Sacred 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 last and media. Greetings and citations. Welcome back to Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation podcast.
This is episode two two thirty five, maybe something like that. It'll be something like that somewhere in the mid two thirties. My name is Colin Moriarty. I'm joined today by actually, this is why everything looks weird.
It's on the wrong screen. There we go. I'm joined today by Chris Ragon, who's cleaning his glasses and drinking. What are you drinking?
Fago out of your bottle there? No, crime rate juice. I don't know why I'm going to say it. I have a two liter crime rate.
I don't know. I'm weirdly, I have a crime rate juice in terms of kid. And I had it again recently. And I'm just like weirdly obsessed with it.
Like I don't know what it is about it. No, is this the pure cranberry juice or oftentimes it's like a cocktail. It's got some other. It's got to be appreciated.
Pure cranberry juice is fucked. Like it's dry. It's incredible, I would say. Like you're drinking like juice.
Like tell me what's in it. I want to know what's look at it. Strontium 90, which I'm pretty sure is radioactive. I don't know what the fuck is in this, but it's fucking delicious.
It's all about the shit I can't pronounce. Well, yeah, you work out so much that you can probably eat whatever you want. I just got back from the gym actually like about an hour before recording this. And my legs are in pain, but you know, good.
Because I love like what every day is like day for me. Because I like to do the high impact training on the elliptical every day. At like the highest resistance, 20 resistance. And my legs are just jacked.
I gotta be honest with you. So I'm trying to like kind of get that working around the rest of the bod with varying levels of success, mostly because I won't stop eating entomens, donuts, cashews, peanut butter, bread with every meal, one can of coca day, Pepsi actually. People knock, people knock entomens, but I don't know, man, that when I was a kid, I used to do like those devil's food cakes, this marshmallow, chocolate cakes, dude, I came in. I would consume like the entire thing in like a night.
And I mean, this is special, dude. Antomens is one wrong below for me, Borsad, where it's like, you if you talk, if you have anything to say, but I've never even heard anyone say anything bad about Borsad, that would be almost unfathomable. But if you did, I'd probably kill you. It would be weird for somebody to say that.
Right. Right. And entomens is close where that's a New York staple. And their crumb cake is so good that the move of leaving the butter knife in the crumb cake box, you know, so the next person could be so themselves.
That's a move. That's the move. But all right. Well, it's good to be here with you today.
Chris, nice to see you. Dustin Furman, executive producer wearing his PlayStation Christmas sweater. I have that same sweater and it's funny. I said, when we first started, when we got on here, I was going to wear that today and I have a 311 sweater, Holly sweater that I bought.
Listen, our merch shop is so good because I ordered the ship from 311 on November 22nd and it still hasn't shipped. And I'm pretty sure anyone that's ordered anything on Black Friday, like on that weekend or week, like it's already in the mail. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Hundreds of orders. Hundreds. What is going on? Anyway, how are you?
I'm doing all right. I'm not really quite despite the lighting change in the sweater. I don't feel like I'm in the Christmas mood. I was thinking that this morning.
Now we are recording in advance. It is December 2nd. But it's about that time. I don't like Christmas music.
I've concluded that I used to. There was once a little Dustin that enjoyed Christmas music and there's still a couple songs here and there that I like. But I've concluded now that I've dealt with this last few years. I'm not into it.
I can't do the Christmas music anymore. Especially the modern Christmas music that you hear that just sounds like, almost I don't like Disney Channel music. Yeah, yeah. It's like Michael Buble singing something earlier.
Yeah. It's, it's, I don't know. The best Christmas song objectively, I think, is setting the trap from Home Alone. Hmm.
I think that's objectively the, like, that Carol Bells. That Carol Bells goes hard. Yeah, it does. Now we've discussed Weird Owl on the show before, Chris.
And Weird Owl's Christmas song, Christmas at Ground Zero. Phenomenal. Yeah. And it's only gotten better with age, in my opinion.
Some people may disagree, but it's a great one. Absolutely fantastic. Is it about the 9-11? No.
