#160: Red Storm Rising

Secret Symbols, a PlayStation podcast, is brought to you by, well, you. If you want to learn how to support our show, go to patreon.com slash laststandmedia. Greetings and salutations. Welcome back to Secret Symbols, a PlayStation podcast.

This is episode number 160. My name is Colin Moriarty. I'm joined as always by my son Chris Reagan. Chris, how are you today?

I'm all right. I think I got like, I had one of those sleeps where like I woke up every two hours, you know? So like, eh, not ideal, but you know, overall, can't complain too much. Sure.

It's funny, I had the exact opposite problem. Well, not a problem, it's a good thing, right? I knew I slept pretty consistently because I had substantial eye boogers when I woke up, which really happens when one doesn't, you know, open their eyes for some time to come. Dustin Furman, executive producer, co-host, how are you today?

I'm doing well. Got a nice, since we're talking sleep, I slept more than normal last night. I went to bed at like 11.30, which is absurd for me usually, but then I slept until like 9. So it's almost been off, but I feel great now.

So I'm ready for a good show. Well, it's good to see everyone out there and be here with all of you today for another episode of Secret Symbols, a PlayStation podcast. Remember, you can support us on patreon.com slash laststandmedia. Like more than 12,000 of you do right now.

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I do want to apologize to some people. I've been reading a few exit surveys on Patreon recently. Most people don't leave any notes when they leave, but some people do. Usually it's an apology, which I feel really bad about, like, you know, and it's like some insane apology.

I'm sorry I just lost my job and my mortgage is getting foreclosed on and I have to, it's like some fucking horrible thing. But every once in a while, someone, someone will write in and they'll kind of opine about their questions, comments, concerns, lots of ideas not being used. And I want to apologize about that. It's just that we get, as I'm sure you see when you submit them, like sometimes 200 or more submissions.

We can maybe fold in, if I'm being aggressive, 15 or so. So maybe 20 on like a really verbose episode. So I apologize about that. But remember, you get lots of perks and we appreciate your support over there.

So thank you. I also wanted to pimp out real quick if I might, our merch. We don't talk too much about it or haven't recently, but it's going. People are still buying it.

It's awesome. Chris is wearing a shirt right now. You can go to lastdanmedia.shop and check out our shirts and our sweatshirts. We have awesome vinyl stickers and other things.

We really appreciate your support over there. All printed and shipped from the United States made in fair trade practices by people who are not sweatshop laborers, which is always nice and different than a lot of merch other people sell. So please do support us over there if you can. We appreciate you.

We also have an exciting thing to note. As we noted last week, we're doing a live show, a test balloon, as I call it, in Western Pennsylvania. That show is totally sold out. In fact, it's sold out in about 30 minutes.

Only two patrons and everyone got exposed to the non-paying audience, which we're sorry about. So I want to make a couple of notes about this, guys, before I pontificate further. The big thing is, I know this is bad marketing and I don't care, is that of course we're going to record the show. Of course we're going to record the show.

So I know people feel like they're going to miss out. It's going to be better in person, but there's never going to be a time when we do a live show that it's not going to be recorded and published at a later time. That's just not how I roll. And I don't feel like, you know, we listen to live music, right?

And you buy like a live album or you listen to a live album, but it's good, it's fun, but it's way cooler to be there. But you get the option of listening to it live if you can't be there. So I wanted to make that note. And the second thing is, I know a lot of people felt that they didn't have enough time to consider it and all this kind of stuff before this tickets went on sale.

We hear you loud and clear, but remember, this is just a test. So don't be upset if you didn't get in this time. If we learn positive things from this experience, which I think we will, we'll be back. And you'll get your opportunity next time.

So we really appreciate the love, kindness, and support you've shown there. And again, props to Dustin and of course Ben Smith, our associate producer for the wonderful work they're doing there. And oh, I guess I said that D.D. Cooper, you wrote in about this.

I'm sorry, I just totally skipped your question about that. A couple other things I want to know. Sacred Symbols Plus recently. We did a couple of interesting ones.

Another call-in show we did. I'm doing an interview shortly tomorrow. Actually, the same day this goes live for patrons with a disability advocate who's going to talk to me about accessibility and games. I'm really excited about that.

I want to get Chris on the phone line soon with people maybe in the next week or two and start folding some other people in. So that'll be fun. So yeah, that's basically it. Now, I've said a lot there, Chris.

I want to know how you're feeling about the live show, how you're feeling about seeing everyone. You know, we're going to do with like 250 or 300 people, something like that. I don't know what it is, something outrageous. And it's going to be exciting.

And the crazy thing is, we probably could have sold out a thousand plus person venue doing the show. But we really don't want to get crazy with you. So are you excited about how you're feeling about that? Yeah, no, I'm stoked.

Like, I've been to, I mean, ever since we started the show, I've been to various like cons. I've been to PAX and E3 and like people have come up recognizing me from the show. And they've always been like really cool. And I think it'll be a lot of fun to be in an area that's like specifically all for it.

I'm curious, because when I go to those cons, it's always like a mix of people who are like, hey, I know you from this, you know, I know you from the channel, or I know you from this podcast, or I know you from StarTank or whatever. So it'll be interesting to see like the just one focused audience. You know, I'm kind of interested to see that. Me too.

I have a cool format. I think it's going to work for our show in terms of we're doing the best games of all time. I want everyone to kind of present their game and defend it to everyone else. I think it'll be a fun little exercise.

We'll spend a few hours with each other. Dustin, how are you feeling about, you know, the promise of it's kind of your first live show as someone people want to see. Like, you know, it's a quote unquote town. I always hate that word.

Right. Well, the thing that's really odd for me is just that it's in my hometown and I'm completely invisible in this town. I've never once been recognized. I have met one person that I didn't know that knew and listened to the show.

And so the weird thing about all this is that like when we put the tickets live last Friday, we had a block of a hotel that's very close. And apparently the hotel block sold out before the tickets even went live. And so Ben knows the hotel manager there and she called him and was like, our phones are ringing off the hook like never before. Like we've never in two or three years this hotel's been open.

This has never happened. And I think the whole entire hotel is booked with pretty much just our fans, which is cool. So it's just like, I'm like wondering if the word's going to get out around here. Like some internet company is holding an event here and people are flying in around the country.

And so it makes it feel a little more, it's not mysterious to us, but I like the fact we're doing this kind of under the radar of the locals. Yeah, it's weird how that all worked out that it ended up in your hometown. Strange. Okay, so we'll continue to, you know, update you guys on this.

And I don't want anyone to fear we're also doing the kind of free picnic gathering. Someone again on Twitter was like, what are you guys just going to gather in a bar? I'm like, our social producer's the mayor. It's going to be like some sort of Walking Dead situation where I'm going to take over a township.

They're going to call me Colin. The Colin is what they're going to call me. My weapon is going to be a hockey stick. Yeah.

They're going to rename the town after you. Just for that day, though. You remember the thing with Conan O'Brien? They named that college Conan O'Brien College, but only for 24 hours on Saturday.

I love it. It's great. I'm excited about this. Thank you so much for your love, kindness and support out there for all that.

Secret symbols, plus Patreon merch, we appreciate you. All right. Want to say Vita, so July 20th has passed, Vita's entire library now exists basically on the shop. I think a few more games will trickle forward, but I want to let everyone know it's kind of, now this thing's kind of frozen.

It is what it is. And pretty interesting, we ended up getting an update out for Habroxia 2 on there, which I'm pleased about. A couple other things to note here. Just quick notes before we get into more earnest conversations.

If you go to the PlayStation blog, the official PlayStation blog, there's a write-up and new video for Ghost of Tsushima and the Iki Island expansion. And I don't want to watch the video and I don't want to read about it because I want to go in surprise, but if you want to go check that out, you're more than welcome to. I thought I'd let everyone know, also, Chris, I'm curious about you to get this. The HBO series for The Last of Us is tracking at more than $10 million per episode, which means the first season will cost over $100 million.

It's a massive investment in this IP. What do you think of that? Also in Canada, so apparently these numbers came out because it's like doing massive benefits for this local community, and that's where I read it. So what do you think about that price tag?

It's pretty crazy. Yeah, I mean, cool for that community, I guess. But I feel like there's a lot of, I don't know, better ways $100 million could be used, but, you know, that's just me. Yeah, it seems expensive.

It's your games company. Yeah, I mean, that's basically, now HBO's paying this. Who knows what Sony is investing in this? They might just be getting licensing money for all we know, but Dustin, what do you think about that $10 million price tag?

I find it extraordinary just because the first season of The HBO Last of Us will cost more than The Last of Us cost to make, the original. Wow. Oh, man, that's a very interesting comparison to make. It is cool.

It's cool in a way because we're seeing these, like, very inflated budgets for television. Like, Amazon, this was a report back in April, but they're spending $465 million on the first season of Lord of the Rings, the new, like, prequel-type show that they're doing, and so to see HBO also, like, be like, yeah, we're going all in, it's good. HBO needs something. You know, they kind of haven't really had a huge mainstream hit since Game of Thrones ended, and maybe they see this as that next thing.

You know, they already have a launching point of the already-established fan base of Last of Us, so maybe they sell some confidence. Yeah, it could. It's a mighty investment, and I was caught by that. I'm more and more interested in doing it.

