'm going to be saying that a lot tonight. Pretty much, yeah. So I didn't want to COVID all 40 of them because if I did, we'd literally be here for another 4 hours. So instead I can then sit down to I think are the 20 that not only got the highest kind of audience praise for Sorry, but also the ones that Lamb and See and I are kind of interested in or have our eyes on.

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So I'm just going to do a rundown. Let us know on Twitter or in the comments here if there's anything that we missed that maybe caught your eye. We've also got a video of all of the trailers just running on loop in the background, just all cut together. So dead cells. This game came out about five years ago, been extremely popular.

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It's now actually getting a new DLC sometime in the first quarter of 2021, which will bring familiar faces from the Castlevania franchise, including Simon Richter and Dracula. This will be the third DLC package for dead cells following Rise of the Giant and Queen of the Sea. Like I said, Q One, so we should expect it before March of this coming year. Horizon had two, actually, announcements during the show. There was Call of the Mountain, which is described as a master at climbing and archery, described as you play as a master at climbing and archery.

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Reyes Ryus, the game's protagonist, is equipped with a hunter bow, which can be used to defeat various robotic creatures. While the game is largely linear, there are multiple paths for players to explore and approach their objectives. There will also include a scenic mode so you can kind of explore around. This will be launching in February 2023 as a PlayStation VR Two exclusive. I think the VR Two is supposed to come out like February 23 or something like that, if I'm not mistaken.

[00:30:23]
Yeah, the problem with that though is if you don't already have a PlayStation Five, you got to spend like $500 for that. Like another $600 for the PSVR Two and then pay for the game. You're talking about like $1,200 plus tax after all is said and done. Yes, unfortunately. So kudos to you if you've preordered one of those and have a PlayStation Five.

[00:30:46]
I'm eager to see how that turns out for a lot of people, because I know there's a lot of hubbub around how limited the launch library was going to be, but this is exciting for Horizon fans. Along with that, Forbidden West is getting some new DLC which is arriving on April 19 of next year, called Burning Shores, which will take Alloy to Los Angeles, complete with the Hollywood sign and display. According to a post on the PlayStation blog, gorilla explained that they want to achieve this grand vision technically and creatively. We've made the difficult decision to focus all of our efforts on making an incredible experience exclusively for the PlayStation Five console. So sorry for those of you who bought it on PlayStation Four, but this DLC will only be PlayStation Five.

[00:31:30]
It is what it is. Street fighter. Six. I know we talked about Street Fighter Six, I think last week because there was an open beta that was launching this month. There's more news now at the Game Awards, so this will be launching sometime in February 2023.

[00:31:46]
All they featured was just a short trailer with the game's main protagonist, Ryu. Oh, sorry, I put the wrong date in here. It was first announced in February 2022. It'll be released on June 2 to tell the future over here, she's announcing something that hasn't even happened yet. Ladies and gentlemen, show is on point.

[00:32:10]
I know now you have to listen to us. We can tell the future. Among other new things coming to Street Fighter Six, they're migrating to the Unreal engine as well, and there will be in game commentary during fights, which is the first time for the Street Fighter series. If you do go to the website, you can still sign up for that closed beta. I haven't checked if there's an official date for it yet, but I know that during the Game Awards it was on the screen there.

[00:32:38]
So if you're interested and if you're a Street Fighter fan, we finally also have a release date. I think one of the biggest announcements is actually Hades too, just based on the audience response. This is a surprise announcement, actually for a lot of people because this game has only been in development since 2021, so it's still relatively young in the cycle. Supergiant did confirm that Hades Two will be released as an early access version on the PC, just like the first Hades was, and the early access build will be available on both Steam and The Lambency Show. They also promised more information during that early access phase in 2023, but didn't say when it would be.

[00:33:15]
Hades One is actually on my to playlist, in all honesty. I just never got around to it because I got really into boyfriend dungeon around the same time it came out. I never got around to play my personal, actually, this one, I put a lot of information on this one. As you can see, it has the most points here to it as well. Yeah, I figured as much because we're both BioShock fans, right?

[00:33:41]
Judith, which is the first official game from Ken Levine's new studio, Ghost Story Games was finally announced officially with a trailer. So earlier this year, Leakers had claimed that they were struggling to make any kind of progress on this game since this would be Levine's first game since not only BioShock Infinite, but it's DLC Burial at Sea, which came out about a year later in 2013. But it seems like given the trailer looks great. In my opinion, it looks a lot like a BioShock game, but more futuristic and less in that Forty S. Fifty S era.

[00:34:15]
Right? Levine also describes the narrative driven single player shooter as a game that's going to explore different approaches to the single player narrative. Ghost Story formed back in 2017 after his longtime collaborator Take Two Interactive. Fuck you. Take Two for what you're doing.

[00:34:31]
A rock star. But I think rock stars are also doing that to themselves. Shut down, irrational games. And a lot of people are just speculating that Levine has basically been working on this game since 2017. At this point, there's no official release date in the trailer.

[00:34:46]
There's just a 2023 year there. So who knows when we're if we will get it? I don't know. A lot of these people will put a year on the trailer and then we don't hear anything at all. And then, oh, now it's November, where's the game?

[00:34:59]
And we get, oh, we have to push back the release date, kind of thing. I just expect this for every game that's announced now that is not an indie. On top of that, we got Bayonetta Origins, which also got a lot of good fan response. So this is going to be coming for The Lambency Show exclusively on March 17. And this also comes just like a week after the series creator announced that Bayonetta Four was already in the works because Bandaida Three just smashed all the records for that franchise.

[00:35:25]
This story will follow a young Serena exploring a strange forest that she's been warned not to go into, but which she must explore as part of a quest to help her imprisoned mother. Another good VR that was announced, though, Ghostbusters, which I don't think we've had a solid Ghostbusters game since that movie tie in one back in the PS 3360 era. I can't remember what year it was. Do you know which one I'm talking about? No, because in all honesty and stuff, Ghostbusters I have always seen as like the original Ghostbusters.

[00:35:54]
Great movie. Wouldn't want to play it as a game. The new Ghostbusters terrible movie would definitely never play as a game. So I don't know of any actual good Ghostbuster ghostbusters games. Got you.

[00:36:07]
Honestly, that last call me. Don't worry. Just call me. No, I'm not calling Ghostbusters. Of course, we all know my tone is, call me, beat me if you want to reach me.

[00:36:19]
Oh, my God. Speaking, that last Ghostbusters movie, the one with Paul Rudd, that was actually surprisingly decent. So I do recommend that, especially people who are fans of the original Ghostbusters movie movies, that was actually a decent one for a modern take on a classic series. Right. But this new Ghostbusters game is coming to VR, and it was already teased earlier this year.

[00:36:41]
It will be coming not only to the PlayStation VR Two, but also the Metaquest Two, which was a price of $1,200. I think we found out it was something ridiculous. Yeah. There we go. So if you want to play Ghostbuster Two, you can either spend $1,200 on the medical two or $1,200 on a place they supply, plus the PSVR Two.

[00:37:03]
Oh, my gosh. If you don't have the money, who are you going to call? My credit loss, pretty much. New credit card companies. This newest Ghostbusters title has been created by Endream, which is the studio behind the last I got a better name.

[00:37:22]
Who are you going to call? Debt collectors.

[00:37:29]
I think they're going to be calling you. If anything, the cast for this new game will be made up of new characters to the Ghostbusters universe, which you can customize however you want. The weapons, you will also be upgradable and customizable, and you can power them up as you progress through the games. And your foes will also get trickier and harder to defeat as you go along to the next one, which actually I mean, this is kind of an exciting one for me, too, just given what's going on at Warner Brothers right now. Suicide Squad.

[00:38:03]
Kill the Justice League. So this would basically be Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, and the Flash as victims, who we presume as victims of who is presumed to be brainiac of the Suicide Squad. This is actually coming from Rocksteady Studios, which, if you guys don't recall, it was last month or the end of October. The two co founders for Rocksteady left after the oh, no, it was last month. They left after that really disastrous Gotham Nights launch, like a week after they announced their departure.

[00:38:32]
Right then they'll also have Batman, voiced by Kevin Conroy, who unfortunately passed a couple of years ago, but has been best known for him voicing Batman in several game and animated adaptations. I'm just I'm a little bit concerned about this one because even though they said earlier this year that they weren't going to touch the WB games part, then James Gunn came in and said that there might be some changes to it. So who knows if the head honchos kind of at the top will have any hand in this. That's why I find this interesting. What's going to happen to this game before it releases on May 26?

[00:39:10]
I don't want to discuss it too much because I'll be discussing that with Canole and the gang tomorrow night. Actually, Vex has become a co host in the what is it called? Mythical Monday madness or something. I mean, you got the first letters right. No.

[00:39:28]
It's mischief, mayhem, movies. Mythical Mischief. Mythical mischief, mayhem and movies. Sure, you got the M's right, at least. But if you want to learn more about what's going on with WB, which there is a fuck ton of, you can tune into that podcast over at Canola Sasquatch on YouTube at 09:00 p.m.

[00:39:48]
Eastern Standard Time every Monday. But back to the list. Back to the list. Star wars jedi survivor. This is probably the biggest one, I think, or the second biggest tied for the biggest one because I think the next one will be equally as big.

[00:40:00]
So we got nearly three minutes of gameplay for this one, which, like you said, just it looked visually great, but it didn't look it just felt like, oh, EA makes great trailers and the games are just a complete 180. Who knows what we'll actually end up getting. But we do have a release date filing for this. So Cameron Monigan, who actually does the motion capture and voice for Cal Kestis, who is the main character in this game, he said he came on stage and he was there for the announcement and everything, and he said that the game will be coming out March 17, 2023. Unfortunately, though, Steam had already kind of leaked this because the placeholder date had showed up online.

[00:40:38]
So we've already kind of known this was coming. This is just confirmation of that leak as well. But in the gameplay, there was a lot of upcoming new characters, both like sorry, upcoming characters that are both new and familiar, including Sarajinda and a new friend called Bod or Boat. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right or wrong. Good news for Star Wars fans, though, subpar news because it's EA who knows death training too.

[00:41:03]
I think this was probably the biggest reveal of the night. Again, not so much because we all knew that Death Stranding Two was coming. There was that leak back in May that Kojima tried to downplay by not saying anything about the Norman Reedus who just notoriously can't keep his mouth fucking shut. Also talked about working on a new Kojima production, which we all assumed was going to be Death Stranding to. On top of that, there's just been kind of leak after leak, it seems like, over the last six months for Kojima in terms of projects that he does have upcoming.

[00:41:33]
But the good news is we got confirmation, right? So the trailer showed off and then Kojima himself took the stage and he said that he had written the story for this before the COVID like lockdowns and everything, but once the pandemic struck, he didn't want to predict any more futures, so he rewrote it. So I don't know what the story line was supposed to be for this, but that sounds kind of dark. He also ventured that he has another project in the works alongside Death Straining too, which is apparently more experimental than this one and will be more unique to open world games as well compared to those that have come out over the last decade. No release date on this, so this was just the first official confirmation and reveal, but this will likely be on PlayStation Five and PC.

[00:42:19]
Death training would have been better as a movie franchise. I agree with that one. I agree with that one. I think most of Kojima's stuff, aside from The Lambency Show, would probably work better as movies or TV shows, to be honest. But I give him Kudos for being the creative mind that he is.