It was before not, it came out 4-9-11, but it was different after it. What if, what if the 19 terrorists found Jesus on their respective flights? And that's what it was about, was like this alternate history where, you know, like on the flight, one of the flights out of Boston, there's like a priest on there and he happens to sit next to one of the guys who has the razors. Yeah.
And he sits there and they end up having a conversation where he gets engrossed, like, no, never mind, we're not doing this. And one of these things is averted. And in every verse, Weird Owl discusses those various, what happened on each plane, coalescing with a chorus at the end that brings it all together. Wow.
That's how I envision it. It's a different world. I feel like that's a little bit out of this wheelhouse, but... Yeah.
Indeed. Indeed. Okay. Well, it's going to be here with you boys and thank you all out there for being with us, as indicated by the fact that I don't even know what episode number this is when we're recording and we're recording this early.
Not that early, but it's going, we're recording this a few weeks ago from when you're hearing it. As always, we like to have episodes going all year, every, you know, day that we're supposed to publish. So it's number, number, number, number, number, number, number, number, number, number, number, our Xbox podcast, defining Duke and so on and so forth, knockback has taken a break for the first time ever this particular month and it's a five year, almost six year run. So these episodes are the things we put in the can so that you have something to listen to while you're out there.
A lot of you still work over Christmas. You have your things to do. You're still bored. Some of you still hate your wives.
Some of you still hate your kids. Some of you have to drive those kids. So it's soccer practice. Some of them hear things on the show.
They shouldn't be hearing. So I don't know if this is going to be one of those episodes, but we appreciate you guys loving support. We don't want to miss over these holidays. And so we always try to do, and I think we've done this since the very beginning of the show, we do two episodes that we kind of put in the can.
One is our most anticipated games, which we've already recorded, although I don't know if that's going to live yet. I really have no idea what's going on right now. And then we also do our favorite PlayStation moments of the certain year that has just passed. So this will be our favorite PlayStation moments of 2022.
And just to give people a little bit of a reminder, each of us will discuss five things that have happened within PlayStation's ecosystem in the last 12 months that we think is relevant or interesting or important, fun, bad, sad, whatever it might be. And the only rule is that it has to revolve either around PlayStation, PlayStation, Studio, or product, or a studio or a game or whatever that would be found on PlayStation. So I think you guys understand the rules there. And we'll go one by one.
We'll go around the horn. I want to start off strong, Dustin, with you, since you're wearing the sacred symbols sweater. I feel like you bring a lot of positive energy, a lot of Christmas energy, a lot of Christmas spirit. I've been watching that show ancient apocalypse.
You guys doing this? Yes. I'm watching it too, dude. What is that?
It's on Netflix. It's awesome. Bro, it's I don't know why I brought this up, but it's because they often talk about the solstice and stuff. Yeah.
Is it's this eight part series by Graham Hancock, I think his name is, who's like considered kind of a pseudo archeologist and pseudoscience in a lot of places, but his basic argument is that human civilization was organized during or around the end of the Ice Age or perhaps before that, as opposed to coming out of the Ice Age and then discovering animal husbandry and discovering agriculture and all that. And he finds all this evidence around the earth, and it's fucking crazy, dude. I'm watching the show like one inch feeling like I'm one inch away from the TV screen. Dude, it's insane.
I keep going, wait, what? What? There was that one thing in the road in the office where I was like, dude, that is obviously a road or some sort of like, obviously, obviously, why isn't anyone talking about this? Why isn't anyone talking about it?
Dude. I don't know how we got that. Chris, you got to check it out. Yeah.
It's not a flick. It's not a flick series. Yeah, ancient. It's probably one of the top, you know, if you look at their top 10, it's probably in there.
All right. I'll give it a shot. I just couldn't believe it because I've read that guy in the past because he did that book. Fingerprints of the gods, which is, which is, I always wanted to read, but is considered pseudoscience, but it seems like what's happening is that he's kind of right about a lot of things.
Is this an ancient aliens type? No, no, it doesn't. It doesn't come. Well, at least it hasn't come up yet.