I don't know if I said this, but what I would like to do, I might have said this in passing either on the show or privately to one of you, but it would be fun is when the show appears, I think it won't be on until 2022, but that 10-week run, one of the two episodes of Sacred Simples Plus every week will be, like, a discussion about the show, and that would be a really fun way to incorporate more of the related PlayStation licensing and products that are going to be coming out. For instance, when PlayStation Mobile games are coming out, I think we'll be covering them on the show. I feel like it's more essential now than PlayStation Mobile and all the experience and all the stuff they've done in the past, and so in that same spirit, when these TV shows and movies and all this coming out, I think we need to find a place to discuss them, and I think Sacred Simples Plus would be a great place to do that, so looking forward to that as well. One more note, GDC, Game Developer Conference in San Francisco 2022, will be in person.

It's a big news, because GDC hasn't been in person for a couple of years, and it's also big news, and I think important news, because GDC, I've been too many times, I always say it was my favorite show, and it is, although I don't think the people that run really like me, but it's just a show where you just go to different sessions of people talking in great granular ways about the way they make games, about the way they sell games, about the way games are conceived, and all the rest. It's just fascinating, all that is put up on YouTube later on, but it's important to get a lot of money in the wings right now, I can tell you, I talk to people, there's money on deck, waiting to be spent, GDC is a great place to find people that want to talk to you, take meetings, and all the rest, so I want to give a shout out to that. Now, a more serious topic, Dustin, I want to kick this one over to you, this came out last night from the time in which we were recording, and I've gone through most of the legal documents that have not been shared more publicly, but Activision Blizzard is being sued by California, the state of California is widely reported for, and IGN reports frat white culture and sexual harassment, this follows a multi-year investigation by the state, and you can check out the full details of the lawsuit online, their publicist philosophies are, so what did you make of this, this is on the back of a lot of drama at Ubisoft, and I actually talked a little bit about that on David Jaffe's stream when I was on there last week, what do you make about this new outpouring of information of the culture of some of these massive publishers? I think the most interesting aspect to me, not that this makes, you know, to dismiss other claims, but this one feels more solid to me in the fact that it is from a two-year investigation by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, so this isn't just, I don't want to say just, I want to make sure I portray this right away, this is beyond some employees coming together to expose the company, right, and you know, there can be validity to that as well, but this is, Activision Blizzard, you have to imagine, is sweating right now, especially if these accusations are true, it's a two-year investigation, and I'd be curious, what, I don't know what the, how it works when actual state governments file suit against companies, I have to imagine that they wouldn't do that unless they were pretty confident they would win, but it's been interesting, Activision Blizzard has put out a statement as well saying that they believe the DFEH, which is that organization through the state of California I mentioned a moment ago, included distorted, in many cases, false descriptions of Blizzard's past, and they said they've been extremely cooperative with them, so they've already kind of put out a statement saying that, you know, this is, this is not, they said it's distorted, which is not a complete denial, which is kind of interesting as well, but some of the stuff in this report, very bad, very, very, very bad, and it's, you know, this is one of the situations where I'm like, I'm very happy to see them go to court, I would love to see all the evidence laid out, and if these things are true, then yeah, people should pay for that, because it's not good.

Yeah, so Chris, just to lay into some of these specific, I guess, accusations, there's a whole vertical of accusations about women basically being ignored and or passed over and or kind of paid less or whatever in the corporate structure, so there's this whole discrimination angle, in addition to that, there's a whole angle of, and vertical of inappropriate behavior at the studio, which I think is its own vertical, so people saying and doing inappropriate things, and then there's a third vertical, which I think is maybe the most serious, which is the overt sexual harassment of women, so I think there's the three verticals of complaints in the document, and yeah, so what is your, what in your mind is going on here? I mean, it seems pretty grisly, dude, like, some of the stuff in there was sincerely shocking to the point where I don't even really feel comfortable saying some of the stuff, because it's like, it's, this doesn't necessarily surprise me so much as it does, especially just because, like, you know, Activision's been rigging in so much money for so long, that, like, it seems to me, like, what was the saying? Absolute power? Oh, absolute power corrupts, absolutely, yeah.

Yeah, like, I don't know, this isn't the same, you know, it's a very different Activision from decades past, and I'm very curious to see, like, how this turns out, because this seems to be, like Dustin said, this seems to be the most egregious example of anything like this that I think I've ever seen. Like, I was reading through some of it, I skimmed a lot of it because it's so much, but if literally even just half of this is true, or even, like, a quarter of this is true, and it highly depends on, like, from what vertical, also, if any amount of this is true, then I think they're in a pretty big amount of trouble. I don't think I've ever seen the state sue a games company like this. Yeah, California and the Attorney General of California are notoriously activists, which is fine, that's what they vote for, and you beat the people in California vote for, so that's representing them, and it's, yeah, it's less cut and dry, because it's not more white-collar and civil kind of situation, with the exception of a few, you know, of these over, could be harassment.

I don't know if it's assault, I don't know if it gets that far, but it's funny, because I was talking about something similar on David Jaffe's show last week, where we were talking about Ubisoft, and someone had, I think maybe someone called in about it, because we did call-ins on a show on a stream, and I was saying that I'm surprised that with Ubisoft, which is a more, which is a problem that we've known about longer, so it's had this chance to kind of come out and go through all these different waves and get figured out over a couple of years, and I was saying to him that, like, to me, Occam's razor suggests that maybe the people that are left behind Ubisoft that were accused of things didn't do anything, or, like, they were investigated, because why would Ubisoft be so proclamative of saying, like, our culture's different, we're writing these letters from Yves Gilman, and all this, and then we see that that's kind of collapsing in on itself, where there's a lot of new accusations going on at Ubisoft, so we have no real idea what's going on there, and then, you know, to Dustin's point, I see this statement from Activision, and the same thing comes to mind for me, where I'm like, why would you say this if you didn't really feel like you could defend yourself? That's the thing that is interesting to me. When they released their statement shortly after this stuff came out, I was like, well, this puts a little bit of a different spin on it, because Because I believe most of these accusations to be true, but I also think that Activision is comfortable enough for Blizzard, you know, they're the same thing. They're comfortable enough defending themselves.

And so, to your point, Dustin, I want to see this go to court. I don't think they might settle, right? I doubt it. California might be able to extract tens of millions of dollars in penalties on Activision and Blizzard and put this away, but hopefully it does actually go to court.

And then we see what the accusations are, and if and when they can be defended, and then we'll have a better understanding of what happened and what the conclusion should be. Because these are serious accusations, a lot of them. I did want to separate those into verticals, and I wanted to say this because I think that one vertical of inappropriateness, general, let's call it general frat boyishness that's not over the line sexual, and that's not something that encourages a certain group of people in this case, women, to be not promoted, all that. That little vertical to me seems to be defensible from Activision's point of view.

We're a video game company, we hire man children basically that never grow up. They have a lot of people. I worked in the industry for years, right? So I know.

There are people that have no social grace, have never spoken to a woman, have... You know what I mean? I'm not even being facetious. There are normal people in gaming, and then there are a lot of awkward ass people per capita, way more than you would probably find in many other industries.

And so that particular vertical might be where Activision is willing to defend itself, saying well, yeah, this guy played Call of Duty all day and didn't work. I mean, it's, you know, we're a video game company, but I think they're going to have a lot harder time defending these other things, and I think that's where people want to go at them, and that's where I want to get more information extracted. We're going to talk about this a little bit more later when we talk about Sumo Digital, because I want to talk about now our own complicity as gamers and consumers in this entire ecosystem, but I'm going to save it for now. I just want to make sure to bring that up so people know what's going on there.

And likewise, and I said earlier, Ubisoft is dealing with a whole smattering of new accusations out of its home country of France. Basically, they're being accused of quote unquote institutional sexual harassment. And this comes on the back of what I was saying prematurely, I guess, maybe Ubisoft is just getting worse and worse for them, so keep an eye out on that as well. And then I just want to let everyone else know as well that, and this just came out, if you go to PlayStation.com or just go to the search on Google, you can get six months of Apple TV, like Apple TV Plus, whatever they call it, the streaming service for free, just for owning a PS5 and then unifying your name, like your Apple name to your PlayStation name.

So if you're interested in that streaming service, you can go check that out as well. Alright, here we go. Alex Shute wrote in and said, look back, blessed day. I'm surprised that none of you mentioned when talking about the reveal of Steam Deck that we are now able to play AAA PlayStation Studio games on the go.

We have Horizon Days Gone handheld now with the addition of probably God of War and any other first party Apple. But surely this is a bigger deal, even given the death of Vita under his eye. Alex, what's with all the weird Handmaid's Tale references? First of all, the bad guys say blessed day and under his eye.

And they're fascists, so maybe not wanting to say that necessarily. Okay, so, Chris, what do you think about this? We have a handheld PS4, some people are claiming, through the Steam Deck. I mean, I guess so, but it's, I'm still not, I think it's a great idea.

I'm happy that this is happening, but I see some optimism in the PlayStation family. Like, oh, this is kind of giving us what we want. I'm like, well, didn't we want a PlayStation device? Yeah, I mean, but they're clearly not going to make it, you know?

So I guess it's more just like, oh, we're going to take what we can get, and if we can get a machine that plays Horizon, God of War, or potentially Ghost of Tsushima at some point down the line portably, then like, hell yeah, we'll take that and we'll be happy with it. Whether it comes from Sony or not. Because ultimately, I think there is validity to this statement. Like, oh yeah, yeah, we finally got this machine where we can play, you know, God of War on the go.

But my mind just keeps saying, who is playing God of War? Who wants to play God of War on the go? Like, who wants to play The Last of Us 2 on a train? Like, I just, I don't understand that part of it.

Because I feel like, oh my god, what's that director who always gets mad at people watching movies on their phones? Do you guys know what I'm talking about? Christopher Nolan. Or is it J.J.