[00:42:34]
Tech and Eight also got a surprise reveal here as well. Nobody expected that one either, so rumors for Tech and Eight have been swirling around for quite a while, but now we got official confirmation that the game does exist and it is in production. This Tech in will feature new gameplay based on more aggressive tactics, as well as a new heat system which triggers aggressive attacks with special moves and enhancements for each character's abilities. This will be built on Unreal Engine Five, and we don't even have a release here for this. So this is the first teaser.

[00:43:05]
I don't think we'll even see it next year. Probably 2024 at the earliest. We'll probably see it. Oh shit, I forgot this one as I go through the list. Okay, I think this is probably the biggest one.

[00:43:14]
And this is a hot take. This is a real hot take. Okay. Certified spicy. Personally, for me, Check and Nate, combined with Mortal Kombat and most fighting games that were around in the 90s have not really been good for about 15 years.

[00:43:33]
Personal opinion I do not like them anywhere near as much as I did when I was younger. Of course, then again, there was a lot less options when I was younger as well. Now we have so many kinds of game options. We had game options before, but not to the extent we currently have. If we don't like them, if we don't like a direction game is going, we could easily find something new.

[00:43:54]
It's really not that hard anymore. Back then, though, even in arcade, you had like a Tekken machine, you had a Street Fighter machine, and you had like, Pinball. So I believe, personally, for me, that the glory days were the best days of these franchises. You can improve the graphics, you can add voice acting. I'm just never going to be interested in these games ever again.

[00:44:20]
It doesn't strike my fancy anymore. I don't find them even slightly interesting anymore. Now more power to those who are big fans of them. I'm glad that you enjoy the game. I'm in no way, shape or form saying that you can't like the game because you like what you like.

[00:44:36]
Me personally can't stand these fighting games anymore. The other thing too is they all just seem now that they're all updated and modern, they all seem the same. Exactly like Marvel versus Capcom. The DC One, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, they all just look the same. They're all just trying to go for realism now and they don't feel unique anymore.

[00:45:01]
But yeah, no, I agree with you. Kudos to those that are still fans of those types of games and who still get hard for them and all that stuff. Kudos to you. Just before we go on to this next one, I actually have some breaking news live from Twitter. Marvel's, Spider Man Two apparently can be wish listed now on the PlayStation Store.

[00:45:19]
Well, there you go. Anyone who's in also breaking news that I'm actually going to be bringing up. This is from the Levinsky show itself. We are in designs right now. I have not officially come up with the official design because I'm going to have to actually talk with you some more Vex to get this because this actually involves you to go along with our Clinton ring line.

[00:45:41]
We are planning on making a special Vex's golden shower line. Bro, I've discussed this with you months ago. I started designing the logo. It's just not done yet.

[00:45:55]
Yeah, I have bad memory, but I'm going to get this up and running soon. So for those who want to receive a special VEXUS electronica go to the shower, you should be able to sue. Now, I wouldn't recommend getting it on a water bottle because that's just weird. Maybe a shirt, though. 100% get it on a water bottle.

[00:46:15]
What are you talking about? I know, right? Just get all that yellow goodness.

[00:46:25]
I'm not trying to bash men here, but do you all have fucking terrible memory? Is this something I need to just be aware of moving forward? Yes, that sounds about right. Okay, got you. Okay.

[00:46:36]
We're more focused on many other things, really. I'm focused on the show too. It doesn't mean I can't multitask. Okay. I had to buy a 2023 calendar today and stuff.

[00:46:48]
One of the ones that has the flip pages and stuff that you write appointments and everything. I haven't had one of those in about ten to 15 years because I'm booking my schedule so much that I can't remember what I'm supposed to do from a day to day basis until I'm like, oh, snap, that was due today. There's a fucking calendar on your smartphone, bro. Yes, which is filled up with random stuff from spam. Does nobody tinker with their phones?

[00:47:16]
This is the second time I've heard this today. Do you guys just buy top of the line smartphones and not see what's in that? Top of the line smartphone? I know what's in there. The thing is, it stood up with spam from my email from years past that won't ever go away.

[00:47:34]
So even if I click Clear Calendar and try to fill up the calendar, my email auto fills the things I just deleted anyways. That's why I bought the calendar. I'll organize your life for you, Lamb. And see. I will do it for you.

[00:47:50]
Sharper needs it much more than I do. Don't get me started. Listen, do I need to introduce you to our reformed orthodox rabbi, Bill Clinton? Rabbi Clinton. Help us, Rabbi Clinton.

[00:48:07]
You're our only hope. You'll need to get on your knees. I did not have relations with that co host.

[00:48:19]
Okay. Baltar's, gate three. So, this game has already been early access for about two years now, but it was officially announced at the Game awards that the game will have a full launch in August 2023. The trailer gave us a closer look at Balder Gate City, as well as the return of characters Minsk and Jahira, and it's also been two decades since fans have seen them in a game, which is crazy to me, which in the oh, I don't know why I copied this line. Ignore that.

[00:48:50]
But Boulders Gate Three has been over a decade in the making, so this is, like, a much anticipated reveal for quite a few people as well. When they revealed all this, they did announce a $270 USD collectors edition, which comes with a large battle diorama of DRO and Mind flayer. Includes a hardcover art book, an oversized D 20 made out of zinc alloy D character sheets, stickers, a cloth map, a tadpole keyring Magic the Gathering booster packs, and a certificate of authenticity. The Silk Collector's edition will only be limited to 25,000 units as well and is available to pre order on the game's official website. Right now, for all you Balder skate fans, what I don't get is how do we have that large of a thing?

[00:49:33]
But do not offer a gate in that package. It's baldur's gate. I think that would be hilarious. Okay, I've been trying to eliminate the phrase Jesus fucking Christ from my vocabulary because I'm not religious, but it feels a little sacrilegious to be taking any god's name in vain, so I've been trying to get rid of that. But I said today, twice now, or, I guess three times now, JFC, people are taxing me today.

[00:50:00]
I'm not in it to win it. Don't push Vex, because she's close to the edge. She's trying not to lose her head. Fire emblem engaged. So this is supposed to be Fire Emblem DLC essentially.

[00:50:16]
That will launch on January 20, 2023. For the Nintendo, of course, that's the only place you can find Fires Emblem, unless you have one of those booty emulators on your PC. For the older ones, this first wave of DLC will also include Tiki, an ancient Maniki to dragon from the original Fire Emblem, who's since gone to appear in later games, including the three DS series. Reboot fire Emblem awakening cure Emblems in engage, grant certain characters powers from another world, augmenting their attacks and generally aiding in battle against strategy games tougher foes. The base game already includes heroes such as the like from Fire Emblem, Path of Radiance, mark from the original game, lynn from Fire Emblem, Blazing Blade, and much more.

[00:50:59]
Remnant Two also got an announcement which the first remnant has been on My to playlist for a while. So this sequel looks pretty good, I'm not going to lie. So Gearbox officially announced that this game will be coming to PlayStation Five, the Series XS PC, sometime in 2023. We didn't even get a quarter, so sometime next year it's going to be coming. It was revealed alongside a 32nd trailer, an extended version, which you can also find on YouTube if you're interested in this game at all, which poses it as a three person cooperative shooter with even more deadly worlds, unique loot and ghastly beasts.

[00:51:39]
Are you guys making fucking snickers jokes in the chat there? I don't know what you're talking about. I just said you're, not you when you're hungry. I ate dinner. You know what?

[00:51:47]
I made my birthday cake finally, before this. Oh, yeah, by the way, happy delayed birthday. Thank you. My birthday was on Friday, but I work Tuesday to Saturday, so I didn't have any time to make it. So I finally was able to make it today and I haven't eaten it yet because I literally just finished icing it 20 minutes before the podcast and I'm not about to rush to eat cake.

[00:52:11]
It's actually, in my opinion, the most beautiful cake I've ever made. So I had to take a picture of it and put it on Twitter. For those of you that are interested at Vex Electronic.

[00:52:22]
So, yeah, aside from that, yeah. Reminisce. There we go. Transformers Reactivate. I actually saw the trailer for this playing in the background.

[00:52:30]
Again, this will be an online action game coming to PC and consoles sometime next year. We have no exact release date, but apparently Splash Damage, which is the developer behind the project, plans to hold a closed beta for it sometime pretty soon. Reactivate will have players explore Fresh new story within the Transformers universe and will allow players to fully immerse themselves like never before, with the option to play as some of their favorite characters from the franchise as they fight the Legion. Nicker's cake was probably awesome, dude. Your piping on the sides was off.

[00:53:02]
Thank you, White Bear. I have like seven of these piping things, piping tips that I haven't had a chance to use, so I just finally took advantage of them. I was like, I'm going to treat myself. So what you're saying is a nice cake. Vex knows how to lay the pipe.

[00:53:19]
Pipe. Lay pipe. Lay pipe. Yes. As I've mentioned before, I have massive balls, so of course I know how to lay pipe.

[00:53:31]
Moving along. What is wrong with us today. We're both having off wheat the banishers Ghosts of New Eden. This is actually the first game from developer Don't Nod since their vampire game back in 2018, which is also I have so many games on my to playlist. I really want to play this one too.

[00:53:55]
I know it got really subpar reviews, but like anything vampire, just throw me in there. I'm in there. So this will take people on a new spiritual action adventure set in 1695 and will incorporate a lot more of the studio's narrative strengths. With a story focused around two lovers, it'll have some action as you'll be able to use tools and powers to banish ghosts in the haunting wilds of North America. The release date is sometime in 2023 for this one.

[00:54:24]
Again, no definitive date for PC and next gen consoles. Now, Lords of the Fallen also had a bit of a teaser here. I know this was first the reboot of this franchise was first announced earlier this year at I think it was the Xbox Bethesda showcase, if I'm not mistaken. So this reboot of the franchise just has a darker setting and takes place about 1000 years after that first game and will feature a world that is five times larger. It will also have a customizable protagonist and a single player campaign with cooperative elements like other games in the genre.

[00:54:58]
This is one of those kind of medieval esque fighting games. By the way, no release date still on this. So this was just kind of more footage for people that were already interested in this reboot.

[00:55:12]
What is going on here in the chat right now? They aren't fun to clean, rather just buy new ones. But yeah, Vex can lay that pipe. I just soak them in a mixture of vinegar and water and then I'll wash them off with soap because I find that's really good for Disinfecting personally. She do be making good cakes.

[00:55:32]
Her pancakes were a little scuffle, though. That's because I didn't have all the ingredients for them. That's why they were questioning how are her milkshakes? Because my milkshakes bring all the boys to the yard. Are you saying you have a dump truck?

[00:55:45]
Is that what you're telling me? I do.

[00:55:50]
I actually do. I've actually been told that quite a few times by quite a few females. I've got to dump it. Oh my God. I got a pancake butt.

[00:55:59]
So give me some of that, please.

[00:56:05]
It's a blessing in a curse. You're a master pipe fitter. Yes, I am, Lividical. And it's quite creamy. I mean, you're dealing with all that ice.

[00:56:15]
What is wrong with you, bro?

[00:56:20]
Hey, you're the one dealing with all the icing in the Glaze. What has this podcast evolved to? We haven't even gotten to the spiciest stuff yet today.