I'm seven of eight episodes, and it's not about that. He's basically making an argument that there was an Ice Age era advanced civilization on par with what you would have seen with the Aztecs or maybe like the Greeks or the Phoenicians, whatever. That's what he's arguing. And that's just a massive quantum leap forward because it suggests that there was this period of loss.
And we often go back and look at the Dark Ages and quotes, you know, with the medieval ages up to the Renaissance. It's kind of era, although it's really overstated of lost knowledge, people not really learning. I mean, that's kind of overstated, but it goes to show that this could have happened where his whole suggestion is we actually had this complex understanding of stars and math, geometry, all these things. And then it just went away.
Right. And he says that. I don't know what we're talking about this one. But based on this flood mythology, like all these different places have the same symbol suggesting that the knowledge might have come from the same source.
So like the Aztecs and the Egyptians and the Phoenicians and all these and their focus on snakes and their focus on Sirius, the Star Sirius and all these different things suggest that. Anyway. I don't know why I started talking about that. Yeah.
It's worth pointing out that because it's not like this is what happened. This is what you should believe. His thing is always just like, Hey, look at this evidence that suggests something. No one's looking into this because it's against the current narrative.
So the Thailand River was where it was, I was like, it was like a temple bit and they're like, Oh, that was naturally made. Yeah. They know there's a camera in it and no one's like, no one's kind of that's I mean, that's interesting. That's crazy.
It's crazy. I mean, like what was it like it takes very it takes a surprisingly minimal amount of time for nature to kind of like completely overtake any amount of civilization after like, after a certain amount of time that's not spent up keeping it. Right. Exactly.
And that would be crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. And his whole argument to is that a lot of it has to do with the water level that during this period, and this is where the flood mythology and everything comes in and what they call the the younger driest, which was like this geologic period that was like really brief where the temperature went way up. And he was saying that a lot of the shit is underwater and this might be where Atlantis comes from.
And that's kind of like where it gets a little weird, but you know, Plato talked about Atlantis and we believe Plato and all what he said, I don't know, just throw it out there. Good holiday. Good holiday. You know, I'm looking at evangelical family members to watch it with you.
They'll love it. Right. The seven day creationists. All right.
All right. That was a good tangent. I appreciate that. Yeah, it was a good tangent.
Highly recommended. Okay. But on that note, Dustin, I wanted to leave it too. I'm not sure.
We do know what each other's things were just to make sure that we weren't selecting the same thing. I'll let you take it from here. You know what to do. So yeah, like you said, Colin, this is a not in a particular order, but I'm going to say this is probably the biggest one overall on my list.
I wrote rock star eats shit twice same year, GTA, the trilogy, GTA six leaks all over the place. GTA's trilogy was this year, right? I just saying that out loud. No, that was actually last year.
Yeah, but it was it remember came out in December. So you can just say rock star GTA six, the we'll say the troubles continued on into this year. I don't know if those were really tall, but still GTA six man, is this fair to say the biggest leak gaming history ever. Absolutely.
Yeah. Well, actually, I don't know because half like two did leak the entire thing did leak in like 2003 or something, and they redesigned the entire game around that leak, but that's true. But that's this is definitely like up there though, because like a lot of it's definitely if not the most like the biggest leak, it's definitely like the second biggest leak behind that half life one. Right.
And I think what also in in combination with that is that it is a leak of the biggest game or the sequel to the biggest game of all time in a new era of social media where clips are flying around on Twitter on YouTube, all over the place. And I think what's probably the most interesting aspect of this story, which I don't even know if we ever really firmly saw the end of it was the story about the autistic 15 year old hacker. Remember how there was like, like they were like calling him autistic, maybe we made that up. I can't remember.
Really on it with it with the autism. Anyway, go on. Yeah. But anyway, you know, it was almost like this big heist like, is the source code out there?
Is it going to get leaked? What does this mean for GTA online and just quite an exciting story and a very interesting glimpse into GTA six, which even it's very early state, sounds very promising. I like that main character shout out to the big boot. Just Latinos.