Abrams? No, it's like David Lynch. I was thinking of someone else even entirely, like the guy that, anyway, the guy that does all the Mafia movies. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, Scorsese, yeah. It reminds me of that, where it's like, maybe I'm channeling this attitude a little bit too much, you can tell me if I am, but like, I feel like things like The Last of Us and God of War and Ghost of Tsushima, I feel like playing them on a handheld, I don't know, I feel like that robs a lot of it, personally. Like, it might be cool in theory, but I don't see you really getting invested in a game like that, like, in a public place. Like, I just, I don't, I think there's a reason why the DS and the Game Boy and the PSP and these like, kind of, not gimped, but like, more appropriately powered handhelds were so successful.

I think it's because they scaled the type of games that people would play in association with where people would be when they would play them. So like, stuff like WarioWare on DS and stuff like that was a perfect, perfect DS game, you know? And even Phoenix Wright, something that's a little more story heavy, but like super simple and like, really like easily digestible. I don't know if God of War is exactly the kind of game that people would be playing portably even if they could.

I could be wrong, I'm sure there's like a couple people out there, but I would bet that most people, if they had the option to play God of War on a PC or a portable, would probably pick the PC. That would be my guess. So the Steam Deck just confuses me just from like a who's this for standpoint. It's really exciting and really cool because there are definitely certain games that I wish were portable that are now able to be, but I don't know, I think people are getting a little blown away, or carried away with this, hey, this is the solution to the lack of Vita, you know?

You're not going to get, because you're not going to be getting those good Vita games now. It's just going to be ports of, not even ports, but just like PC versions of previous games you've already played. Yeah, it's a good point. And Dustin, I think it's kind of a mirror of what we've even experienced with Vita 10 years ago when everyone was saying a lot of the same stuff that Chris was just saying now, where it's like, well, why would you want to play Uncharted on a handheld?

You can play Uncharted on your PS3. And I remember USP Shueyoshita on Twitter once saying, like, roasting someone saying, like, does your iPhone have Uncharted? And it seemed like in 2011 that was very clever and fun, but it didn't end up mattering in an ironic way. God of War is a good example because we got two God of War games on PSP, and Sony didn't even really seem that worried about bringing it ever to the new one.

In fact, the most AAA game we ever got out of Sony for Vita was at launch. And so there is something, there is some sort of dissonance here about what a handheld is supposed to be. And I think Vita got caught in that crossfire already, which is why I think Sony has gunshot. Right.

I was just thinking, Chris mentioned, you know, inevitably someday The Last of Us Part II will be on PC and thus on Steam Deck. Just imagine someone playing that on a train and, like, a passerby looks. I'm thinking a very particular murder scene, but I'm not going to say which one for all spoilers, but just someone like, what the fuck? Like, just, like, horrific shit.

But, yeah, I don't know, the Steam Deck, I'm, the thing for me I think this relates is, you know, Chris was talking about, like, the types of experiences that you wouldn't want to have in mobile. I think the other concerning thing is just beyond that in that you can't just put a PC game on a six-inch screen or whatever, and it's going to, like, the UI is going to be right. Like, some of these games are not designed to be played like that. So, I'm willing to bet that at launch there's going to be definitely some growing things where people are like, this game's great, but the text is, like, two millimeters tall, and I cannot read it on this thing.

So, who knows? Yeah. Oh, my God, God of War's old text menus on that screen. Yeah, you'll need, like, a magnifying glass.

We see that already, we see this problem with ports that come to PC that are kind of fast. I remember specifically, it was Kerbal Space programming that came to the PS4 and it was just horrible. Like, it was literally just put onto the PS3 as it was and you can't play it like that. So, yeah, we'll see how this thing goes.

I do like, as I said last week, I do like Battle of Moxie, and I appreciate them trying to do something new for them. Finally, before we get into what we're playing, Joey wrote in and said, what's your go-to beverage when gaming? Do you even have one at all? Is it Pepsi, Coke, or water?

Something else, presumably, maybe. Mine is water. Dustin, what do you like to drink when you play video games? I mean, I just drink the same favorites that I always drink, whether it's coffee or I do like a Coke or a Pepsi, of course.

I don't like to drink beer or alcohol when I drink because I don't drink very much at all nowadays. So, if I have one drink, I'm going to be slightly impaired and it means I'm going to play like shit. And I just don't find that. I don't find playing video games drunk fun at all.

So, never, not never beer, but I usually avoid that. What about you, Chris? Where are you on drinking? You're drinking anything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't drink alcohol. I'm for the same reason, Dustin. It frustrates me.

Yeah, exactly. Unless it's the whole point where it's like, hey, let's all play Mario Kart and make a drinking game out of it. That's hilarious. That's fun.

I'll do that. But if I'm just by myself, I'll be like, yeah, I'll have eight shots and I'll go into Trials of Osiris and Destiny 2 and get my shit pushed in. I'm like, I don't want to do that. That's not fun.

It's so aggravating to be in a state where you play this game that you usually play well terribly and you're too impaired to even think properly about how you should handle the fact that you suck. It's not a good place to be. They were drinking and by the time we got to like the third or fourth section, they were just completely trashed. You couldn't even hear them.

And then, of course, like you could hear one of their kids through the mic. It was like, Daddy. And we were like, no. And so, yeah, we just bolted out.

But don't do that to your raid crew. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't drink and raid. No.

I don't know. I stick to pretty generic stuff. Like I'll drink like a smart water or like if I'm feeling like I want some a little bit more refreshing, I'll get a lemonade or like an Arizona iced tea, like a lemon iced tea. How about a whole gallon of iced tea?

Sometimes. On occasion. I'm the only one who drinks it here, so like I have free reign of the gallon, so I don't even have to pour anything. I don't have to dirty a dish.

I don't have to like find like a solo cup or anything. It's just like, there it goes. It's mine. Fuck you.

Drinking out of the carton, I will say, is like one of the most liberating things that a human being can possibly experience. Dude, that was great. That's great. Carrick, when he was doing Duke, he would just have a two liter.

I don't even know what. It was like Walmart ran. Some kind of mysterious off-ran, like Mountain Lightning or something. He would just drink that straight from the two liter.

And I never respected him more than seeing a man do that. Or a woman. That's a person who knows what they want and then goes and they get it. I appreciate that.

Sure. Well said. Yeah, I stick with just the water, my smart water, which I just refill with just the door water on my fridge a couple times. So I don't just throw the bottle right away.

But I like having a new crisp bottle of water and both in the size and in the squeeze bottle size. I go through quite a few of those. I drink Pepsi every day with my dinner. But I don't like drinking sugary drinks when I'm not eating.

I feel like it doesn't work for me, really. If I'm not eating, I want water. But if I am eating, I don't want water. That's basically a rule of thumb.

I think I understand that entirely somehow. Yeah. It's not too complex. Sitting down with a pop, as we would say here in Western Japan, a pop.

Like last night, I turned on Sopranos and I had a drink and it was like perfect. You know, just a little fizzy. So interesting that's all my meat, though. Yeah, I like Coke or Pepsi just makes so many things better.

Sure. Like you're washing it down the old gully. Like an American. All right, let's see here.

Let's get to what we're playing. Chris, we'll start with you. You're not playing anything. So what's going on with you?

Are you moving or what is happening? Well, yeah, that's the kind of thing. I'm like setting up everything. The idea is August 28th, so the end of August, I will be on my way to Nueva York.

Cool, man. Are you excited? Yeah, I'm a little, you know, nervous. You know, it's a little scary.

But just because like, I don't know, moving across, like all my shit across the country feels dumping. I know you've done it. Although I just sold a lot of your stuff. Yeah, I sold, yeah, I probably, well, yeah, I got rid of all my furniture.

And then, and my TVs and stuff, like everything. I think the biggest things that I saved were like my GI Joe collection, my games, and like I just shipped everything on FedEx. You might remember, like I would go to FedEx like every couple of days in December with just like a box or two of things and just ship it. I'm just shipping all my shit to my moms.

And then, I don't suggest moving like that, but I must say, if you are a minimalist, because I shipped my guitars and stuff like that, so those got shipped. But, because I'm seeing your guitar in the background, but if you're someone of a minimalist, which I think you kind of are, like you could shed your TV, your bed, your desk, then it's actually not that expensive. I think I probably spent like a thousand dollars. That's not that much when you consider.

Didn't we talk about this at the time, but I was like astounded that you could even do something like that for a thousand dollars. Like how, it's like a loosey pay thing about flying in an airplane and why you shouldn't get bad because it's so extraordinary. I was thinking the same thing, like it's so much money. Like someone is literally just bringing all of my shit 3,000 miles.

It's pretty crazy. What are you going to do? How are you going to play it? I'm still kind of working the case.

I am a minimalist. I have no problem shedding most of my stuff. At the same time, I do have a lot of camera equipment that I just don't feel like reacquiring, you know? And also, it would be a bitch to sell.

And also, I really like this TV. It's like the perfect TV. If I could get it across the country, I would. And this desk is like a really hard to find desk as well.

So I'm going to have to ship some furniture. So I'm thinking like, I don't know, I'll get like a small, I'll do like a fine movie company to do like a small truck, fill it with some of the stuff that I absolutely need. I want to keep my wall art because I just like my wall stuff. But I don't know.

Just working on it. I think probably I'll have everything sorted out by the end of July. So that I can start moving. But I haven't had time to really like sit down.

I tried to play a little bit of a play tale. But I was just, my mind was just like, you got to get this thing done, this thing done. I was like, I can't do it, I can't. I had to like step myself back.