[00:56:34]
Cyberpunk 2077. That Phantom Liberty DLC that everyone is really excited for. We got a new trailer for that which actually was presented. Via video by Idris Elba, the schmexi actor, as he'll actually be joining the cast along Keanu Reeves. In this one, Elba plays Solomon Reed, an agent for the US, the United States of America and V's only ally in their desperate attempt to infiltrate the organization.

[00:57:01]
Reeves also will have more screen time as well in this as Johnny Silverhand and we still don't have I feel like there was already a release date announced for this. I thought it was coming out in January. Am I mistaken? I don't know. Maybe we have that selective memory.

[00:57:20]
Maybe. I thought it was supposed to come out in early 2023. Right, but apparently it still has no release date and this will be a paid expansion. It was announced as well, but there's no price tag attached to it yet. I imagine it will probably be somewhere on that $20 price point.

[00:57:34]
That's usually where a lot of these DLCs land, and that's where a lot of CDPR's previous DLCs have been priced at, too. Armored core six. I'm not good with Roman numerals. Hold on. Is that a six?

[00:57:50]
You're a Final Fantasy nerd, so you know. Okay. Why did you always give me Final Fantasy Nerd to you? You try to say something here your Final Fantasy nerd with a fucking dump truck. Listen, somebody's got to have a dump truck of an ass because clearly yours is a pancake, as you've already stated.

[00:58:09]
Oh, God, don't get mad at me just because I'm dead. Sick. The last game in the Arbor Corps series, which is Arbor Core Verdict Day, released back in 2013. So it's been almost ten years since we've had any news on this. This will be out sometime next year for actually all consoles.

[00:58:28]
So this will be PlayStation Four, five Xbox One Series XS and PC sometime in 2023. And finally, last but not least, Final Fantasy 16. So god, is it Yoshida tata. Yeah, yoshida. Okay, who is the creative director?

[00:58:48]
Okay, I'm catching on. See, apparently Final Fantasy 16 had a world premiere trailer at the Game awards as well, which Shashida came on stage to kind of introduce and announce. The last trailer we saw was back in October, which was the Ambition trailer, which reveals how the crystals and the Final Fantasy universe factor into the story, as well as a closer look at the game's characters and the world of Valisphia. I don't know if I pronounce that right. And it's multiple kingdoms.

[00:59:17]
Hold on, I was responding to the chat. Good. Yeah. Valystia. Okay, I got it.

[00:59:24]
All right, Final Fantasy 16 will officially launch now on June 22, 2023. You can actually pre order it and stuff already. The pre order has been available for a while. There's a special edition that I think is Japan only as well that you compete at. I think I'm trying to win a copy for you.

[00:59:41]
Unless that's a different final fantasy I'm thinking of. No, I think it's this one. No. You're thinking of Crisis Corps. That's the one that comes out in like a few weeks.

[00:59:50]
No, that's the one that comes out in two days. Well then well then I can't keep up with these. Listen, it's not my fault that you don't know about the world of warcraft. I mean, Final Fantasy oh, I know about the world of Warcraft, my friend. But I don't butters, you said you're on your PC all day.

[01:00:14]
What do you do? I'm playing Hello Kitty. I'm an avengers. Butters, go back to your home, talk to your mom. Go get rural of Warcraft and start playing it before we all murder you.

[01:00:26]
I'm looking at the chat as well. I'm glad you were able to revive Final Fantasy X. We do plan on reviewing other games, including yeah, I have a review in the works for Zoo Tycoon one. So we are doing older games. And what I was trying to say is while I am backtracking yours and stuff as they come in next, I'm also planning on doing some reviews and video videos myself since I'm going to have a little bit more time.

[01:00:52]
Got you. Nice. Lots coming to the Lamb and see YouTube channel, by the way. Lots. Yeah.

[01:00:57]
So if you haven't subscribed to us on YouTube yet, go check us out. If you don't have the link, that's fine. Just go to our website, www.thelampseeshow.com. And our YouTube link is in there. There you go.

[01:01:09]
All right. Now, a lot of people took to Twitter after this and the socials being like, oh, first, I mentioned already, game reveals, 40 game reveals, stop being a fucking wuss. Second of all, a lot of people were disappointed with Xbox's kind of lack of reveals at this because as you guys have probably been aware or not aware, they've been just saying like, oh, 2020, there's going to be awesome. We're going to have so much to show you guys. And now we're at the very end of 2022 and we don't even have just like a peek at what might happen in earning early 2023.

[01:01:41]
So Aaron Greenberg, who is Xbox's marketing boss, tweeted that fans will be, don't worry, you won't have to wait very long for news. They have a lot planned for 2023 and they know that people are eager, but this timing is everything. Xbox does have several first party games scheduled already with official release dates, including Red Fall Starfield and Stalker Two. And Phil Spencer also reaffirmed that there's a lot to come in early 2023 in terms of releases. And also people are just like, oh, why the fuck didn't they show any of this?

[01:02:14]
I mean, to me, I can kind of understand it given what we're about to discuss with the ABK acquisition. They're just under a lot of scrutiny right now. And on top of this, I think the one point that I think a lot of people fail to notice is and you had mentioned it earlier as a joke, actually lamessy, is that this show was dominated by okay, this show was dominated by PlayStation and Nintendo. Every part of it was dominated by them in terms of games to win awards, like Xbox games won one award and it was for as dusk falls for games that make an impression kind of deal, right? And it's unfortunate no one cares about that category, but it is what it is.

[01:02:58]
So why would you introduce or reveal Xbox games to an audience that is primarily PlayStation and your audience is not there? Why would any of them care? Why would they build up hype? Because all that's going to happen is a bunch of people are going to go online and be like, xbox has so much to worry about. Oh, Xbox has no games.

[01:03:16]
PlayStation, butter. God, I hate the console warming you all. Xbox and ponies are just something else. Like, seriously, get a fucking life. There is more than just video games.

[01:03:27]
And I know that's ironic given that I run a podcast video game, freaking gaming, but get a fucking life. The funny thing is, like I said, I'm a PlayStation fan. But the thing is, I also have Xbox and I have PC. I don't get the people who are so die hard over one system. Now, when I had to choose between PlayStation or Xbox, yeah, I'm going to choose PlayStation, but that's because they've, over the years, just been able to develop their own indies that are exclusive.

[01:04:01]
But that doesn't mean that I don't believe that, in fairness, of all kinds of consoles. That's why I've been very outspoken of this ABK acquisition. Because this acquisition, not only did they have to go out and go buy huge titles and a huge company in order to try to compete with PlayStation, I would even say slightly in order to compete with PlayStation, but it will also make it less likely that people are going to want to compete against them. Whenever you have one company that owns too many things, we've talked about this before. They get too comfortable with where they are.

[01:04:42]
So they're no longer innovative. Yes, 100%. So when you hear me speak out about this acquisition, what I'm really talking about, it's not about PlayStation versus Xbox. It's about the state of gaming as a whole. When I speak out about it.

[01:04:57]
Yes. And even when I speak out about it, it's the same thing. It's every game, every console or interface. It's all bleeding into the same yes, but yes. Speaking of the ABK acquisition, there was so much on this, I'm going to be methodical in this, so you literally don't need to hear about this from anyone else after you hear it here on the lamenessy show.

[01:05:23]
Okay, so the first big news on the late evening of December 6, all was quiet, was not a bird weeding into the darkness. Phil Spencer decided to go on Twitter. Oh, what a shock. Phil Spencer, one of the people who talks about everything at any time and goes on multiple people's podcasts and interviews and all that other stuff, decides to open his mouth. Shocking.

[01:05:44]
There you go. Right? But Phil Spencer took to Twitter and he said this in quotes. Microsoft has entered into a ten year commitment to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo. Following the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King, microsoft is committed to helping bring more games to more people however they choose to play.

[01:06:01]
He also added on that they will continue to feature the Call of Duty franchise through Steam, which is honestly no surprise there. Steam has been a pretty integral part for delivering Call of Duty on PC. But this is a big deal for Nintendo because the last Nintendo or the last Call of Duty game that Nintendo got was Call of Duty Ghosts, which was back in 2013 for the Wii U. It wasn't even on the Switch, so the Switch hasn't really got one yet. And Nintendo was actually really excited about this.

[01:06:29]
They said that, where is it? I fucking lost some place. But, oh, I don't think I put it actually here. Never mind. Nintendo did respond to this, and they're actually very happy about it, and they hope the deal goes through and they're excited to have Call of Duty back on the Nintendo platform.

[01:06:44]
Now, some people were like, oh, Nintendo is a family friendly console. What would Call of Duty be to that? I say, open your fucking brain, dude. Nintendo has a very vast, vast, vast library of 18 plus tente games, people. Just a very vast library.

[01:07:02]
Nintendo with, you know, Super Mario, Zelda Pokemon along those lines. But in reality, you know, for those who don't play the system, in reality, there are so many things. We've talked about it before on this podcast about, like you said, the Hentai games, and both of us were kind of shocked. We were like wait, what? They have that?

[01:07:24]
Because that's not something you associate with Nintendo because we don't play it as often as we play other consoles, PC. But I thought it was hilarious. But you're right. Them getting this is good for them. And for those who are saying, oh, it's a family friendly console, it's really not.

[01:07:40]
You just think it is. Yeah, it's just the way you choose to associate it based on their biggest IP. And not only that, but like, the Nintendo, the Wii U had Doom on there, and it had a couple of other big Resident Evil games on there too. In fact, the Resident Evil remakes that are coming up, they just announced in October that a bunch of the recent Re games are coming to The Lambency Show. So you guys just have, like, a selective knowledge or bias of this.

[01:08:08]
But Nintendo is not as family friendly as you think it is, okay?

[01:08:16]
Oh, gosh, I'm in a zone today, clearly right in an internal report. So in response, Sony replied to Microsoft and Nintendo's recently announced deal as smoke and mirrors, stating that Nintendo's younger audience is not interested in the first person shooter. And oh, here's a statement sorry, was in the next thing, the full statement. There's a full statement that Nintendo put out in response to this, actually in response to Sony saying that Nintendo doesn't care, so I'm just going to read it word for word. Quote microsoft Call of Duty deal with Nintendo is misleading, Sony argues.

[01:08:53]
Sony argues period. I forgot a period there. Sony has criticized Microsoft's deal to make the game Call of Duty available on Nintendo should the $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard be approved by regulators as smoke and mirrors. Activision Blizzard could supply Call of Duty to oh, why did I you're going to have to edit some of this out, Lamb. See, this is a fact.

[01:09:13]
That too much effort. Okay, timestamp. Someone give me a Timestamp, please. There ain't timestamps on rumble.

[01:09:24]
Okay, we're about an hour and 19 minutes in. Okay, how about that? There's your timestamp. Nintendo enters such agreement, Sony says oh, okay, here's the better quote. Instead of being a logical business decision, a licensing agreement is a tactic designed to make Microsoft, whose acquisition has drawn concerns in the EU, UK and US look cooperative with regulators, the argument goes.

[01:09:47]
So this is the argument from Sony, not from Nintendo. Okay, I misspoke. Furthermore, Nintendo's Switch could not run Call of Duty easily and may never be able to. Sony argues developing a version of the game compatible with the Switch could take years, making the ten year licensing deal meaningless. It's easier for Nintendo to enter into such an agreement, as Nintendo doesn't need to worry about equal treatment for its subscription service or cloud gaming service, as those are not areas where it currently competes aggressively, the argument goes.