Oh, yeah, definitely. Dude, people were so weird about that leak. It's like, it looks unfinished. It's like, it is.
It's like, fuck up. Yeah. And by the way, as unfinished as it is like this far before, it looks like better quality than a lot of stuff that comes out. You know what I mean?
Like, it looked a lot more finished than that. Like the current build or not the current build, but that version of GTA six looked way better than saints wrote to me. You know what I mean? Like, even just even graphically despite the fact that it was unfinished.
So, like, people were being weird about that game. Yeah, I agree. And just to the big booty Latina character or one of the protagonists, they know exactly what they're doing with this. I mean, this character, if this character comes out like this is going to be iconic.
I'm telling you right now, it's going to become an iconic video game character. No doubt about it. No doubt. Because I will say that, though, CJ and, you know, Roman and all these different characters have, and Tommy Vercedi, like they become iconic in their own way, but not to the Mario level, like not to a classic cross-cultural reference, I think CJ is the closest because of that meme.
Okay, here we go again. Oh, shit. But I feel like this is a character of people are going to know. I just have that feeling.
It just seems like it's all coming together. Well, I'm sorry. I remember calling how there was rumors about a female lead and people were concerned is rock star going woke. And now they saw that game in the game.
Can't have like a joke. Cricket. Yeah. That shit is so horseshoe.
It's insane. It's so cool. That whole premise is like there's a woman in it, so it's so outstanding. And it's so common, too.
Like, it's not even like a, you'd think it's like these subcultures, but it's like all over the Internet. It's like really surprising and depressing. Well, it's like when people talk about race or gender in some way they think are being progressive, but then just come off as racist or sexist. It's like it is some sort of full, full on thing.
So, well, I'm amped about the female character and as far as I understand, it's going to be a kind of a small hodgepodge of character to play as. Not unlike GTA 5. So, yeah, I'm excited about it. It looks, looks out.
All right. Good choice. By the way, to clear up the, the record though, GCA, Trilla, GK into PS4 and PS5 November 11th of last year. Wow.
And it currently sits at a 54 on Metacritic on PS5 with a .9 user score. Nice. Out of 4, 1,154 reviews from Grove Street. They did promise to fix the game.
I really don't know the status of it. I suspect they and I are going to do GTA 3 this year or, you know, coming here on knockback. And I guess I'll play this version because it should be better by now. I assume.
We'll find out. Anyway, Chris, let's go to you for your first selection. I'm eager to hear it. Yeah.
So, I had a feeling that by the time I had thought about what I wanted to put on this list, they would be like the bigger, the bigger moments would be kind of taken. And I was kind of right. So I kind of, I, I focused my list on things that I recalled that made me either really, me personally, really, really excited or made me laugh. And one of those things was when Sonic frontiers was in his previous age and the developers were insisting that you just don't get it.
You just don't, you don't understand what we're doing here. And then it came out and I think it's pretty understandable. It's not like a particularly high, critically claimed, critically claimed at 70, oh, it's way might be higher. That was another one.
I'm going to bundle those two in. But I think, I know, I just thought that was so funny because like you, it's Sonic team. You know, it's not like a studio that is renowned in the sense that like they put it out just banger after banger. And then there's coming, it's like, oh, listen, like that they've earned the statement, look, you just don't get it.
It's Sonic team. And I just, I love that. I actually really adore that bravado coming out of a studio like that. I think it was very, very funny, it was very, very amusing.
And of course, the game wasn't improved at all from that reason because they were asked if they were going to delay it. Like, no, yeah, and they were like, no, it's like, you just don't get it. And a lot of the complaints in the preview window were the poppet and then they were like, oh, you just don't get it. And it's like, is there a grand design about the pie?
Is that like intentional? No, it just doesn't run well. And I love that. I love the just the thick, the pure fake confidence in that really stuck out to me as just like a what?
What is going on? Chris, I have to add to this because I don't know if we covered this on the show back in early November. The director of Sonic frontiers after release said, quote, we are checking the opinions of the critics and everyone. He ended the tweet by saying, quote, still have a long way to go.