Because I knew that if I continued, I would not absorb anything. So I haven't played anything really this week. Yeah, I totally understand that. I remember in November, December of 2019, we were doing the show for over a year at that point.

And I was moving. And yeah, people know. It's all consumed. Now that I own a house, as I've been saying for a year.

And I know Dustin knows this and you'll know this soon. Chris is, it's like just like a quarter of your mind at all times. It's just constant things to do. I don't understand it.

But Dustin, what the hell are you playing? For me? Well, Colin, you wrote this. So I wrote it as well.

But I don't know if this is embargoed. I think we can say we're playing it but not our impressions. Yeah, so we're playing Trigger Witch. Now, this is 8.6 shooter from our friends at Rainbite who did a wonderful Zelda-like game called Reverie.

Which I highly recommend. You can play it wherever you want. But this is their new game there. They're Australian, right?

Or they're from New Zealand, I think. And John Opeka, a friend of ours, who wrote the game. And really did a nice job with the dialogue. It's so charming and stuff.

But I don't know what we can say about it. I have no problem saying it. We have to say two things. These are our friends.

So they did send us codes and we accepted them. I would not have solicited them. We actually worked with them a lot. So they emailed me themselves with the codes.

I'm totally comfortable with that. But yeah, apart from that, I don't know what we're allowed to say. I don't think they'll mind just saying it. I think it's great.

And I'm really enjoying it. And I'm trying to not play it too quickly. Because they make smaller titles. I would love a game like this to be 20 hours long.

But I don't think it is. Referee was a few hours basically. Five hours. This game had me smiling quite a bit.

I'll leave it at that. Definitely. I'm still playing through Plague Tale just kind of slowly. It's one of those games that I don't want to play for like over an hour at a time.

Just because you're doing the same thing over and over throughout this game. You're either hiding and trying to get through enemies. Or you're trying to get through hordes of rats. It's one of the two.

Sometimes both. Both sections are awesome. But I'm still enjoying it. And then I'm playing through Demon's Souls.

Demon's Souls again on my Twitch channel. Because it is. I have two games from the FromSoftware. Well, the Souls FromSoftware lineage that I have not played on stream.

Demon's Souls being one of them. The other one being Bloodborne. So I'm having a good time going back to that. Just it's a really, really solid remake.

I was just thinking when I was playing. Man, this game looks so good. Bluepoint just did such a good job. Such strong attention to detail from the original as well.

And I'm just glad that Sony that they're. You know, I don't want to sound hypocritical. Because I don't like the whole consolidation of the. sure we're going to get into some of that in a little bit with sumo but i think that partnerships that make sense are good like blue point they've been pretty much exclusively working with sony for a while now so i'm glad that they can take them under their wing and do more awesome projects like demon souls so it's very good i recommend checking out it's been on sale a few times actually since launch i think it's gone down to either 45 or 50 a few times so cool man yeah otherwise i've not been messing around too much i've been playing world of final fantasy just a little bit because i had it on vita i played it when it came out 2016 just a little game is very weird i'm trying to understand it better it's been on my mind where i'm like i want to get this game a little bit more i feel like it's one of those final fantasy spin-offs i just don't quite comprehend and it's like what was that chocobo's mystery dungeon it's like one of those games where i don't quite get it and i'm trying to get it more so just spending a few hours with it on my video here and there and it is kind of like pokemon it's kind of like pokemon meets disgaea in a way because you're like getting creatures so that's like pokemon but then you're stacking creatures on top of each other to make these pillars and that's like disgaea and then you use them in battle i don't know i don't know what to think of it i'm just i'm in this space right now because i downloaded metro exodus and i was gonna be getting that then i got the trigger which code so i started that but i'm in this space right now where i'm kind of just hungry for something that i don't know what it is someone actually wrote in we didn't use a letter but remember zombies ate my neighbors and it's sequel they were supposed to come out already on ps4 and ps5 but they haven't they come out on xbox and switch and pc but they're not out i was kind of looking forward to that that never materialized i don't know what's going on there and then uh i was thinking about some other titles like from the past i might want to play that maybe a tales game or something i think tales of a rise is the next game that's gonna really capture me and the prelude to that might be hades which comes a couple weeks before the playstation 4 and i'll finally play it there so that's basically all i'm messing with but i wanted to throw in this inquiry from william outlaw on patreon he says hey guys i've been playing playtale recently and noticed that it has incredibly well implemented ps5 features the dual sense feels great uh dustin talked about that last week but i was pleasantly surprised by the game help instructions and videos for collectibles i totally forgot this was a thing at all but once i tried it it was actually way more helpful than picking up my phone and looking it up now over six months in what third party game has the best ps5 implementation of dual sense game helper loading etc i wanted to throw this in because i don't feel like i played any third party game that does this very well each one that i played goes there a little bit but not all the way and the only games that i've used a game help videos on and they were very good was astro and then ratchet actually gets some of the gold bolts and i feel like this needs to be i don't want to say needs to be because you don't want to put barriers in front of developers but sony should kind of slip into certification something about like you have to do something with these it's the same thing when sony i don't know if you guys probably remember this but sony turned on trophies in mid-2008 and still many developers and so what they did was like if you release your game after january 1st 2009 it has to have trophies and that just forced everyone to do it and adopt them so maybe they have to do a similar thing here where it's like can you do something can you have some counters can you have some game help videos and i know for instance that and i think this is awesome tom hap who's making axiom version made axiom version making axiom version 2 says the reason the ps5 version is going to come later than the ps4 version is because he wants to fully utilize the game help features and that's the first time i've ever heard anyone outside of first party or second party say that doesn't anything come to mind for you from your third party experiences in this but actually i have to give it up to them like it is good and it is easier like when i was looking up a gold bolt i'm like this is way better than going to powerpix or going to brian or something i love those guys but it is easier and i don't understand why people aren't using it especially on these massive teams that can certainly have their intern do this right yeah i'm glad you mentioned that because i actually did use the game help one time for uh play tale and i couldn't believe that it clearly laid out the thing that i was confused how to do i was like oh this is how this is supposed to work uh as opposed to resident evil where uh the game help is there but it is not really that helpful it'll have like a few points for each level and it's just really not that great at all as far as other implementations of dual sense i'm trying to i'm honestly trying to think like i played hitman and it was like okay resident evil's guns felt kind of bad in my opinion with the haptic triggers but i guess i mean i'm not surprised though that this early on the best implementations are from sony first party i'd be curious to hear about some of the third party games for example uh call of duty cold war i didn't i played that on pc so i don't know what the haptics were like i know that they said that like each gun feels different but you know who knows yeah i dabbled a little bit with uh the ps5 version of cold war and i you know it's it's definitely there i don't think it's anything particularly special but i also think the adaptive triggers in general like are kind of like i think the haptic feedback like the the the you know oh i can feel the sand i can feel the stone i can feel the brick on dual sense when i'm walking across some landscape in astro's playroom i think like the haptics are the thing that's most impressive to me about the dual sense and i think the most objectively well utilized regardless like even if you have a game that doesn't utilize it well it's not it's never utilized in a way that's the distractingly like terrible but like when i think about godfall and its horrific use of the adaptive triggers to the point where like the game felt like broken like busted in like a real you know like a real way that i think i've ever i sincerely don't think i've ever felt like the game was more broken just by the way that a game was using controller features like it's inconceivable to me how they managed to mess up something so simple like swinging a sword and how broken it feels but the adaptive triggers i think are just harder to program also like because i was i was playing cold war and i was like yeah i mean the controller is resisting me but i don't i don't know if i really want that when i'm firing a gun you know like i want to make shooting a gun harder than it already than it needs to be especially in like a competitive environment like there's no way people are like in multiplayer with active adaptive triggers like there's just no way that they're doing that because there's no reason to do that it's just actively putting you at a disadvantage so like i don't know i just i just wanted to mention godfall as something that just completely did not utilize the dual sense well at all like it's the worst implementation of dual sense technology that i've seen like without a shadow of doubt it's funny because godfall must come up every so often in the hollow halls of this particular podcast as it sometimes does but the interesting thing about haptics is and kind of the new rumble features i don't know if you guys have noticed this is when a game seems to not have programmed into it i experienced it with scarlet nexus for instance when a game seems to just be dragged over to the ps5 and not really recoded in any meaningful way the haptics i don't know if you've noticed this but when you get old style rumble in a new game on the controller it kind of just turns over the motor and it sounds like a piece of plastic just falling inside the controller i don't know if i'm explaining that well you guys know what i'm talking about where it's not the same rumble it's not the same feature set people need to figure out a different way to make it work and these are early days it reminds me of early days of rumble on n64 and really more on ps1 and ps2 when it was just forced remember it was called forced feedback because they originally because it wasn't called rumble really because it was supposed to be like it was supposed to be shaking and it was like a one note kind of thing and then they realized well it could actually be used in many other ways other than just making your hands fucking fall asleep like you know donkey kong 64 whatever game you know just like shaking the god controller so i feel like we are going to figure out a similar way path forward with really clever uses and the good news unlike those early rumble uses is that the precedent has been set by a couple games that are doing it really nicely and chris and i totally understand chris's contention of competitive gameplay and all that but i love the adaptive triggers like i think it's super cool but i understand i don't play competitive games so i understand that that would be a feature i mean i would probably play with a mouse and keyboard probably even if i were competitive so clearly that's not what's important to me so we just have to figure out a way forward with all this but it's interesting as far as the game stuff though i want to see that included more and i hope that it is because it has been authentically useful for me i was skeptical of it i mean it's so grainy and low res and shit it's comical how low res is i don't know why it has to be so low res when you use it but it does work and it'll show you exactly what it won't show you that help anymore it's it's cool so check it out if you play ratchet still all right guys let's get into the news now dustin as i sometimes do i'm gonna have to tell you something here this is a political conversation i don't think it's a partisan conversation but it is a political conversation i know some of you want to avoid it but i really hope you don't because i'm gonna tie this into what we were talking about with activision and ubisoft earlier in the show and about how burying our heads in the sand as gamers players consumers enthusiasts whatever is just a huge mistake so here's the story number one chinese megacorporation tencent has struck again purchasing another large gaming entity and this one is perhaps closest in proximity to playstation according to multiple sources tencent is slated to purchase british company sumo digital for 1.3 billion dollars the price is outrageous it's 43% above the company's trading price on the market and cracks the company open to the chinese conglomerate which already owns nearly 10% of the company the deal will be conducted entirely in cash and though freshly met the millionaires many many times over sumo's founders and c-suite executives are slated to stay in place carl kavers who is the ceo sumo said in a mystifying statement in part quote the opportunity to work with tencent is one we just couldn't miss it would bring another dimension to sumo presenting opportunities for us to truly stamp our mark on this amazing industry in ways which have been previously out of reach tencent has a strong track record for backing management teams and their existing strategies alongside the acceleration of own ip work tencent has demonstrated its commitment to backing our client work and has stated its intention to ensure that we have the necessary investment to continue focusing on work with our key strategic partners on turnkey and co-development projects and quote in other words sumo will continue making its own games and working on behalf of others too when playstation is their biggest client by a mile this for the first time brings sony into an intimate relationship with a partner that has maximally shady foreign ownership in this case in the form of tencent which is widely acknowledged to be an organ of the ruling communist party of china tencent's holdings in the gaming industry are growing at an alarming rate remember tencent owns 100% of riot games the creators of league of legends they own most of supercell one of the biggest mobile game companies in the world they own 40% of epic about a quarter of don't not a fifth of marvellous 5% each in ubisoft activision remedy and paradox they control a majority of companies like clay and jaeger they have unknown holdings with roblox and platinum and even have their hands in discord they have never voluntarily divested from a gaming entity they put money into and tend to gobble up companies slowly which they did with sumo sumo digital founded about two decades ago was at one time best known for its work with sega particularly with the virtual tennis outrun and later sonic series amongst others they leaned into sony from the beginning too and were responsible for 2014's little big planet 3 on ps3 and ps4 and sack away a big adventure on ps4 and ps five cody smith wrote inside hello podcast buds tencent buying sumo digital limited is yet another distressing example of chinese conglomerates eating their way into the video game industry i know this topic has been discussed a lot on this podcast lately but i think we all know it's very important here's my question do video game companies have an almost moral imperative not to sell themselves to chinese companies or companies tied to other problematic countries or regions i know colin is a self-described capitalist and i am one as well but this is a very chilling trend that could easily threaten video gaming as a whole not to mention everything else thank you for continuing to discuss this both on the podcast and on social media much love thank you for writing in cody we appreciate it dustin what do you make of this situation so colin maybe you can answer this i don't know in a situation like this he asked is it is it a moral imperative not to sell to china when you're presented with an offer from someone to buy your company for what was it 40 43 percent above the market value it comes into the fiduciary duty to your stockholders to like instantly sell i mean i don't know how that works i just don't know it's a totally valid question yeah and that's i mean it sucks um but that'd be the case i don't know since sumo digital is a british company their laws may be different this is like definitely a question for rick hogue he would definitely know the answer to that but let's so let's just pretend that that's not a possibility and it's it's i'm sure that like there's a very difficult thing i know i don't think we can just say like it's easy to say no to you and all of the other management company to become insanely rich instantly like that is a desirable thing to say yes to so like i don't envy that choice but at the same time there is something to be said about the moral aspects of it we've talked about like the ccp has known concentration camps like a few months ago there was a story about wigs that were exported from china that were human hair like this isn't just like uh oh rumors about concentration camps or rumors of um humanitarian crisis crises happen whatever the word is this is like legit fact-based things that are happening so it's like you have to take that into consideration um strongly i mean to me i guess when you think about it it's like that probably should be like is it worth becoming a multi you and all your friends become multi-millionaires at the fact that you will be run by a company that is strongly connected to a government that is committing genocide that should i guess now that i see when you say it like that probably should be not a starter yeah i i agree before i say what i need to say i'm curious to bring you into this and just get what your take is i i think it's relevant and i wanted to bring this up to see how you feel about it but what your favorite developer bungie is also owned by a chinese company isn't it and they i think yeah i think i think they received like i think a hundred million dollars from not tencent right it was something it was another one yeah it was a company i think and yeah there's there are two chinese companies that like yeah netties which is not i don't think as well they're not as big i mean their fraction is large but they're also not really known to be so active in communist circles in china as well so it's a little different but i do want to ask you about that if that has come into play for you or your community at all over on destiny because i know it's a little bit controversial but they don't really seem to they're not the same netties is not the same as tencent yes i don't think they play i haven't seen it mentioned that much in uh in that community i think when it first happened there was like talk about it but i don't know i did you know you know how the you know how things move like a mile a minute and people just kind of forgetting like oh here's a new thing here's a new thing every minute of every day there's a new story to kind of distract i but as far as the question here about like do two video game companies have a moral imperative not to sell to china no a company has a company's only imperative is to make money that's like literally the point of a company so when you have the option to make millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions upon millions of dollars overnight yeah you take that because that's what you're supposed to do that's what a company is supposed to do is make that money if we governed everything based on morals we'd have a completely different system head to toe here like the reason why we can't uh and not to get too political here i think i'm getting as political as i need to make the case but like you know the money argument always gets brought up about health care like that's a pretty frequent thing it's like oh well helping our fellow man costs too much so we won't do it even though it's kind of morally reasonable that you would say yeah we should help each other in a base way that's not how that works because money is important and as far as that goes like i just i think that's just how the world works now like it's just how it's always worked at least over here in the west you know money talks people listen and if that money happens to come from a place with like abhorrent morals and abhorrent you know you know practices that defy our cultural norms and our basic morality then yeah i'll take my money and wash my hands of it and then i can be free of it and then whatever it's it's depressing but this is just the way things are going i think it's i don't think it's really gonna stop i think it's gonna keep accelerating i wonder i have a lot to say about this i don't know how much i'll be able to get out here but i wonder to what extent 10 cents interference in global gaming markets would have to reach for someone to be like we can't in washington or london or we have to do something about this the only reason i say that is because as we discussed last week or a few weeks ago maybe huawei which is another chinese mega conglomeration with ccp connections like is not allowed to work like it's not allowed to do what's in the united states at all uh in terms of like what i want to do with 5g and all those things we don't trust them we don't believe that they're not an organ of the chinese government and and all that now these are these are lesser deals but and people have been saying this to me too and i guess i should have said it on the show where i kind of was like yeah someone offered me enough money from 10 cents i would sell you know what no i wouldn't and the reason i say this is for two reasons number one if there's interest in from Tencent in whatever I own, then there's interest from someone else, too.