[01:10:16]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't you access your Nintendo games via a similar cloud service? Because you can play the Switch on the go and all that. I'm pretty sure you can. But I can also see their argument not only I was laughing inside when I read Sharper's comment about how they got to make it. Actually, here it is right here.

[01:10:39]
I mean, it would work if they can get the game under 1 TB, because the Switch, don't get me wrong, we complained about the PlayStation Five's memory, the Xbox series SS memory. I've complained about it numerous times. I have bought like an SSD to improve the memory, but Nintendo Switch has worse memory, from what I hear, than the consoles I'm currently dealing with. So being how large of a size Call of Duty has notoriously been over the years, it would be very hard for them to get it on their platforms. And then as far as the subscription services and stuff, I'm sure they have some sort of service.

[01:11:17]
But it's not like that's their main thing. A lot of their games are kind of you don't even need a service, you just need to have the game. Because a lot of people will buy a Nintendo Switch strictly because they can turn it onto their TV or they can use it as a handheld, almost like an old school Game Boy. So I could sort of see their argument. Yeah, what my thinking was is, okay, hear me out.

[01:11:41]
This also might be a hot take, or maybe this is just me being a little presumptuous, right? This whole ten year deal thing. Now, Call of Duty, despite it making, I think, something like 42 billion a year for Activision or something like that, it has progressively gotten worse over the years. The fan base is not as steady as it used to well over a decade ago. On top of that, the game is definitely leaning towards a direction that is just more War Zone focused, I would say more than anything, if that makes sense.

[01:12:17]
It's away from that fun multiplayer. It's away from the campaigns, which, by the way, I started playing the Modern Warfare Two campaign. It's like the ADHD of Call of Duty campaigns.

[01:12:30]
Like a lot of the footage from this remake of Modern Warfare Two, I'm not impressed. It doesn't even look like Modern Warfare Two at all. It's just a call of duty. Where's my favela? Where's Rust?

[01:12:43]
Where's? High rise. Where's all these iconic? Where's? Hot ghosts.

[01:12:51]
I agree with you. I mean, there's going to be seasons, right? I know we're getting a map remaster in the next season. I don't remember off the top of my head what it was, though. But yeah, I agree with you.

[01:13:02]
It doesn't feel what it used to be. So I honestly don't think Call of Duty is going to be as big as everybody thinks it will be in just the next couple of years. Especially when you also take into account the fact that gaming in general seems to be leaning more towards open worlds in basically every genre. Everyone's got an online shooter coming out. Just look at all the shooters.

[01:13:24]
That like the smaller shooters that came out in the last couple of years, like Split Gate and Road Company. There we go. So there's a lot of competition in shooters as well that has taken a lot of the Call of Duty fan base away because most people don't like the way Call of Duty like what Call of Duty has become. So this is just my take on it, right? If you have information that maybe disproves that, please let me know because I'm eager to learn either way.

[01:13:50]
But I think everyone's like ten years is more than enough. When you also factor in just how quickly the industry is evolving and adapting to new techniques and everything as well, I think it's all a big hub. I can understand why nintendo took the deal, if you look at it from that frame of mind, and I think Nintendo knows that I disagree with you, and there's a reason why. Because this deal has more than just Call of Duty. We've talked about it before.

[01:14:16]
I'm speaking just from the Call of Duty. From the Call of Duty perspective, I don't give a shit. I'll be honest with you. I really don't give a shit. Because Call of Duty has not been good for a long time, since the original Modern War for Two, if you ask me.

[01:14:31]
Which is why I brought up the whole fact of this remake isn't even a remake. Like, even if they bring in old maps eventually. Here's the thing. If I would have bought that game hoping to play Modern Warfare Two with new graphics, I'd have been severely pissed off and severely disappointed. So, honestly, this was a last chance for me, for Call of Duty to actually bring some sort of semblance of a decent game, and they failed it tremendously.

[01:15:00]
So as far as the ten years, yeah, fine. Whatever. Ten years is fine. My issue as a whole has nothing to do with Call of Duty itself. It has to do with the fact that Activision and Blizzard, as well as King are all in, that ABK is a huge conglomerate of the company itself being swallowed up by another huge conglomerate of a company.

[01:15:22]
And we all know what happens when that happens. We've spoke about it numerous times. So as far as ten years for Call of Poopy, as my friend's son calls it, I don't give a shit. I really don't. I would be perfectly fine if Call of Duty just ceased to exist for the remainder of my life, period.

[01:15:40]
I'm going to agree with you on that one, too. I could give less of a shit about Call of Duty. I'm going to be honest. I agree with you. But everyone cares about Call of Duty when it comes to merger.

[01:15:48]
Fuck all the other IPS that they have. Just Call of duty. I think it's just because it's name brand recognition and everybody's heard of it. I think so, too. Yeah.

[01:15:57]
And it's available on everything, basically. Right. So I understand. See? Canola agrees.

[01:16:03]
Ghost is hot. Thank you. When I first got a smartphone, I don't know if you did this, but on the MacBooks, there was GarageBand, and you had the option to upload audio and edit it there, right? I don't think they support GarageBand anymore on Apple, but I decided when I got my first smartphone, which was the iPhone Four, that I was going to make custom notification sounds. So my notification sounds for when I got, like, text messages or emails or voicemails was like a package inbound tactical new King coming UAV online.

[01:16:37]
I'd just be sitting there in class and forget to put my phone on silent, and all you hear is UAV online. Honestly, it would be even funnier if you're like, in the middle of an airport and all you hear is that tactical new kid coming.

[01:16:56]
I should probably put those, but it was in that OG ghost voice, so I should probably put that back on my phone. In all honesty, I liked those notification. Sound okay, biggest news. Biggest news. Now that we've covered the Game Awards, I think the biggest news was this whole FTC thing that happened.

[01:17:18]
There's a lot of information I'm going to dump on you guys here. So I hope your brains are prepared for this because I'm going to COVID everything that has come out very afraid because we're hunting Federal Trade Commission? No, not really. We're going to squash some of the FTC's arguments, though. That's what we're going to do.

[01:17:35]
So on December 8, the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission here in the United States are there in the United States, because I'm in Canada, announced that they were going to sue to stop Microsoft from acquiring Activision Blizzard. So here is the full official statement that you can find on the FTC website. So I'm just going to read it to you guys real quick, all right? The Federal Trade Commission is seeking to block technology giant Microsoft Corp. From acquiring leading video game developer Activision Blizzard Inc.

[01:18:04]
And its blockbuster gaming franchises such as Call of Duty. Alleging that the $69 billion deal Microsoft's largest ever. And the largest ever in video gaming industry would enable Microsoft to suppress its competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud gaming business. In a complaint issued today, the FTC pointed to Microsoft's record of acquiring and using valuable gaming content to suppress competition from rival consoles, including its acquisition of ZeniMax, parent company of Bethesda Softworks, a well known game developer. Microsoft decided to make several of Bethesda's titles, including Starfield and Redfall Microsoft exclusives, despite assurances it had given to the European antitrust authorities that it had no incentive to withhold games from rival consoles.

[01:18:53]
Microsoft has already shown that it can and will withhold content from its gaming rivals, said Holly Vidova, director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition. Today, we seek to stop Microsoft from gaining control over a leading independent game studio and using it to harm competition in multiple dynamic and fast growing gaming markets. Microsoft's Xbox Series X and Series S are one of the one of only two types of high performance video game consoles. Importantly, Microsoft also offers a leading video game content subscription service called Xbox Game Pass, as well as cutting edge cloud based video game streaming service. According to the complaint, activision is one of only a very small number of top video game developers in the world that create and publish high quality video games for multiple devices, including video game consoles, PCs and mobile devices.

[01:19:44]
It produces some of the most iconic and popular video game titles, including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft diablo and Overwatch and has millions of monthly active users around the world. According to the FTC's complaint, activision currently has a strategy of offering its games on many devices regardless of the producer, but that could change if the deal is allowed to proceed with control over Activision's blockbuster franchises. Microsoft would have both the means and motive to harm competition by manipulating Activision's pricing, degrading Activision's game quality or player experience on rival consoles and gaming services, changing the terms and timing of access to Activision's content or withholding content from competitors entirely, resulting in harm to consumers. The Commission vote to issue the complaint was three to one, with Commissioner Christine S. Wilson voting no.

[01:20:32]
A copy of the administrative complaint will be available shortly. Note the Commission issues an administrative complaint when it has reason to believe that the law has been or is being violated, and it appears to the Commission that a proceeding is in the public interest. The issuance of the administrative complaint marks the beginning of a proceeding in which the allegations will be tried in a formal hearing before an administrative law judge, and then it ends with the Federal Trade Commission works to promote competition and protect and educate consumers. That's a full statement. That's a condensed statement.

[01:21:03]
Actually, if you want, you can read the full FTC filing. It's about 23 pages long. A lot of it is really repetitive in that condensed statement, though they do kind of outline the big arguments. And I read through the whole 23 page document I did. It took me a couple of days because I did it on and off when I had the time.

[01:21:23]
But there were a couple of things I wanted to pick out of there. And there's a few things that people picked out of here as well that they seem to be using against Microsoft in a bit of a false sense. I'd like to say before we pick through this, even though I am an Xbox based gamer, I have no bias towards this deal. In fact, I don't want this deal to go through it all. I don't care if it benefits me at the end of the day, because I'm also a game pass subscriber.

[01:21:49]
I just don't like the monopolization of gaming developers, that's all. And that's my sole reason for not wanting this to go through. Do you have any comments before I PROCEED? I also don't want this deal to go through it for reasons also stated before, I think it's a terrible idea for gaming as a whole. There we go.

[01:22:08]
Okay, so, yeah, like I said, you can read through this. The Verge.com actually had the direct link to it if you're interested. So I know lamincy can see this, but I just took some screenshots out because I wasn't about to copy and paste that bitch. It was really hard.

[01:22:24]
One of the things that they mentioned so they have all of their arguments, like sectioned and then they're all numbered and there's like 60 something things in there. So number twelve on their list of things says, quote, microsoft's past conduct provides a preview of the combined firm's likely plans if it consummates the proposed acquisition. Despite any assurances the company may offer regarding its plans. In March 2021, Microsoft acquired ZeniMax Media, the parent company of the well known game developer and publisher at Bethesda Softworks. Microsoft assured the European Commission during its antitrust review of the ZeniMax purchase that Microsoft would not have the incentive to withhold ZeniMax titles from rival consoles.

[01:23:04]
But shortly after the EC cleared the transaction, microsoft made public its decision to make several of the newly acquired ZeniMax titles, including Starfield, Redfall and Elder Scroll Six. Microsoft exclusives. This is partially false. Partially false, okay? Nobody really cared until Xbox acquired Bethesda in 2021 because before then, all of their acquisitions had focused on smaller studios.

[01:23:29]
Would you agree on that lambda scene? I started paying attention when Xbox started buying studios to begin with, because it was only brought to my attention because PlayStation started buying studios as well. And I was a little bit confused, like, they've always bought studios, but it felt like they were ramping up. And so I started looking at the Xbox and I started realizing that they were buying a lot of studios, a lot of good indie developers and everything going on. So I was like, this could be the start of some sort of war.

[01:24:01]
We'll wait and see how it goes. Well, here we are, two years later. There you go. Right? But let's be honest, nobody really cared about Microsoft buying anyone until Bethesda happened.