And we take this seriously as a global play test. So there you go. Your $60. Little play test.
This is the worst. They're always going to be the worst. Even when everything seems fine, even when everything's going well, there's always going to be that Sega stink. Crickly claimed.
Unless it's vanquished. Of course. Yeah, critically acclaimed. And what is it?
74? Is that what I'm going to be? I'll check it. Maybe it's different now.
It's got 72 frontiers. I don't know. I don't know. Does it open critic becoming like the preferred thing now?
Sonic frontiers is looks like it's 71 on Metacritic. Yeah. Yeah. So they're getting it now.
Metacritic. I don't know if it's the same with open critic, but Metacritic's algorithm is secret. Like, not everything. And I think people are really confused about this.
I understand. I just review count something like four or five times in that number and so on and so forth. So you have a lot of power with those particular numbers, while some numbers are not even counted once. They're counted a fraction of one.
And that's how you kind of get the number. But they never say what's going on with this open critic thing. Because I've been hearing people bring this up more including you. Right.
Are people moving away? Well, I know that definitely the website for open critic is way better than Metacritic. I'm trying to remember, because back in the handsome fandom days, we were verified critics. Like you can search Dustin Furman on open critic and see my reviews there.
Oh, yeah. I wonder if I'm on here. I don't know. I think that that's kind of one of their things is that they try to give more power to the people in that it's not just anyone can go in and effect the score.
But I don't think they weigh bigger sites heavier than smaller sites. I know there's like top critic averages, so there's like can be multiple scores. But I at the very least open critic is a much better site for just browsing seeing what's new. It's a way nicer site.
I just like I've never been on this before, but this is way better. Yeah. It's cool. I mean, they're missing.
They only have me for 19 reviews. I reviewed hundreds of games. What the total like my average score was 75.5, which seems about right because we always said that things trended up simply because we weren't reviewing everything and usually it was a shovelware in the shittier games that didn't get reviewed. So the score wouldn't be dragged down that way.
But I would say that everyone's been a little fast and loose with the scoring these days. Oh, yeah. As far as I'm concerned, we I think we gave away something like four or five tens the entire time I worked at IGN. And I think that there have been that many every year or something in the last years.
I just feel like it doesn't mean anything anymore. I was so scared when I gave my 10 away. I feel like you should be scared. It's a scary thing.
All right. It's my turn. Good selection. Sonic Frontier.
Shout out. Okay. PlayStation after is a game pass race with PS plus extra and premium. And specifically how it's not, I don't think gone very well.
So this scheme was revealed as people might recall and this just goes to show how quick the year is going as we're into summer now, but it was revealed in March and began rolling out in May and June, depending on the territories that you were in. And basically what they pitched was a three tier system of PlayStation Plus, PlayStation Plus as it existed still exists. And that's the essential tier at $60 a year, but there's an extra tier at $100 and premium tier at $120. And the extra tier gets hundreds of PS4 and PS5 games and premium gets basically what was PlayStation now as well as PS2 and PSP games and cloud support.
People are bummed about the lacklustre support, especially of old school PlayStation games from both both first and third party and people are particularly throwing their ire at premium. And what I think is interesting here is that PlayStation Plus has actually gone down since this was announced. I don't know that the same has happened with game pass. Also, I would argue that they're still totally different services in terms of their value and the game pass is certainly a better service.
So it wouldn't be surprised to see those numbers stay the same or continue to go up. But PS Plus since it announced this new scheme went from 47.3 million subscribers to 45.4 million drop of 1.9 million. The same time monthly active users on PlayStation have also gone down. My argument here is essential remains fairly strong, although I know we argue on the show that some of that stuff shouldn't even be behind a gate.
And I wouldn't even subscribe probably to PlayStation Plus at all if it wasn't for cloud saving because I don't really play games online. In fact, I just don't play games online. And I also don't really get much value out of the three or four free games a month we get in quotes free. I think the last one that I played at the time it came out was Man Eater.