And the second thing is that I think that there is, and I disagree with you guys on this, I think there is a moral imperative at this point that is extra economical, that doesn't fit within the confines of free marketeerism. But I'm not really a free market person anyway. I'm always told that I'm a libertarian, but I haven't called myself one in many years, and I believe in protectionism and all this kind of stuff. So of course, I'm going to believe in trying to remove ourselves from an uneven and really unfair political situation with a government that not only mistreats its own people, and that's one whole huge part of it, but also undercuts its own currency and manipulates markets to get better deals, and just does really heinous shit.

They're a fucking complete menace to their neighbors and to their local geopolitical area in the world and all the rest. The Chinese government is malevolent and evil. And if people need to hear that, then that's what they need to hear. It doesn't mean China's evil.

It doesn't mean Chinese people are evil or Chinese culture is evil. None of those things are true. Of course, that's not true. But we're talking about a communist dictatorship with 1.2 or 1.3 billion people within its boundaries.

And Tencent, I was reading about this, so about one in 12 people in China are dues-paying, in quotes, members of the Chinese Communist Party. So they have about almost 100 million members. So that's something like, I don't know, 7 or 8% of people. Tencent, their employees, are members of the Chinese Communist Party three times more per capita, almost 25%, and have known tendrils to the CCP.

And the reason that this matters is not only because of the CCP's malevolence and evil, non-voting, dynastic shit that they have going on with the communist, non-dynastic communist dictatorship and all the concentration camps with the Uyghurs and all that, all that aside, which is a huge thing to put aside, this is a company that is openly tethered to a communist dictatorship. And everything you do is going to be tied to that communist dictatorship. And if you are owned by a company that has 10 cents of money, then you are complicit in the things they are doing. We can't live, as I've said many times, a moralistic economic life.

But there comes times when big times when big choices need to be made. And someone needs to stand up and say, no, we won't sell because it's scary for us to be involved with them. I brought this quote, again, from the CEO, Carl Capers. The opportunity to work with 10 cents is one we just couldn't miss.

Who the fuck has ever said that? You know what he's saying when he says that. What'd you say? No, I said, you know what he's saying when he says that.

He's like, the opportunity to work with a billion dollars is something that we could not miss. No, that's exactly what he means. But he's not, they're not, see, none of them can be honest. It's like what I always say about that website Gameby or whatever that's owned by 10 cents.

You'll never see anything honest on that site because about what's going on there because they can't say it. And you know what? The second I see one of these companies release something that calls, you know, Taiwan a free country or Hong Kong free or something about the Uyghurs when any of these companies that I rattled off do something like that, then I'll think that I'll recant everything I said about 10 cents. I will.