[01:24:11]
Because Bethesda was a huge studio, or is a huge studio, nobody cared that they bought these smaller guys. So I'd like to start there. Many people also seem to be spreading misinformation online that they bought Bethesda and just made everything exclusive. That's also a false statement. I can actually read to you what they said to I'll read to you guys what they said to the in their official EU statement right?

[01:24:35]
In a moment. But the agreement essentially was that it would fulfill its existing obligations from any indevelopment IPS that basically didn't have any contractual obligations to be multiplatform. So at the time of that acquisition, when it was going through Starfield and Redfall, which they cite in the agreement, didn't have any concrete it had no reason to be on all consoles. Right. I do disagree with the Elder Scrolls six thing.

[01:25:02]
I don't think that should be made a console exclusive, though, I understand, given that prior to Elder Scrolls Four Oblivion, right? The Elder Scrolls series had been on Windows, Windows and Xbox before then, and then it switched over to being multiplatform. So now it's just going back to originally where it was. I don't know if that was part of the deal, though, is the thing. I don't know how that ended up happening.

[01:25:24]
I don't agree with it either way. This is why. But once you made it multiplatform and it didn't go back exactly, you can't just go back. The only way I would be okay with that is, for example, let's say, you know what, I'll use a PlayStation game as an example. Let's say Final Fantasy, a popular Final Fantasy game, just goes on Xbox, but nobody seems to care.

[01:25:48]
It's got like very low downloads or whatever on Xbox, but does extremely well on PC and PlayStation at that point. Yeah, if you want to pull it from Xbox because it's got like per 100,000 views you got on PlayStation or Plays, you get like ten, then yeah, pull it because it's doing historically bad. Obviously they wouldn't care about that particular title, but that was not the case with PlayStation. As far as those games, as far as Elder Scrolls, they love that game. So to just pull it was I don't care.

[01:26:20]
Doesn't make sense. If it was an exclusive before it was a dick move to do. I agree. I agree 100%. I agree.

[01:26:26]
But they also didn't end up trying to cancel out agreements that Bethesda had with PlayStation. I guess the most notable one would be Ghost Wire and Death Loop, which are both Bethesda produced titles that are currently well, actually, up until recently, Death Loop was but those are PlayStation exclusives, right? They're being ported over to Xbox now. They have a one year exclusivity window on the PlayStation, so they didn't try to do that in the official filing. I'll just read this.

[01:26:55]
A couple of days after the filing was reduced, the EU Commission actually came out. The European Commission came out and said, no, the FTC is actually wrong in their accusation here they said, quote, microsoft didn't make any commitments to EU regulators not to release Xbox exclusive content following its takeover of ZeniMax Media, the European Commission has said. US enforces yesterday suggested that the US tech giant had misled the regulator in 2021 and cited that as a reason to challenge its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The commission cleared the Microsoft ZeniMax transaction unconditionally as it concluded that the transaction would not raise competition concerns, an EU watchdog said in an emailed statement. The absence of competition concerns did not rely on any statements made by Microsoft about the future distribution strategy concerning ZeniMax's games, said the commission, which itself has opened an in depth probe into the Active Illusion Blizzard deal and appears to be keen to clarify what happened in the previous acquisition.

[01:27:54]
The EU actually came to their defense, Microsoft defense in this case, stating that you guys got it really wrong and even, yeah, they got it really wrong, that's all. Okay, so moving along, there was another thing I pointed out here, number 32. This might be a nitpicky one, but it is what it is. The Xbox series X and PS Five consoles are redacted from a broad consumer perspective in a number of technical specifications, including offering similar graphics, user experiences, and hardware features. In addition, the Xbox Series X and PlayStation Five are sold at the same price, while the Series S offers lower performance and is sold at a lower price.

[01:28:34]
I don't know if maybe this is just when the filing was written, but even then it's months outdated then. But there is a price difference between the Series X and the PlayStation Five. They're not the same. Price difference cost more. It does?

[01:28:49]
Yes. PlayStation costs $50 more.

[01:28:54]
The price is not the same. Okay, now in reasons I'm going to read reasons 36, 37 and 38 in here. Xbox Game Pass provides subscribers with unlimited access to a library of over 301st and third party games at no additional cost. The service is priced at 999 per month for gamers who seek to download games to play solely on an Xbox console or PC. The higher tier service, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, priced at 1499 per month, allows gamers to download games to play on either Xbox console or PC, and additionally enables gamers to stream games from an offsite server to any web enabled local device that can access Game Pass 37.

[01:29:33]
Sony also offers a multi game content library subscription service, PlayStation Plus, which at a certain tiers is comparable to Xbox Game Pass. The lower comparable tier, PlayStation Plus Extra, priced at 1499 per month, provides access to a library of hundreds of games that can be played on PlayStation consoles, as well as online multiplayer access, discounts on other games, and cloud storage. The higher comparable tier, PlayStation Plus Premium, priced at 1799 per month, provides access to an even larger library of games that can be played on PlayStation along with cloud streaming number 38. In addition to Sony's PlayStation Plus, Extra, and Premium other multi game content. Library subscription services include EA Play and Ubisoft Play.

[01:30:13]
EA Play starts at 499 per month, and Ubisoft, starting at 1499 per month, each offer access only to content from the respective publishers. You still there? Okay, yeah, no, I just reading it over. It sounds so fucking stupid, that's all. I'd like to just address the tone between 36 and 37.

[01:30:33]
Okay? Excluding 38, because that's really just including that EA and Ubisoft both have their own kind of pay to play subscription services. They seem to neglect to address that. Xbox basically abandoned the gold thing more or less and bundled it into Game Pass. So if you have a Game Pass subscription, you do also get deals on games.

[01:30:58]
I don't understand the wording here. To me, this reads a lot like there's some very specific Sony bias here. And I don't know if this is intentional because was it Lena Con, I think is her name? She's just trying to make her mark basically by issuing this lawsuit. I'd also like to add that she's not won any of the lawsuits she's filed.

[01:31:18]
She's just lawsuit happy because she wants to make a name for herself. I don't know if you noticed that at all. Reading this Lamb at scene, I did notice that her tone seems a little bit off. But the other problem I have is when they started talking about like, oh, well, PlayStation's version of the Game Passes comparable. No, the fuck it's not.

[01:31:39]
And I'm going to tell you exactly why PlayStation botched it. From the way the interface works all the way to their game selection, they completely botched their PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Premium. It's why to this day, I'm still on PlayStation Essential. My thing was expiring in March, like my Essential was expiring in March. And I generally speaking around this time of the year, by a year, plan for another year because you can get a discount on it.

[01:32:09]
Of course I went back for Essential because there is nothing that is of interest as a PlayStation fan. There is nothing of interest for me in the PlayStation Plus or PlayStation Premium, all right? Now this is coming from someone who's played since the PlayStation one, and I'm telling you that the PlayStation Plus and the PlayStation Premium are an absolute joke. I have never seen a library this fast botched so bad. I agree with you.

[01:32:35]
PlayStation had a real opportunity this past year to really revamp it, to actually be a viable competitor to Xbox Game Pass, and they really did fuck it up. And they shouldn't have with the amount of content they have, with the amount with the library they have. Let me put it like it should have been. The reason I was okay with coming back for an Xbox wasn't just because I had the PS Five and then I traded in my PS Four Pro and I paid like $20 in tax to get the Xbox Series S. But it was also because I had heard great things about the Game Pass.

[01:33:04]
And I'm going to tell you right now, I have not bought a single game on the Xbox store. All the games that I have on Xbox are just from the Game Pass, all right? It's got some really good games. The interface is great, and you could basically find whatever kind of niche you're looking for with relative ease. That's not the case with PlayStation, which is sad, because like I said, with the vast library that they have in their history, it's embarrassing that you couldn't have even come up with something comparative, let alone something superior.

[01:33:35]
In reality, you should have been able to blow the Game Pass out of the water if you did it the right way. But we would have been fine if you would have just made something comparative. It's not even close to being comparative. Sorry, I'm just responding to the chat there. Canole says that he downgraded his PlayStation Premium to Essential as well.

[01:33:54]
He says that there was too many games to play plus costs. Oh, it went down from $120 to $60. That's fair. Yeah. The wording is just so there's bias in the wording in what I've read.

[01:34:08]
That's what I can't get over is they make it seem like it's a bad thing that people can buy Xbox Game Pass. But no, you should definitely buy Sony's PlayStation Plus instead, even though it's more or less the same service, but it's priced higher. Sounds to me it's a little less accessible is what you're getting across. It's extremely confusing. Take it like this.

[01:34:29]
Xbox's Game Pass has gotten down to such a t that someone who hadn't been on the Xbox since 2015 got on the Xbox and was able to easily navigate it like it was absolutely nothing. Yeah, I don't I don't understand why they're trying to make Game Pass sound like a bad thing when everyone's doing it right. So, yeah, it just seems like they're just adding this in to try and get it to sway a certain way. Now, in reasons 39 to 41, there was a whole section on cloud based gaming in this filing. It said basically that I find it interesting that people don't fail to recognize this, but Xbox, the cloud service has been around for like 15 years.

[01:35:10]
Did you know that? But that's because Microsoft is more than just a freaking video game industry. Well, yes, but I'm saying, like, when I had my 360, when you would log into an X on your profile on it, someone else's 360, it would say, like, loading cloud. Yeah, the cloud service has been there for a while, but people are getting up in arms about it now because technology has advanced significantly since the 360 era. I don't understand why they go into such depth about why cloud gaming from Microsoft is so bad when Microsoft literally just first of all, they did extremely poorly during the Xbox One generation.

[01:35:47]
I admit it. Microsoft is starting to admit it. It's not hard to see. Like, I'm someone that owned an Xbox One, and even I can say, put it like this. It was a comparative system and stuff on PlayStation because let me tell you my history.

[01:36:02]
So when I was PlayStation versus Xbox, I want PlayStation. Then PlayStation two. So of course, naturally I want PlayStation Three. Hated it, traded it in immediately. Terrible platform, went to 360.

[01:36:14]
So when I went to Xbox One versus PS Four, I went to the Xbox One. Hated it. Within 24 hours of having it, traded it back in. Got went to the PS Four. Yeah, I was tempted to buy a PlayStation Four as well because I had so many issues with that Xbox One during those first couple of launch, that launch, first launch year, actually.

[01:36:32]
But I kept with it because I'm like, I liked my 360 and maybe this is a temporary thing. And then it just never got better because all the first party stuff they put out was in my opinion. Absolute garbage for the most part. Didn't like Halo Five, didn't like years five, didn't like years four. I think Forza was really the only redeeming thing there.

[01:36:50]
Forza never really does any harm. It just kills it every single time. But yeah, no, it was a terrible thing. But they were working on cloud gaming then they spent an entire generation preparing for the next one. I don't think anybody really takes that into consideration when they look at where Microsoft is now with this current generation.

[01:37:11]
This is them catching up and use that to master it so that when they release this gen, it would be, if not a flawless, close to flawless transition. I don't believe for a fucking second you had an Xbox One at all sharper. Not for a fucking second. The way you talk trash about consoles.

[01:37:33]
And they also don't fail to list other cloud gaming services like Amazon's, Luna. They just totally forget that exists. There's other cloud gaming services that Netflix has one sort of as well. It's still in its infancy, but it's there. But that doesn't matter.