So that was two years ago. So something like 60 or 70 games have come since then that I just have a mess with. That's just a column problem. I'm sure a lot of people find value in that.
And if you're a patient gamer, you could create quite the backlog on PlayStation Plus where you really conceivably never buy a game, especially if you consider the PlayStation Plus collection where a lot of the essential first and second party games as well as the big third party games like Persona are. So it's a great value. I'm not saying it's not. But I think it's a big deal that Sony has kind of relented and has imagined for itself for better or for worse a situation where they will compete in some tangential way with Game Pass and they're even getting some games day in date, like Shadow Warrior III and others.
So not huge games, but some products, unless I think the rock galactic or whatever that game was called is which is pretty big was another one of their big PS Plus games. So I wanted to shout that out as a big moment. I feel like that was a moment of capitulation in some way, but also of acceptance of where this industry is probably going and that it's smart for them to at least have some sort of front open to battle on that subscription model battlefield that they like, although I think that they are reluctant to continue to hope that they don't have to do it. So that's what I wanted to give a shout out to any additions to that.
I still hope that PS Plus premium will become a value. It feels like we just talked about this yesterday on Sacred Symbols, but this episode is coming out way later, so maybe it won't be too stale, but it just sucks. It feels like it can be such a good service. You know, when it was announced, we thought, man, there will never be trophies on PS One games.
And then they did it. It was such an exciting moment, such a great launch lineup with ape escape and loud arms and it really made me excited too. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah.
I'm glad I'm wild arms. I actually took the time to even go through and play it. Very exciting. I felt like an Xbox gamer being excited for a service.
It was quite something for me, and then my hopes have just been dashed. So hopefully they can turn it around in 2023, but I can't say I'm hopeful. All right. Let's go back to you, Dustin, for your second selection.
Second selection. Okay. Abandoned. And our friend Hassan appears to just be a sham at this point.
I think the story was really, really fun because we got to play a big role in it. So maybe I'm a bit biased in that. And it just felt like such an insane story from our end as well, just in that I think I've said this on the show, but we had kind of had some back and forth with Hassan about being on the show. And we weren't really sure what was going to happen.
And he was tweeting about it before it was scheduled. And then I think you had texted me or like, Hey, Hassan wants to do the show. I need you to talk to him today in order to plan it out. Okay.
So people thought that may have been a CG animated person or something. So it was really, really fun to just sit down and talk to him. And we don't, I don't know if I really have anything against him on a personal level. I mean, I think that some of the things that maybe have happened have been pretty unsavory, but you know, I don't want to knock the guy too hard, but I don't know.
This story is pretty much dead at this point after our reporting and calling to interview, just in that there were just too many loose ends and appears to be too many situations where Hassan had maybe said things that he shouldn't have or gave people the wrong idea and just kind of lost all anyone's confidence in him at all to really deliver anything of note. And so while it seems the story is over, I'm always interested if he has something else to say. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I think I would have him back on the show, but it would be a much more adversarial conversation, I think, because he was clearly, I don't want to say clearly.
I mean, it was obvious to me that he was lying or unfamiliar about certain things or unable to answer certain things, missling when I talked to him. And I think it's fairly obvious that there's not anything here at all. I mean, there might have been something vaguely at some point. I just think it's weird to make a lot of claims.
Who's paying for your game? How are you getting all these contractors? Like, I was all over this dude. And I'm proud of that.
Like you said, I'm proud that I was so surprised why people weren't, and I kept saying if someone can just ask him these questions, please, so then I just did it myself and relearn that he couldn't answer a lot of them. So that comes off to me as being dishonest in some way. Yeah, that's true. And so I don't, I hear what you're saying, I just, and I don't, I don't know him personally, he could be a very nice person or whatever, but it comes off his con man shit, frankly.
Yes. And, and that to me is really interesting. Yeah. Because you, again, this thing is a one of a kind.
It still is a one of a kind thing where no one's ever done anything like this. No, you can't just get a PlayStation blog post, they ignore most people that want to post on there. They're very deliberate, especially these days about what they want to promote. There's a lot of weird shit about there's still a lot of weird stuff about this.