But it's not gonna happen. And there's a chilling effect when you let in entities in creative fields like this. And money isn't more important than creativity. Sumo Digital is a lucrative and is a lucrative and successful company that could have other people according to it, including Sony itself.

So I don't want to hear this idea that they couldn't have held on and gotten a better deal. The opportunity to work with 10 cents is one we just couldn't miss. I hope you enjoy getting those checks signed by the communists in China and all that comes along with it. And you can ask the guys over at Arc System Works how that worked out for Guilty Gear Strive when they had to secretly patch out every mention of Taiwan and Hong Kong and Uyghurs in their lore.

And they're not even owned by them. They just want to do business there. Can you fucking imagine when your parent company is Chinese? The kind of pressure you have to be under?

It's the same thing with SNK selling itself with the intent of selling the entire company to the royal family in Saudi Arabia. It's not acceptable. We don't want entities like this in gaming. They're totalitarians.

They're evil. They're not elected. They murder and disappear people. They keep their people with their boots on their necks.

The Chinese companies wouldn't be in charge if there was an election in China. I can guarantee you that. So it's not a partisan issue. It's not left or right or Democrat or Republican or labor or Tory or whatever.

It's nothing like that. Open your fucking eyes to what is happening here and the decisions that have to be made. And the reason, Chris, and I'm so disappointed in this because Dustin had brought up the fiduciary obligation, which is true, and also you had brought up like it's just the way it works, unfortunately. And my whole thing is like I was hoping that we would start having conversations as a society about how do we uncouple ourselves from China?

How do we uncouple ourselves from this cheap labor that drives down blue-collar work in the United States and puts people on welfare and puts them out of jobs? How do we get rid of that? But now we put like seven more barriers in front of us. We're never going to get to answer that question because now we're talking about companies like Tencent buying Crytek and their military ops, right?

Or we're talking about the Saudi royal family buying SNK months after they disappeared a fucking Saudi dissident journalist and everyone knows they did it. At some point, the morals do play in it. So you know what? No, I wouldn't sell and you can hold me to that if that's ever presented to me.

Yeah. It's infuriating that this is happening. Yeah, and I think, I mean, you know, not to get too much, we could segue out of this after this, but you know, I think you're right where I think we've kind of let this go on for too long to the point where now it's like it's inconceivable that we would be able to like easily uncouple because it's not even, by the way, I think the reason why this isn't getting a lot of attention is just because of the things that are happening, it is of the least importance to most people. It's like, oh, big deal, they bought a game company.

Whereas like I think a big conversation happening or at least the way that I, in the circles that I, you know, orbit is a big conversation about like, hey, the Chinese government's buying like a lot of US real estate, what's that about? You know, like that's, that's a whole other fucking thing that seems a little bit more immediately important than, oh, they bought it, oh, what are they going to do? Like I feel like most people still think, oh, what are they going to do, a Chinese game, who cares? You know, I feel like that's the attitude still for a lot of people because a lot of people outside of the industry don't really take games super seriously even though they make a ton of money.

You know, it's still kind of this inexplicably niche thing to a lot of people even though, you know, The Last of Us gets like, what, $10 million an episode on HBO? It's kind of crazy but I think there's just a lot of other conversations about China and the US and our dependence on them that I think, and just like, you know, the way that they egregiously pollute and like, there's so much else to that conversation that even this specific conversation in the games industry as important as it is to us to most people doesn't even register something even worth paying attention to because it's just they're making a video game. What's a video game? Who cares?

Right. I think you're totally right on this and yeah, I'm curious to get your closing thoughts as well because I don't know how else to make to try to make people open their eyes. I'm so glad you brought up the real estate thing too, Chris. I mean, the United States government is concerned about certain things and we had brought up Huawei before but they're looking to stop China and Chinese interest from buying up farmland in the United States which they've been doing at a rapid rate as well and the government is getting involved in that and I'll say it again and this is a political statement but it just is.

Letting China into the World Trade Organization years ago and normalizing relations with them was a fucking massive mistake and it's created, you know, a huge situation like Chris said of multi-tendril. You can't do business with certainties, right? Like you just can't, you can't hold your hand out like with the Soviet Union during the Cold War like we weren't really doing business with them, we dealt with them and but they were on their own and we were on our own and we all had our spirits of influence and we thought we would be really clever and really cute by allowing a country that like Chris said pollutes and doesn't pay its labor and just kills people and has one child policy and all this crazy fascistic shit going on over there. No elections, all of that and we're just, we're so far beyond the pale now that it's true.

Gaming almost looks like well, what are you supposed to do about this? But to me, I look at it and I'm like, well, why can't we be allowed in our sphere to say we don't want this and we should be, what I want to say about Activision and Ubisoft it's before and I'm going to tie this in now is it is time for people to start making decisions about on individual levels about how much you want to interact with these companies or not and I don't, I'm not going to be able to live a moralistic like that like I know that and I've said that a million times but it's the big decisions and the way they trickle down to make the choices easier for people that don't necessarily want to make them that matter the most so if you give us an option to buy a PS5 not made in China then maybe you would see that people would buy it or if you made an iPhone not in China maybe people would buy it you know and maybe they would be willing to support it and maybe they would be willing to pay more or do this or do that to uncouple ourselves but we are so, we've added so much to the pile that now the really important stuff is littered and covered over by Tencent buying Sumo Digital and yet that in and of itself is nefarious and we shouldn't accept that as just something that just happens without at least us saying something about it Right, yeah the only thing just left that I'll add is that and this is political in a way that it's clear to me we're in a Cold War with China at this point it's just not like the last Cold War that was with Russia it's being played on a completely different playing board and you guys mentioned like the buying up of farmland and I'm sure that there are many different fronts to this and the controlling of American entertainment is one of them you can just look I mean it's not even it's weird because saying it out loud slightly feels like a conspiracy but it's like it's clearly not like we talked about the John Cena video like from a few weeks ago and it's like Apologizing in Mandarin Right What an embarrassment What a funding embarrassment I'm sorry What an embarrassment Yeah, so you know and it sucks just because the West in particular the United States is basically at war with itself over you know when you think about the Grand Sina things so many like stupid little things and so I guess not all stupid little things but we're such at war in partisan politics that it's like yeah, China can come in and start buying all this shit up and no one cares because all people care about is whether you're fighting the Democrats or fighting the Republicans in the right way and making sure you say the right things on Twitter and that doesn't just apply to the citizens but also the people in power so it sucks you know I guess the point I'm trying to make is we can bring as much light as we can in the gaming space and I'm glad we have the platform to do that the scary part is that it's much much bigger than just our medium and it's something that people should consider and I'm sure that people think I'm sure there's some people who think we're overreacting but I just want to bring this up every time we talk about China I like to bring this up because I think it's a perfect example Activision put out a trailer for Call of Duty Cold War that had Tiananmen Square footage in it and because they receive money from China they had to take it down edit the Tiananmen Square footage out and repost it this is not like conspiracy this is not like hypothetical this is not like oh what if China blah blah blah this is real so like take that as you will but I feel like that's a small example of something that is if they're willing to do that publicly then like you know and remember unlike and we said it earlier but unlike Activision where there's money to interest there companies like Art System and others are starting to make moves just in anticipation of being asked to do it because they know when Guilty Gear Shri comes out in mainland China someone's going to stumble upon that and they're going to get in a lot of trouble because to them Tiananmen Square what is that wait Tibet is an independent nation who are the Uyghurs oh your social media score is going to go down now and we might disappear your family by the way don't have more than one or two kids if you know what's good for you and enjoy your $5,000 a year from the government to keep you quiet you know it is glaring and scary and if this podcast opened people's eyes up to the fact that there is a Cold War going on and that there is an entertainment front on it unlike the last time when the Soviets had no power they had no money they had no clout in fact the Soviet Union disintegrating fucked up communism almost all around the world except for in China because they were powerful enough because the Soviet Union had a bunch of client states like Cuba we were talking about so and the same thing happened with Venezuela cropping Cuba up as well this is a Western problem whether you're in Europe or in Canada or in Latin America or in parts of Asia or in Australia and all the rest pay attention wake up wake up wake up please please wake up please thank you alright let's move on to number 2 here's the rub website video game chronicle relay word that data miner Steve Moser scraped some interesting stuff off of Netflix recently all pointing towards gaming features we know that Netflix is getting into gaming and in fact they're openly talking about these prospects having testing the waters over the last couple of years with interactive games like Bandersnatch among the images scrapped scrapped from Netflix however are two important ones one shows Jin Sakai from Sucker Punch's Ghost of Tsushima a PlayStation exclusive and the other shows an image of a couple of dual sense controllers the PS5 controller that's all we know right now but there's no denying that these images came from Netflix's own servers and are definitive in their content Jin and PS5 controllers what's it all mean if anything remains to be seen but this news came on the back of a report from economic website CNBC that Netflix will indeed be getting into games beginning with smaller mobile style titles and working their way up from there so whether they're being coy or not remains to be seen but it doesn't necessarily sound like these images indicate the PlayStation partnership some would hope for and such a partnership would be a major boon for Sony as Netflix's user base is currently sitting at 209 million subscribers and they are the holders of some of the most sophisticated streaming technologies in the world which would certainly be manipulated and leveraged in the core gaming so James wrote in what's on Patreon about this he says what's up best LSM trio I want to ask you guys thoughts on the rumors and data miners well the evidence is a bit puzzling to me in the fact that so PlayStation does have their own streaming service with PlayStation Now so that's something to consider and the other thing is that Ghost of Tsushima was selected as one of the images which to me in a hypothetical situation where let's say it's a partnership with Netflix so maybe you have a Netflix subscription and you have access to streaming certain PlayStation games or something Ghost of Tsushima you know right now wouldn't they want to be pointing people to playing that on PlayStation hardware with a director's cut you wouldn't want to mix up the messaging too much on that but that is what we're presented with in front of us so as far as it being answered at Game Pass I don't know this is I honestly I mean I'm sure you guys can tell by listening to me but it's like all of the pieces here don't really add up to me I don't know what the strategy could possibly be that would make sense I mean obviously Netflix great streaming technology PlayStation great creators of games but again like I said they have that conflict there you have a game streaming service that is not very good so I mean maybe that could be the thing with PlayStation now yeah maybe it could fuse with PlayStation now in some way but it would be complicated but I guess they could you know if this is the answer to Game Pass then yeah it would be complicated and be something it would take months to pull off I gotta say I don't find this conflict as compelling as others do because Sony would light PlayStation now on fucking fire if they could get involved with Netflix and their technology instead so that to me means nothing right like because Netflix Netflix's streaming technology is so much more sophisticated than whatever Sony's doing that they'd probably be like well I agree but I also wonder like is their streaming technology so good that it could handle something that is purely interactive like Bandersnatch was an interactive TV show but it was still very minimally interactive like we don't really know like, it's hard to really gauge what the latency on Netflix is, because there's nothing to really consider, you know? Like, is Netflix more equipped to stream games than PlayStation Now is? I feel like the answer is probably no, you know, because it's not built for that.