[01:37:48]
Only Microsoft's cloud gaming service matters in this case, guys, all right, nothing else exists. In reason 49, this was also an error. They state that MLB the show is a PlayStation exclusive and Elder Scrolls is a Microsoft exclusive. Again, Elder Scrolls is not a Microsoft exclusive. It went cross platform, like I said, with oblivion.

[01:38:08]
With oblivion. With Elder Scrolls four, MLB the show, it lost its PlayStation exclusivity back in 2019. This information, you can easily find a lied for 2 seconds. As a matter of fact, we've actually reported on it before. Not when they've lost it, but you remember I had brought up how MLB the Show was a day one game pass thing for Xbox, and I called it absolutely embarrassing for PlayStation.

[01:38:34]
You know, I remember that. I remember that. Yes, I do remember that. So, again, factual things. Okay now okay, so statements 61 and 62 of this filing.

[01:38:45]
So 61. The proposed acquisition is likely to harm innovation. For instance, by decreasing the combined firm's incentive to optimize Activision's content for gameplay on rival hardware, thereby reducing the quality of consumer gaming experiences on competing products. Number 62, the proposed acquisition is reasonably likely to substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in the relevant markets for high performance consoles, Multigain content library subscription services, and cloud gain subscription services. The proposed acquisition is therefore reasonably likely to result in harm to both competition and consumers.

[01:39:21]
I partially agree with these statements. Like we've said many times before, monopolizing will harm the industry at the end of the day, but it also fails to account for the better part of the home to PlayStation has been the lead competitor by some pretty insane margins, right? And as well, they seem to be claiming that cloud gaming from Microsoft has just been oh, you guys just sprung this on us. Randomly. It was in development in plain sight.

[01:39:46]
You could see in plain sight six, seven, eight years ago, that this was the end game plan. As soon as Netflix became a popular thing, you could see that this was where gaming was going to go. When Microsoft started working on cloud gaming or I just don't think people took it serious because you got to keep in mind when you look at the latency of trying to play through cloud based and stuff, we didn't expect it to become as efficient as it is and now we're facing the consequences for not taking it seriously enough. But going back to your statement about PlayStation dominating the market, PlayStation put a lot of work to dominate the market. People fail to remember that.

[01:40:22]
It wasn't like we went out when I say we it wasn't like PlayStation went out and bought a whole bunch of huge companies to get their big games to get exclusive. No, they bought a whole bunch of indie developers and had them make games that became iconic. And yes, they were exclusives, but they also paid the studios. They bought these small studios, they gave them a project to work on and stuff, or they came up with their own idea and got the funding to work on the project that they wanted to. That became iconic series.

[01:40:55]
And this happened over and over and over again. So when people talk about how PlayStation has owned the market, they fail to mention the fact of how much effort and work and money that PlayStation put in to own the market. It wasn't like they were going out of their way to beat Dicks to any particular console. Like, yeah, of course they're going to beat Dicks, because Sony, you see the way they conduct themselves now, they're really snarky, but they're confident because they know that their product is good. However, that confidence is also a double edged sword when it comes to everything that's been going on lately.

[01:41:31]
Yes, you did a lot of great things and stuff, but now with everything going on and stuff, you are starting to slip and cracks are starting to form and your cockiness is actually hurting you more than it's helping you. I agree. Microsoft I may not agree with the way they're doing it, but now they're putting in the money to do the exact same thing that PlayStation has been doing this whole time. They're trying to level the playing field. Again, I don't agree with how they're doing it, but they're trying to.

[01:41:58]
I don't think this acquisition is going to be as big of a deal as people make it out to be. I really don't. But that's just me as far as doing I don't think it's going to be a big deal. My problem more long list has to do with all the companies combined and especially the one that a lot of people fail to remember. And we brought this up before.

[01:42:15]
And that would be King. The k of the ABK. Yeah. Mobile. Nobody's looking at the mobile.

[01:42:22]
I looked into the financials actually for that. King Mobile brings in, I think if I remember correctly, it was like $19 billion a year. So it's only about a third of what Activision does. Right. But in retrospect, King is a much smaller company and a much newer company.

[01:42:36]
Activision has been around since like the mid 90s making games and with money. Yeah, right. So when you put it into that perspective, it makes sense. But again, considering how young of a company King is and the stake they have in mobile at the rate they've been growing, that's very impressive. That's extremely impressive.

[01:42:52]
So I don't know why people are still fuck Call of Duty. Look at King. Look at King. Please. Because it also came out this week that Microsoft was looking at making a super app to do everything Xbox and Microsoft related on what would be the best thing to have that app on a Microsoft smartphone if they decided to bring it back.

[01:43:14]
Or Microsoft tablet. The Surface tablet. There we go. Those were selling like hotcakes every time there's a sale going on because they discount those Surface Pros insanely for Black Friday. Insanely.

[01:43:27]
I remember there was a point where they would bundle it in with this was years ago, but it was when the Xbox One s, I think it was, came out and they were actually bundling like strong discount deals for The Lambency Show with that console of Christmas. If they are to do something like that, they might actually take a page out of Amazon's book and learn a lesson from how Amazon failed. And the book I'm referring to is the whole Amazon Echo. They basically sell it at a price that doesn't really make them any money, especially considering how often they put it on discounts. But if you look at what they are trying to do versus what it's actually used for, they're losing money because of it.

[01:44:10]
Because originally the Amazon Echo was supposed to be used as another way to shop. But here's the thing. You don't have a screen, you can't confirm what you're looking at, anything else like that. People don't use the Echo to shop. However, if Microsoft with King and all that other stuff was to make a super app or a tablet or something along those lines, they can use it as, hey, we'll lose money on this actual tablet.

[01:44:37]
But the money will make having everything on there and stuff and being able to get people who are only on certain bits onto other bits would more than make up for that loss. We've already seen Microsoft is going to take a hit on consoles. If it means they make money on the game path, what's to say they wouldn't do the same thing for that? And for them it would be profitable long term. Yeah, long term growth.

[01:45:00]
Long term growth is what they're focused on. And that just ties into the fact, again, cloud gaming has been in plain sight for 1015 years. Long term plan is what they've been looking at. On a side note, there's been some inconsistencies with those game pass subscriber numbers. According to this filing, it's 25 million.

[01:45:19]
But given that there's been so many inconsistencies and falsehoods in this filing, who knows if that's accurate or not? But back to this again, wasn't okay, the PlayStation had the PST, right? And the PSV didn't. Those offer options, some games to cross play with your PS Three, or load your game on your PS Three? Or am I mistaken on that?

[01:45:39]
I can't quite remember. But I do know that I love the PSP nonetheless. And I can't believe that they just completely scrapped it because it was just such a great deal. I don't even remember the price of the console and stuff, but it was like you get to play your favorite PlayStation games on this little tiny device. Device.

[01:46:00]
By the way, also, if you had Internet, if you had WiFi, you can hook it up to the Internet. You can browse the web, you can watch videos, all this other stuff. It was a great little thing. It was like honestly, when I had it, I felt like I had a very advanced Game Boy. I loved that thing.

[01:46:21]
And it's just a shame that they discontinued it because it was awesome. Yeah. So again, like you're again, same thing here with the wording, with the tone. They're choosing it's like nobody, nobody else did this multiplatform thing before Microsoft where they're the first ones. Really.

[01:46:37]
This is dead in the water, right? A couple of other people. So aside from the EU coming to defense of Microsoft for this FTC filing, lulu Chang Maservini, who is the financial CEO over at Activision Blizzard, she put out a tweet, actually the day like actually an hour after this filing was released, and she said, quote, the FTC's job is to protect consumers, not competitors. This vote departs from the President, but the law hasn't changed any claim. The deal is anticompetitive, ignores facts.

[01:47:06]
The deal benefits gamers and the industry, especially given the competition from abroad. We look forward to proving our case in court and closing our deal with Microsoft. That's not from Microsoft. That's from Activision. Blizzard.

[01:47:17]
Activision Blizzard wants this to go through. You guys are blocking something that the buyer willingly like the seller wants to willingly go through. My thing with that though, is why? That's a question that's not really that's what I'm curious. That's a question that's not getting asked enough.

[01:47:32]
Why do they want it to go through this bad? I think now this is just me just thinking of possible scenarios. This is not to say this is the actual case, but from the standpoint of the stances of everything they're taking, combined with recent and ongoing sexual allegations and misconduct. I think there's a smoking gun that's being hidden that they're trying to rid themselves of dealing with agreement and as soon as it goes through and stuff, within a year you're going to actually hear that smoking gun. I think that if they were to continue as an independent developer and not have a bigger company take them, the allegations could be enough to get rid of so many people in the actual studio itself that it would.

[01:48:21]
Do irreparable harm to the company, to the point where you cannot hire people willing to work for your company who could replace the people you lose. Yes, this is what I was actually funny you mentioned because I was thinking the exact same thing because we've covered time and time again about all of the issues going on at Activision Blizzard when it comes to worker safety and mental health and all that stuff. And this isn't something new. This is something that's been going on for years now and they've been downsizing the size of their employee kind of collective and whatnot as well. So I wonder if they can see from their part that Activision is kind of going downhill and it's better to like a stock, right?

[01:49:04]
It's better to cash out while it's still high than to wait and see what happens. And it's $69 billion. Why the fuck not? Nice, right? So Bobby Kotik as well, who is the Activision Blizzard CEO, put out an email statement to his employees on the same day that this filing was made.

[01:49:24]
It says, quote, team, I want to provide a brief update on our pending merger with Microsoft. This week the US Federal Trade Commission announced its decision to challenge the deal. This means they will file a lawsuit to block the merger and arguments will be heard by a judge. This sounds alarming, so I want to reinforce my confidence that the deal will close. The allegation that this deal is anti competitive doesn't align with the facts and we believe we'll win this challenge thanks to the hard work by all of you.

[01:49:49]
Every day we're on a strong path bringing epic joy to players around the world with what I believe are the greatest games in the industry. At the same time, the competitive landscape is shifting and simply put, a combined Microsoft ABK would be good for players, good for employees, good for competition, and good for the industry. Our players want choice and this gives them exactly that. You can read more about the specifics on those points in this update, which is hot Linked we recently shared with you. We believe these arguments will win despite a regulatory environment focused on ideology and misconceptions about the tech industry.

[01:50:23]
Thank you for your dedication and creativity. Bobby, again, he's very confident. He wants it to go through. You know what, the more I think about it, I forget PC players are a thing sometimes because when you hear about gaming. You just hear about what's coming to this console, what's coming to that console, but then you totally forget the PC is a thing.

[01:50:45]
Most PC players are on a Windows based system. So now when I think about this, this whole filing reads as though, oh, only Xbox gamers will benefit. But what about the PC gamers that all play on Windows interfaces? Oh, PC Gamers will benefit. Like I said, this is why I don't like this.

[01:51:03]
I hate the fact that they say that it would be more competitive if this deal goes through because no, it frees anti competitiveness. Because Microsoft is well known on PC. It's well known through their system, obviously. And having big IPS like what this company can provide sets a terrible precedent because they literally can just lord it over any other competitors. This is why when I read the whole thing from Gavin himself, from Steam about how Microsoft has never let us down, we believe them and stuff.