But I think a lot of it is just focused. There were a lot of options. It could have been a dude really being secretive and mysterious and kind of invoking that, but I think it was another thing, which was a dude way over his skis, you know, and really fucked up and made it seem, I think legitimately like he was Kojima or tried to be like Kojima and you got to be very careful. Yeah, I don't think, I don't think there's much more for, for, for, we're going to hear from him.
Yeah. I, I don't know. It's weird. Now that you laid out, I'm like, hmm, maybe I don't feel sympathy towards him.
I don't know. It just. I don't human level. I'm sure it's not easy.
But you have to, I guess, understand that here's a weird thing. I watch a lot of crime drama or a crime like documentaries and everyone's all that talk to the murderer, right? And you hear him and you're thinking, it's like, man, why do I feel sympathy for you, you know, no matter what you're saying, I don't want to compare, I mean, I'm comparing this to the murder. I don't mean to do that.
Just as the example, you understand what I'm saying? Like, I can, in the moment, it's like, yeah, okay, I'm, it's very sad, very sad, I'm going to horrible childhood and you, and this happened to you and you did this and I, but, but you still did this thing. And so that's kind of where I am for a much lesser extreme with the sod. Do you have anything you want to add, Chris?
Well, I mean, I remember just sort of briefly looking into the history of his studio and the history of like, like his team, and I can't remember the specifics of it because this is a while ago, but it struck me that, that this guy or that studio or something, there's something related to abandon. It was tied to a lot of games that were promised and never showed up, you know, like, so it's struck me pretty early on is like, this is, I hate this, like, I think I was probably the first of the three of us to be like, I'm tired, like, I'm so tired of this because I just don't think, I didn't trust that there was anything there. And if anything there was anything there, then like sure, I'll be glad to pay attention again, but I was, I was so over the, you know, like, it's, it's, I didn't mean to imply that it was Silent Hill or it's like, why would you? Yeah, you're totally right that you bought out first and I was definitely engaged the most the longest.
It's good that you were because you got that interview with him and it just confirmed everything about it. Right. Exactly. Like, I was there, I went through this whole, I would be fun to kind of go back.
I mean, it won't be fun because I'm not going to do it. But to go back and listen to the various podcasts where we talked about it and to kind of gauge our different attitudes, because there were, there were these different 10 steps kind of thing going on. We're like acceptance and, and whatever and disappointment and whatever, but there was a time where I could not even believe it. And if you still explain to me everything that happened, again, I'd be like, that's so weird, but it just happened that someone did that it just, it happened.
And sometimes the unexpected or the weird is just unexpected or weird because that was the intent. And sometimes things just fall apart. So it was a very, very interesting story. I think that's a great selection.
All right. Chris, let's hear your second one. Yeah. Yeah.
So let me see. I think the one that I, the feel good one that I have, and there's like, actually, there's two feel good ones here, but the one I want to start off with, or for my number two is Cyberpunk Second Wind and how that game just totally somehow kind of crawled back into the limelight again and not in no small part, thanks to the anime, of course, but, you know, CD product red in general kind of since this, since this turnaround of cyberpunk seems to be in a bit of a, I don't know if necessarily it's too early to, might be too early to call it a resurgence, but they're definitely on the upswing in a sense that people are really hyped on cyberpunk again. They're looking for more. They announced a future project in which are three, obviously, just recently at the time that we're recording this has like a huge patch that's coming out for free and it's, it looks pretty dope.
And, you know, we, we learned recently as of the time that we're recording this, obviously, here this much later, but that, you know, which are one is like a whole different beast as well than a lot of people are anticipating, so they're the, which are one remake or reimagining or whatever. So it's, it's just very interesting the story of cyberpunk going back to the launch and how disastrous it was. And the fact that it was pulled from the PlayStation store, which is like wildly unprecedented. And just to watch it kind of come back in a way that's pretty shocking.