It's built for a very specific purpose, and has been built for that purpose, and probably honed in and tuned specifically for that purpose, which is why it is the gold standard of streaming, you know, passive entertainment. But there has to be a difference between the way that Netflix handles latency and the way that Hulu handles, you know, streaming, and the way xCloud or PS Now do it, just purely based on the dependency on interaction and, you know, interactivity. Like, I don't think they would set PS Now on fire, especially because they have, you know, they don't have a lot of subscribers on there, but they do have, like, a decent chunk who would, I think, feel a little burned if they just kind of got swept away without being, like, kind of grandfathered into whatever the hell they're trying to pull with this Netflix thing, if anything is even happening. This honestly seems to me like, I'm with Dustin, where, like, none of this adds up to me, and I feel like it's almost like somebody was putting together a pitch meeting, and it's like, uh, this is a big game, and here's a controller, like, and they feel like making a PowerPoint or something.

That, to me, is the only way that this could make sense, because I don't understand, like, why somebody would mix the messaging up with their, especially with them going to PC as well, like, so you got PC, and then you've got, like, Netflix, but you've also got PS Now, and, like, one's streaming and downloading, one's only streaming, and it's a partnership with Netflix, and then one's downloadable on PC. It just seems like, it just seems like so, such a mess to navigate, as far as, like, the messaging goes, that I can't imagine that they would, I can't imagine that this means much of anything. Like, I'm, it's so, it's such a confusing array of variables to consider. Yeah, I find, I mean, I find your answers, both of you, compelling, but I can't say I agree.

I, I think this would be such a megalithic partnership, just hypothetically, I'm not talking about anything, but imagine if Netflix hasn't been working on something for games for a while, which they probably haven't. Sony has some sort of relationship with them, and they get together, and they're like, well, what if Netflix acts as the technology or something to leverage your games into, like, what if Netflix gaming is powered by PlayStation, even in the reverse, like, what if we have, we're the streaming solution for your games, you have now 210 million subscribers, so that Xbox Game Pass numbers, it sounds fucking comical at that point, and you just jump ahead, and you have the biggest partner with global reach. Now, the numbers for Netflix aren't all great, they actually lost almost half a million subscribers, I don't know if you saw that in the United States and Canada last quarter, but they're up globally, so I look at this and I say, this would be sophisticated, because you're right, like, we have to deal with all these different angles, but this is, like, what massive partnerships look like, and I, we're just, it's just all hypothetical based on uploaded images, but I'm compelled by those images for two reasons. Number one, some people have brought up, well, Ghost of Tsushima is getting a film, and that's true, so that could be, like, a reference to that, but I'm like, no, because Ghost of Tsushima's film is a theatrical release, there's so many pictures, that has nothing to do with Netflix, so that, I think, is a reference to a game, I don't think it's a reference to a movie, and the second thing is, it's, like, pictures of dual sets, that's just, why, why, so, it could be as simple as, like, and this is what David Jaffe said, and I think this is also interesting, he's like, well, and it's true, we've all pitched things like this, we've seen it in pitch meetings where it's, like, I'm pitching a game that's like Zelda in this, so here's literally a picture of Zelda, and here's, like, literally a picture of this, and I know, like, when Sunset Overdrive was pitched at Microsoft, they were pitching it with, like, punk music, and all sorts of shit, just stitched together, and this could be it, this could be someone saying, like, here's a Ghost of Tsushima image, and here's a dual video game controller, and all that, but why would you upload it to Netflix?

Why wouldn't that just be on your deck when you're presenting it in a boardroom? So, I think that there's just interesting pieces here, I'm like, I don't know that there's nothing here, I actually think that there might be, and I think Sony's been awfully quiet about a lot recently, I think they have a lot to say, and it's conceivable that maybe, I mean, can you imagine if they were, like, we're partnering, we're partners with Netflix, it doesn't mean that Netflix isn't available everywhere still, it's just saying, like, they're getting into gaming, and we are going to be a big part of that, and I think that's a huge win. Yeah, it would be interesting if that was true, I just, like, I feel like it's just a minefield to navigate, but if they're willing to navigate that, and, like, kind of, you know, suffer through a little bit of, like, I don't know, like, a few months of, like, really muddy messaging to come out the other side of something that is, you know, ultimately, like, super widely available, and, you know, very enticing, then I guess it would make sense, I just, I don't know if I'm super convinced, like, I'll need to, because my biggest question here is, like, we know Sony isn't the best on the software front, not on the games front, but as far as, like, software goes and streaming goes, we know that that's the case, we know that Netflix is really good at that, but we also know that they've not really dabbled in games, and in the same way that, like, a lot of other companies have, and, dude, even, like, companies like Google, which you think would have a better eye for this type of thing, just completely fail, you know, out the gate with Stadia, and God knows how many other companies have tried this as well, I'm just, I'm curious as to how savvy Netflix is as a company, and if they can pull something like this off, because they've really only ever stayed in their lane, like, they've never really tried to expand in any real way, the last time they really tried to expand was when they started streaming, and when they were like, hey, DVDs, ah, fuck you, you want a DVD mail? By the way, do you remember when they tried to rename themselves at that time?

That's, like, an almost forgotten piece of history. Oh, yeah, what was it? Netflix, I think, was going to be the company's name that was going to be the disc service, and they were going to name, or maybe it was the other way, I've got to look this up real quick, it's, like, Netflix renamed, yeah, and it lasted literally, I want to say, like, two and a half seconds, yeah, it was in 2011, Netflix changed its name, apologizes to customers, and, oh, yeah, they were going to call Quickster, which was going to be, yeah, so, I'll never forget that, I was like, what the, that story lasted literally half a day, otherwise you're going to rename Netflix, you can't do, so, anyway, Dustin, what's your final part here? Here's a hypothetical question, okay, let's say this does happen, Netflix, PlayStation partner up, you can play select PlayStation games via Netflix, or something like that, can you play Ghost of Tsushima on the Xbox app, on the Xbox Series S or S?

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know how this all works, it would be, I would imagine, though, it would be wild, I would imagine, again, this is all just speculation from a couple of images that were straight built on Netflix, but, it all seems to kind of make a little bit of sense to me, it's one of those things that I keep saying recently where, it could be and I'm probably wrong, but I at least want the audience to know where I'm coming from, and I think that my sequence of, like, where I'm coming from here makes a little bit of sense, like, you want, like, who would be a better partner than Netflix to proliferate subscription services, would you have some sort of boutique version of Netflix only for PlayStation, which would be interesting as well, and all the rest we talk about in the inverse with Game Pass, so, I don't know there's anything here, it's fun to think about, I really want to see what Netflix's solution is for a while, there was three big steps for them, it was DVDs, then it was streaming, then it was original content, so, this will be the fourth step, which will be interactive media in a greater way, and what's interesting is that, I'm curious, they said openly that they want to work on, like, mobile titles, so, they seem like they're going to work as a publisher, and, so, who the fuck knows what that means, I mean, it could be that they're going to publish a AAA Stranger Things game on PlayStation 5 for all the way now, I don't know, I have no idea, but, I just think it's weird to have a DualSense controller and a Ghost of Tsushima picture in your back end, for no reason. Yeah, it is weird. Alright, let's move on to the next one here, number three, is there something fundamentally wrong with PlayStation 5? It's a question we've been asking on the show for a rather glaring reason, random games seem to not work on the console for different reasons and in random ways, including with Sony's own games, and these problems don't seem to affect any comparable cross-platform iterations.

The most recent example of this, according to the website Eurogamer, is with racing game F1 2021. In a rare move, EA-owned developer Codemasters patched ray tracing out of the PS5 version of the game. That visual feature remains intact in both the PC and Xbox Series X versions, and was apparently patched out of the PlayStation 5 version, due to stability issues introduced by the ray tracing option. Now, this could be much to do about nothing, but it needs to be taken in the larger context of other games.