[01:51:41]
They've always been truthful to us. Yeah, well, no shit. They've been a good business partner for you for many years, and you guys have worked hand in hand together. There's a big fucking difference between that and an actual competitor. I do anything Gavin says.

[01:51:56]
Honestly, I hate Lord Gavin with a grain of salt. I hate Lord Gavin so much. He sits there on his throne alive all the time. He tries to act like he's so much better than everybody else, but you look at the bigger picture, it's like, dude, you're no better than the console. You're really not.

[01:52:16]
I hate to break it to you. That's true. That's true. No, I was seeing that as well. The good for employees part of that.

[01:52:23]
I also keep forgetting that there's a lot of developers that like working with Microsoft. In fact, we covered one last week, the Squash Studios, with their new game High on Life, which comes out in a couple of days. Right. To be fair, they said it was a dream working. If you look at it, you work with Sony, okay?

[01:52:40]
You get PlayStation, you work with Microsoft, you get Xbox, you get PC, you get a whole bunch of different things. You know what I mean? You're going to be on a lot more platforms. Yeah, as a developer, why wouldn't I want to work with Microsoft? Exactly.

[01:52:55]
Just from that standpoint alone, you sign a deal with Xbox, but you're not signing a deal with Xbox. When you sign a deal with Xbox, you're signing a deal with Microsoft, which is more than just Xbox. Way more than just xbox only accounts for like 13% of their earnings as a company. Exactly. Just for people who think that Microsoft is only an Xbox company.

[01:53:14]
No, Microsoft does way more than just that. Aside from the tech side of things, they also have a ton of government contracts that makes up most of their revenue. Actually, while I understand that. PlayStation has dominated the console wars. That's also because that's just Xbox.

[01:53:31]
You take the whole thing into the equation. And if I had to guess, I mean, I'd have to actually look at the financials, but if I had to guess, I would take a gander that Microsoft as a whole makes a whole lot more money than PlayStation.

[01:53:44]
There's not even a comparison. It's not even a comparison. People are, oh, Sony is just going to go buy up their own companies. No, Sony doesn't have that kind of money. Exactly.

[01:53:55]
Which is why it becomes anti competitive. Because Microsoft is a huge conglomerate, all right? They already dominate the PC market. Keep in mind, if you are a gamer and you're trying to stream through a gaming PC, you're not buying an Apple PC. You're buying a Microsoft PC.

[01:54:14]
Exactly. No, that's true. I'm blown at some of the things that people are willing to just let slip through their mind for this. Yeah, canola even agrees sony can't compete with them financially. No, just honestly, if you guys are curious, just go look it up.

[01:54:29]
It's not even a competition. If we could put a real world example to this, it's like Sony is an ant and Microsoft is the boot. That's the financial comparison. So those are kind of the big things I was able to pull out of that whole filing. Those are the big points.

[01:54:47]
I wanted to also cover what the response has been from nintendo is happy with that ten year deal. EU came to the defense. Two people from Activision Blizzard came to their defense. There's a lot there that I feel a lot of the hot takes you see online don't take into account people online. Just post shit as soon as it comes.

[01:55:07]
And they don't actually critically think, they just want you to click right. So here's a little more depth, and hopefully that provides you guys with a little bit more of a more informed insight to this. Critical thinking is really lost on people, man. Well, that's what happens when you spend all your time in classrooms that are more worried about teaching you about you could be anything you want to be, including something you're not, as opposed to here's how to critically think. Dude, do you know what I was talking to someone about earlier this week?

[01:55:37]
Is that you're pregnant? No, I had mentioned this. What did I you myself? No. Okay, sorry.

[01:55:48]
No, I was talking to someone. I had mentioned this to someone at the beginning of the year, but it came up in a conversation again earlier this week. I live in Ontario, Canada. Right? So in the public school curriculum for math before you start grade nine high school math, if you get like, the printout curriculum, they dedicate an entire unit to emotional learning and math.

[01:56:11]
Meaning I can hear you a little bit. Like, what the fuck does that mean? What it means is that you're supposed to learn emotionally how math affects you and the communities around you and those who are disenfranchised before you learn actual math. No critical thinking. They're teaching how and what to think, not how to think for yourself.

[01:56:30]
They're teaching you what exactly? And I looked at the student that brought this to me and I was like, why the hell are you learning? This isn't math. You're supposed to be learning like infinite numbers and linear graphs and all this stuff. Why are you learning what numbers make you feel?

[01:56:45]
Like, fucking ridiculous. Fucking ridiculous. Number six. And the number nine, when put together, makes me feel all weird in my peepee. Nice.

[01:56:55]
They make me feel all tingly. Is that some sort of issue, teacher? No, not at all. Matter of fact, let me actually teach you how to have gay sex. But you can actually keep the video that you have up on the screen, the MW Two footage, because I'm liking this footage while I go into this next segment of the news.

[01:57:14]
So I figure a nice segue there is to just cover what's going on with Xbox. Because despite all this, xbox did have some pretty notable news as well. I had to cut a lot from tonight's show. Like, again, we would have been here until like four or 5 hours if I didn't cut it down. Phil Spencer went on a interview, did an interview for a podcast called Second Request.

[01:57:35]
He talked about a lot of things. You know, Phil Spencer likes to talk, so there's no surprise there. But he was asked about Sony, like how Sony's been reacting to the ABCA acquisition. And he said they were the one major pressure to the deal. Quote, Sony is trying to protect its dominance on the console.

[01:57:52]
The way they grow is by making Xbox smaller. Sony has a very different view of the industry than we do. They don't ship their games day and day and date on PC. They do not put their games on their subscription when they launch their games. He's not wrong.

[01:58:05]
They don't. But no need to bring it up. We all do this. That's like beating a dead horse. It really is.

[01:58:14]
I love how they say things like that, but then fail to mention how Xbox is just like you said, it's like 13% of Microsoft's entire business. Sony specializes in consoles. Of course they're going to dominate the market. Yeah, that's the one on that market for like don't get wrong, Sony makes other electronics, but it's not like Microsoft at all. Not even close.

[01:58:38]
And even then, just like Sony TV. Are Sony TVs even really a thing? Because Samsung dominates that market now, Sony, I used to have Sony TVs and stuff, but I swear it's just it's Samsung, it's Toshiba, it's a whole bunch of other things, but it's not Sony anymore. I don't see as many Sony TVs. They're still out there electronics like it was.

[01:59:01]
Yeah, and even like, I like Sony phones. Maybe this is a hot take. I thought, I think Sony phones are great, that's just me. But even Sony phones, those don't dominate the market. But Sony does actually make the camera components for iPhones.

[01:59:14]
I don't know if you knew that at all. Yeah, Sony makes amazing TVs, but you need a loan to buy one.

[01:59:25]
Because I remember all the TVs that were in my household when I was growing up. They were all Sony TVs. Even when flat screens first became a thing, it was a Sony TV. And then somewhere along the line, I guess it was around the time LCDs started coming in, samsung started dominating that market and I stopped seeing Sony TVs everywhere. You know what my earliest memories of Sony dominating something was?

[01:59:46]
What? Sony Walkmans. How could I forget? People forget that before. Sony and I've talked about this before.

[01:59:55]
I've made videos before about this, but before Sony became a console maker, they dominated tech in other aspects, like Walkman, CD players, radios, things along those lines. And they had approached Nintendo, another Japanese company who is big in the market. Obviously it's Nintendo about, hey, we noticed an issue with your games and that's the limited capabilities of cartridges. So we'd like to work with you to make like a CD based console to which Nintendo originally agreed. They actually made some prototypes which we've shown on stream before, but then they decided against it.

[02:00:38]
And lo and behold, Sony decides, you know what, we're going to make our own console. So I came up the PlayStation one and something happened. Interestingly square Enix came out with a title by the name of Final Fantasy Seven, which was supposed to go on the Nintendo 64. Do you know why it didn't go on the 64? No, why?

[02:00:58]
It didn't go on the 64 because as Sony had predicted, cartridges just don't have enough memory. So I had to go on The Lambency Show. So, yeah, Sony has been popular for a long time. However, you look at the past, like 2025 years, it's been Microsoft. Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Live, Microsoft this, Microsoft that.

[02:01:21]
Microsoft hit me with a whistleblow back Office, even the interface that my work uses for our scheduling and everything is Windows based. And then when I worked in the environmental industry, like for the government, all of their stuff was all Microsoft based business, I think it was called. I can't remember. Welcome in Copa, thank you for joining us. We can tell is here, we have already scheduled on December 27 an interview with Copa Katanya at 09:00 p.m..

[02:01:52]
Really? Yep. I will be in there for that one because I have, I have two weeks off during the break. Yes. So that'll be on December 27.

[02:02:00]
Okay. All right. And we have an interview with Shroom show tomorrow at nine. Got you. Beautiful stream show is an interesting character for those of you that do decide to tune into that one.

[02:02:11]
He's a character. I enjoyed his last interview. Oh, God. Do you remember how crazy he was? Yes.

[02:02:18]
You got to me. The way he came up with things on the slide. No, it was funny. I like him. For those who don't know, he plays the character of an alien from, I think he said the Planet Xerxes.

[02:02:32]
I want to say I don't remember, but you guys don't love him. He's hilarious. Okay. But yes, back to our gaming news. Right.

[02:02:40]
So another Xbox related move. So remember last week we had covered how who unionized last week? It wasn't Bethesda who unionized last week? Lamb. See how I can't remember if I had breakfast, let alone what I had?

[02:02:54]
Never mind. Okay, someone unionized last week. I can't remember who it was. It was a big developer. But this week, now labor movements labor movements have been building up momentum.

[02:03:05]
Over 300 quality assurance workers at ZeniMax Online Studios, former Bethesda parent company and current subsidiary of Microsoft, as we had previously mentioned, are in the process of organizing a union. The workers are organizing in collaboration with Code CWA, which is assisted in the formation of Activision Blizzards. Activision Blizzard formed a union last week. There we go. But I forget that in a statement on Twitter, ZeniMax Workers United posted, quote, today we, a majority of QA workers at ZeniMax are proud to announce the launch of our union with Code CWA.

[02:03:38]
We are the first group of workers at Microsoft to formally unionize. We are empowered to advocate for ourselves and build a future where we can thrive alongside the company. This move comes just days after QA workers at Blizzard's Albany Studio voted to unanimously for their union for their union after weather delays and alleged union busting attempts by their parent company. However, it seems Denimax's path to unionization might not be hindered by Microsoft, which bought them out back in 2021. After Microsoft announced its plans to purchase Activision Blizzard earlier this year, it shared principles that it would guide its response to the organizing activities of its employees.

[02:04:17]
The principles included the same direct dialogue lines used by companies before, while also stating that it does not believe there's any benefit to resisting employees unionization efforts. Basically, it seems like Microsoft is adopting a hands off approach while also acknowledging attempts for its potential future subsidiary. Again, it sounds like Microsoft is a great place to work if you're in gaming. That's what that sounds like to me. But you'll never learn about that other app.

[02:04:44]
Sorry, I was just looking at the chat there and then I also mentioned the super app. But I've already talked about this. But bro, did I not call this a few weeks ago? No, you did. I did.

[02:04:56]
See, vex is smart. This is why you have to listen to our podcast, because I can see this shit coming from a mile away. The thing is, it's just like what I said. All you have to do is read between the lines and look at everything. Look at the whole picture, not just what they're telling you.