Returnal straight up doesn't work on some PS5s. Ratchet & Clank is a mess for some people. Third-party games like Snapper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 were unceremoniously delayed indefinitely for PS5 only. Something may be up with build quality, or the SDK, or something having to do with firmware, or certification checklists, or any other host of issues.

The only change in console manufacturing so far is the recently revealed lighter version of the PS5 digital iteration, slightly modified for weight-related reasons, apparently, with some screws and stuff, which will drive costs down over the long term. Website Pushware notes that this change isn't nearly as major as one being engineered for 2022, which will allow Sony to use new semi-customized 6 nanometer chips for PlayStation 5 production. Now, Dustin, we've talked about this a lot on the show. I feel like something is going on.

I don't know what it is, but I don't know that I've ever noticed a small handful of games crossing from first to third party and second party, obviously, that just seem to have peculiar problems for big groups of people, and it seems to be happening over and over again. And I was connecting this. How many times has someone patched something out of a game that's already been patched in past certification? Once the game got into the wild, they discovered something about it that they didn know.

So, do you think there's something here when you take into account Returnal's issues, Ratchet's issues, and then random third party games? Remember, Sonic for Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 was delayed for months on PS5 for no particular reason other than that it just didn't seem to work. Right. There's definitely something up.

The question is to what extent? To me, I think there might be multiple issues going on at the same time. In particular, the theory with Returnal may have been related to the, in certain ways that the ray tracing works, which it could just be that a lot of PS5s are coming out with a bad processor or GPU in them. I mean, there's a thing with PCs, when you get a graphics card, they are all slightly different.

They call it the Silicon Lottery. And so people will go and then overclock them, and some of them are able to be more overclocked than others. Now, I'm bringing this up because there's also just a possibility that some of these GPUs or CPUs are coming down the line, and certain either cores or certain connections in them are not consistently working. So, that's the biggest question overall, though, is to what extent is this happening?

Because, as we know, our very own Ben Smith had a major problem with his PS5. He had to send it to Sony twice before they replaced it. I've heard of other people with the exact same issue. We had a call-in on one of our call-in shows with a very similar issue.

My friend Jimmy has had a major problem with Ratchet and Clank. It's like, we keep hearing these stories. At what point does, I mean, I'm sure Sony would fight tooth and nail before they say anything until it's like they absolutely have to. Look at Nintendo with their Joy-Con drift issue.

They're still acting like that doesn't exist. But, so, I don't know. At what point does this just become too significant of an issue to ignore? That's the big question.

What do you think of this, Chris? I just, I'm a little annoyed about it because I'm not a technical person, as everyone knows, but it's clear you can just, if you're an observer of the industry long enough, you know that something's not right here. And, it's never quite gone like this before. Can you imagine in the pre-patching era if they were dealing with this?

Holy moly. They would have a huge problem on their hands, man. Like a recall-level problem, I think. Now, I don't know if it's the tech or the SDK or something to do with the checklist that they give for certification.

Something's wrong, though. And Crytek experienced this with Sniper Ghost Contracts, or it was running on Crytek anyway. I think that's a rebellion game. But, do you think there's something wrong or do you think this is much to do about nothing?

No, I think there's something, like, a little bit weird about the PS5 in general because it seems that, like, there's a lot of problems with games that aren't really consistent. It seems like a, that's the weirdest thing about it to me. It's like, some people can play Returnal flawlessly. Some people, it crashes for them.

Some people can't get past the first cutscene without sending their PS5 to Sony twice to get prepared and replaced over the course of, like, a month and a half. It's like, it's such an inconsistent, like, array of issues for the same games, you know? So, it's like, I feel like all the problems that every individual person who played Returnal had, that probably wasn't a Returnal problem. It was probably a PlayStation 5 problem.

Because if it was a Returnal problem, most of us would have those problems, right? That's just, that's how I would imagine that would work. The way that they're assembling these things. And, yeah, maybe you don't have, like, a Red Ring of Death situation where, like, 40% of the hardware just has a, has a high chance of dying.

But I do think there's something of a similar level where it's, like, a lot of PlayStation 5s have issues. They're not going to break your console. They're not going to, like, fuck you over. They're not going to, like, explode.

You're not going to have to wrap it in a wet towel for, like, eight minutes and try and fix it. But you're probably going to notice, like, weird issues with games that everybody else is probably having a totally fine time with. You know, whether that means the GPU is acting a little weird, whether the SDK is acting strange, whether, whether, whether, maybe it has something to do with the fact that the cell state is positioned in the way that it is. There's a myriad of, there are so many reasons why these problems can be happening that it's almost, like, a daunting task to even narrow it down in the first place.

So I don't envy their, the position that they're in and trying to figure out, like, what the hell's going on. But I think something must be going on. Because this isn't happening with other hardware. It just isn't.

Like, you mentioned the Joy-Con drift, right? Yep, with Switch. And that exists. But, dude, I'm noticing drift on my DualSense.

Like, straight up. Like, I was playing Metro Exodus and I put the controller down to get a drink. And I came back and I was, like, wandering to the left. Like, just through an open field.

I was getting, like, attacked by demons or whatever. And I was, like, what the hell's going on? I was in a safe place. It sucks.

I don't know. It's very bizarre. There's, like, I mean, this is to be expected also with, in some way, with, like, the first iteration of new hardware. There's always weird kind of quirks and weird bugs and differences in comparison to, like, later builds.

Like, even, even if they don't do a refresh of, like, new hardware, like, hey, here's the PS2 Slim, there are several versions of the original fat PS2 just based on the ways that, like, technology gets cheaper and, like, components get cheaper and, like, oh, we could put this part in and it does the same thing. There's a lot to consider. But there's definitely something up with the PS5, in comparison, at least, to the other consoles on the market and even the other hardware on the market, too. I guess we'll find out one way or the other.

Maybe we won't. Maybe it'll just stop happening and then we'll figure out that they've kind of silently squashed the problem on a firmware level, perhaps. I'm going to call this next one 3A. I don't know if you guys saw this.

I didn't write it in. It just broke. Dead Space is being remade by EA Motive. It's been announced.

And there's a short teaser for it. Unknown Date. PlayStation 5. No last-gen versions.

And that's all we basically know. Apparently no loading times. Totally seamless from front to end. So we don't know.

But this rumor has been circulating for a while. So let's cut in with this. Dustin, what are your preliminary thoughts? Dead Space remade by EA Motive.

I have not watched it. Apparently it's just like a very, very short in-game trailer, which I think when we were talking about the remake, about the rumors, I was like, yeah, you'll get announced, but you're not getting anything, which sounds about right. But the one image I see here of Isaac looks very, very good. I was playing a little bit of the first Dead Space the other day on stream, and it's definitely a little dated at this point.

Not like from a gameplay standpoint, but just from a visual standpoint. So I'm very happy to hear that it's current-gen only, so we can get that full-fat experience, and I'm ready to chop some limbs on PS5. I gotta say, Chris, I'm curious about your take, because I love this game. I love the original game.

We all do. I'm a little disappointed. I wanted them to re-release them, leading into some sort of reimagining of Dead Space or whatever. But I'll take this.

I think it's pretty cool. EA seems to be paying more attention to what people actually want, which is nice, and EA Motive working on this doesn't fill me with an entire helping of confidence, but this will set a nice little path here, so I think it will be okay. What do you think? I think this looks...

I mean, yeah, I'm watching the trailer, and it is a teaser trailer. There's really not much to go on, but it looks pretty nice. Isaac looks great. I love Dead Space, and like you said, it hasn't aged poorly, particularly, but I think it could use first-for-seven.

I think re-releasing them would have been nice. it would be nice in general to have access to games that came out back then just as a general principle. That would be, you know, pretty convenient and nice. I know you can play them on the Series X because they're backwards compatible, but it sucks that that's really the only place you can play them because the PC versions are super borked as well.

Like, I don't know who handled the PC ports of the original Dead Space, but they do not function well at all. So it sucks that, like, really the only real way to relive those games is over on the Xbox ecosystem, but I'm more excited about this than I would have been a re-release of the old games because I do love the old games, but I am curious to see, like, what a new interpretation of that can be, especially because it's such a simple, like, I feel like anybody who's working on a Dead Space remake is somebody who wants to be working on it, you know? It's such a specific, like, beloved game, and it's so, it's super popular, but it's also, like, really niche. Like, I don't know a lot of people outside of the industry who know about Dead Space in the same way that people know about, you know, Fortnite or whatever the hell.

Yeah, yeah, it's its own kind of, like, niche hit, and I'm excited to see what a new team can do with it. It's been a long time, so I'll take whatever I can get with Dead Space. You know, at least I'm getting something. Unlike, you know, other...

Well, we'll talk about that in just a short moment. I'm looking forward to this. I just, yeah, I wanted more access to the other games like we said on PS4 and PS5. Maybe we'll get that, too.

I don't, I think the only thing that would make Dead Space remake look better is to just re-release a remaster of the original as well. So hopefully we'll get that. And if you're gonna do that, you wouldn't necessarily want to expose all that at once. But I would have done it if both of those things do happen, and it probably won't.

I would have done it in the reverse and announce the remaster first. No one does it really like Sly Cooper trilogy did it. Remember on PS3 where if you beat all three games they got the Platinum's and it teased the new games. So it wasn't like a week after it came out that people realized they were teasing a new game in there.

They should do more stuff like that. I think that'd be fun. All right, Chris. Number four.

Mega publisher Ubisoft has revealed an all-new Tom Clancy's related project. It's called X-Defiant. It's being developed by Ubisoft San Francisco and it's a free-to-play multiplayer FPS coming to both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. It honestly looks incredibly generic, but it does have a cool twist.