[02:05:12]
This is why we have a big problem going on, particularly in America, not just across the world, but particularly in America. We have this inability to communicate with each other because people only want to read headlines. They don't want to read whole articles. And even if they do read the whole article, they don't take into account anything else, what led to it, what caused this, anything else that they own or have previously done, or anything along those lines. So we like to actually look at the whole picture and not just read headlines, which is why we're able to predict many things.

[02:05:49]
It's not that we're psychic or anything else like that. It's the fact that we actually do something called research. We try to report with something called integrity and honesty, and we don't try to riddle you with false narratives and extreme bias. And if we have an opinion, we like to state that, hey, this is a personal opinion or a hot take. Big fucking difference.

[02:06:12]
We need a hot take button, by the way. Like, we need a hot take. Sound effect. Speaking of sound effects and things along those lines, I am in talks with John Reeves live about doing an intro and outro music for this, finally. Wow.

[02:06:27]
When is John Reeves coming back to the podcast, though, is what I want to know. Both of us are extremely busy and stuff, but he is working on that for us. And I have given him that's wonderful. I have given him free rein to make it however he, like, under the construct of I want it to sound retro, and I want it to sound like how he would describe, for example, the intro. I'm like, I want it to be retro, and I want it to be in a way that he would think of an introduction to retro gaming, how he would want it to sound and the outro to be the same thing, but instead of how it's introducing him to it, how it's sadly leaving.

[02:07:06]
Interesting. So we'll see what he comes up with. We'll see what he comes up with. Thank you, John Reese. If you're listening, or if you're here, thank you for helping us out.

[02:07:14]
Go check out John Reese. I'm definitely paying for it and stuff. I'm going to pay him what he's worth. No, but yeah. No.

[02:07:21]
He's such a wholesome man. Oh, my goodness. If there's any person, if I could define the most, like, what is a wholesome person? I immediately think of John Reese. There's nothing bad you can find about this guy, but it's so adorable.

[02:07:36]
It doesn't matter. It's wholesome still. It really is. I saw this guy posted on Twitter, I think it was last week. He ordered, like, DoorDash or something, and they brought the wrong food.

[02:07:49]
And he wasn't even upset. He was just having a party with all this food. They said it's on the house.

[02:07:56]
He was so happy. Look at this. Chicken fingers. I didn't order this. It's on the house.

[02:08:04]
That's the level of just like grateful and happy. I just always want to be on john Reeves. You're amazing person. He really is. If anyone has not watched him go check out John Reeves live on twitch, you will not be disappointed.

[02:08:19]
That guy is just so awesome. Yes. So one more big thing coming out of I thought she was going to say me when describing wholesome weird. You yell a lot at us though. Copa.

[02:08:31]
I can't say that you're that wholesome as much if you would visit him at the copa catania where music and passion is always in fashion, xbox is preparing to join other major game publishers and also raising its prices of its first party titles from sixty dollars to seventy dollars. Beginning in 2023, games built for the series x and x, including that, including ford's a motors for Redfall and starfield, will cost 69 99 USD at launch. So we could be like nice has noted that the regional pricing may differ as it is, yet not yet given specifics for other countries. I'm starting to get tongue tied now that we're going. We're longer than tongue tied.

[02:09:20]
You got to do the weird throat noises.

[02:09:26]
There you go. That one was for you, canola. That was for you. Oh yeah. That's your custom sound for leaving our review adventures in here.

[02:09:33]
So I can't give him his. This price reflects the content, scale and technical complexity of these titles, a spokesperson told IGN. As with all games developed by our teams at xbox, they will also be available with game pass the same day they launch. I mean, this is unsurprising. The $70 thing has noises because he wants to take the $3 back.

[02:09:55]
Oh wow. Okay, white bear, this is for you. Look, you got a custom sound alert there, white bear.

[02:10:06]
As I was saying, xbox is not the first company to do this and this has just been an ongoing trend in the industry. Sony started it ubisoft. And caught onto it pretty quickly as well. I think just given the rate of inflation, it was inevitable that this was going to happen. Xbox has even stated as well, like even though their console prices are staying the same right now, they know foreseeably in the future they're going to go up because even though they're already taking a loss, they can't maintain that loss again given the rate of inflation and the prices of the parts and stuff.

[02:10:40]
Right. So no surprise. I mean for me, a game is still going to cost more. Yeah, you know what? You know what I just realized?

[02:10:47]
The gas prices went down, right? It now costs me more to buy a new release game than to fill up my truck. That's how expensive games are for me.

[02:11:04]
That was how you know that was a legit laugh, right? You want to know why I have a game pass. It's because I like because it costs me some. Like when gas is at its highest. The most I paid for a tank of gas was almost $140 for a full tank.

[02:11:21]
That's why I have a Game Pass subscription, because I can't be paying 89, 99 plus taxes, which comes out to, like, $107 for new release game. I'm not doing it. I can't do it. I can't afford it. All right?

[02:11:42]
So I got the information for this price, like, bump from IGN, right? So even though so here's the quote. So Sony UVSA has to take to interactive have announced $70 price points for new certain games, and Sony specifically has reported reportedly discussed raising that price even higher. As for whether this will mean the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S will also get more expensive, it's hard to say. IGN, are you retarded?

[02:12:07]
Quite possibly. I'm not as bad as Pataku is. I literally just said, yo, they've confirmed that the console prices are going to raise. This is, again, bare minimum. Googling.

[02:12:18]
Even like, Google won't even suppress this. It's there. I swear to sometimes you know how when characters get angry and cartoons, they get that vein in the forehead? I feel at the rate that I have to roll my eyes at the shit I read about gaming, I'm eventually going to get that thick veiny fuck just going through the center of my forehead. Like mainstream gaming news, like, news outlets are fucking trash anyway.

[02:12:46]
That's why we have this week in Gaming. That's why we have this week in Gaming. So on a happier note, let's end on a nice happy note, okay? I mean, you can just keep playing the Modern Warfare clips at this point. I'm playing bioshop.

[02:12:58]
We're going strong. Okay. All right. Thank you. So, yes, as Judas was announced to write the new game from Ken Levine, we actually finally got some new news about BioShock Four.

[02:13:12]
So for those of you who aren't aware, BioShock Four was announced. I feel like it was like four or five years ago now. And then COVID happened. And at the beginning of COVID we got some news that they were relocating the studio to Montreal in Quebec, Canada, and that BioShock Four was going to be, unfortunately, an open world, which, again, not everything has to be open world. A good, linear, closed world game is you can do it and still make boatloads of money.

[02:13:39]
Okay? BioShock doesn't need to be open world, in my opinion. But we did learn earlier this week that Liz Albie, who was a writer for Ghost of Toshima, as well as other big titles like Assassin's Creed, Blackslag, Far Cry, Four and Five, and Watchdog Legions, has joined the team as the game's narrative lead. She announced on Twitter quote, the dream is real. So happy to announce I've joined Cloud Chamber as the narrative lead on BioShock.

[02:14:06]
Exciting news. Very exciting. It's good to hear something about this, but if she's just being hired on as a writer, that means we're not going to see this game for at least, like, four more years if she's just getting hired on. Just saying. Also, I mean, as much as I do like BioShock, I still don't have a lot of hope for this.

[02:14:21]
Because, I mean, yes, BioShock Infant was good, but it wasn't that good. I thought it was, like, kind of lackluster compared to the first two. And now this being under a new studio, open world, given where the industry is also going and it's being developed in Canada, my hope is for it. I'll still probably check it out, though. Ghost of toshiba.

[02:14:39]
Did I say toshiba or toshima? Sushima. Sushima. That's how I say it anyways. Like Sashimi.

[02:14:47]
Sashimi. Kuta. For those who don't know that may go fuck yourself in Polish. Nice. It actually does.

[02:14:55]
I'm not even lying.

[02:15:01]
To Ignite is a disgusting film of gaming. Do our voices and volumes seem to match this time? You're slightly softer. Yeah, that's fine. Give me 1 second.

[02:15:11]
How about now? Because the thing is, the concept of the way OBS volume sounds compared to how she hears me are two different lineups. I have to adjust the volume on the OBS to see how it works, but I can't actually hear it, so I rely on feedback from the audience in order to know whether or not it's actually working.

[02:15:37]
Canole says if BioShock Four sucks, they'll just euthanize the game. I don't think so. They'll milk it. BioShock is such a staple name in gaming. The 100% milk it.

[02:15:46]
Lamincy is so soft. You got a dump truck. We know that. They're just fucking with me now. Listen, I may be sucked on that side, but on the other side, I got a dumpy.

[02:15:57]
I know people just like there are people that hate America for just no reason. Hating America. But Canada is generally just a garbage country. I mean, at least your country didn't trade a hypocritical female basketball player and stuff for an international drug lord who's known as a merchant of death who targets Americans in the middle of a supposed war between Ukraine. They return a Russian arms dealer.

[02:16:22]
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. That's true. I mean, we did give $10 million to a terrorist. I did show you the whole tweet that I showed you where the Pentagon was like, we're worried that Fix your Belt might go back to Armstrong, but no fucking shit, I did. Yeah.

[02:16:37]
And then on top of that, we also said it's totally oh, I shared this. I don't think I shared the screenshot with you, but I was working with a student. I have a law student that I help out, and she's doing a project on LGBT rights in Ontario, and a court of law ruled up here back in the 70s because there was some material that seemed kind of underage inappropriate. So it basically said that even though the material was like, illegal, it was totally legal to advertise and publish it and advocate for it. It's legal to advocate for pedophilia, essentially, in Canada since the 70s.

[02:17:12]
Sounds about right.

[02:17:16]
I live in a country a lot of the elites purchased underage clients from Giselane Maxwell, who has gone to prison for a whole prostitution ring and none of the clients have been named. Yeah. You mean gislane. Whatever. Gisling.

[02:17:32]
Does it really matter at this point? No, it doesn't. All right. Yeah. So that's all the gaming news I have for this week.

[02:17:39]
Like I said, I had cut a lot out of this show because there was so much to focus on with the Game Awards and the whole FTC lawsuit. But that seems to be it for this week. Like I said, if you are upset about that little 15 year old kid dedicating the Elder Ring Award to his reformed Orthodox Rabbi Bill Clinton, if you think that was racist, you're a pussy. Grow a pair and please go outside and touch some grass. There was nothing to get upset about.

[02:18:10]
On that note, also buy our new Clinton ringwitch, which I have pulled up here. Like I said, we have it in phone cases, bath mats, doormats, T shirts, sweatshirts, pretty much you name it. We are planning on making more lines and stuff, heading over to the The Lambency Show to catch our latest episodes. We do have a core line as well, but this is what I'm promoting now. If you have not already and you are interested in becoming a guest, go out to our website and go to the guest forms and fill out the form and we will get back to you as soon as we can about trying to schedule that because we are officially back with the creator spotlight.

[02:18:51]
Because I have a little bit more time due to the fact that we have a new cohost joining us on Tuesdays. The weekly anime recap. I'm going to break him in on Tuesday and then he's going to take over for me. So it's just going to be Mikey and that particular cohost. So I'm going to have the creative.

[02:19:09]
It works out if it works out. So I'm going to have the Creator spotlight to run by myself. That being said, though, that is at the end of this podcast. We hope you guys enjoyed this podcast, and until next time, enjoy yourself.