I think I always anticipated that it would come back in some way, just because the CD project is so huge and that game was so big and I knew when I played it the first time that this is a good game, like this is a really solid title. I happen to avoid all the major bugs, thankfully, but there's, there's a real diamond here. And it just needed time, but I don't think I anticipated the way that it would come back. I don't think I anticipated that it would be this TV show, it would be this anime and then that would send it spiraling into the stratosphere again.
I think it's a very interesting no man's sky type of story that just kind of came out of nowhere. I really did not anticipate this. This was not on my bingo card, is it where? Yeah, I'm writing just a couple notes here because you say something interesting, which is this, I think is a is important in the moment for cyberpunk and important in the moment for CD project.
But I think he's a reinforcing agent for everyone's instincts in corporate gaming that cross media. You got it. We got to get it done. Not only can we make money here, but we can even revitalize things that are dead and to such a degree that we can sell millions of copies of the games that were considered were basically left for dead at some point.
Yeah. Or at least left for God and left for. I was looking just to make sure, because when I played it, because it feels like it was longer than it was, but I platen it on PS5 just this past August and I would say cyberpunk 2077 is awesome. I think that game is fucking awesome.
Yeah. I really do. It was awesome. Love it.
Love it. It's a great experience. And I think it's just cool the way that. And yeah, you're right.
It is definitely going to be looked at as kind of an example going forward for the industry of like, man, we could, if we just get this synergy right, because quite frankly, CD project, if they've done anything right in the last several years, it's been that, it's been that cross media synergy that a lot of companies and a lot of, a lot of IP seem to have a really difficult time managing. I mean, we talk about Halo and that TV show. I could talk for hours on that, but you know, it's not easy to do and this is the second time they've done this. Obviously the Witcher 3 wasn't as big of a success, obviously, but it was, it was totally, it was entirely good.
It was like, totally, the first season anyways, like really, really solid. And you know, Henry Cavill's attached to it and then that resulted in a lot of people playing Witcher for the first time and getting into it. It's what got me back into it after I'd put it down so many times. And it actually got me through my longest playthrough of the Witcher that I had ever.
And you know, again, with cyberpunk and who knows what the hell they're going to be doing in the future. They're really clever over there with how they manage that in particular. And it's definitely going to be a learning point for a lot of other publishers and studios and what have you. Yeah, right on.
I think it also shows the importance of IP, generally, how this all started with some very obscure 80s, paper and pencil, tabletop, rolling games. It's all very strange. It doesn't do anything you want to add before we move on. I think that it is true that we'll see more movie tie-in stuff or show tie-in stuff, too.
I hope that what shines through, though, is that you don't need to retell the exact story. You can give a really fucking awesome team, like Studio Trigger, maybe give them some parameters, but let them tell a new story in their own way, set in your world. And if your world's great, then it should be just fine, because, man, Ed Runners was so incredibly cool. And so we just need less actual just retellings, let there be something a little different.
And the people will come. It's good. Yeah. I mean, this might be like a slight tangent.
But I don't understand why that's so difficult for people to understand that the world is the driving factor in a lot of these. Mm-hmm. You remember that Death Note live action thing that Netflix did? Oh.
Yeah. With Willem Dafoe is reuking it. It's awesome. It's not in a good way.
But it's really fun if you're kind of drunk. I mean, Willem Dafoe is dope as that character. It's a shame. Because the whole time I'm thinking, why did you retell the anime when it would have been so cool to just drop the Death Note in another character?
Imagine the Death Note in the hands of a crypto bro. Or the Death Note in the hands of somebody in the 1700s or something. Just take the concept of the Death Note and just put it somewhere. Does it need to be the show again?
And it's like, I don't know, man. Well, I mean, do they fail out this year, right? There was another big anime failure. Oh, that would be Bob.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're doing one piece, dude. I hate one piece of red show. Which you love, right?
One piece of red show. I love it. I'm just so ugly. It's gonna be horrifying.
I'm a rubber man. It's just gonna be... I forgot about Kyle. You know what's sad about Kyle?
That's another example of just like... I was watching that show and I was like, this would be really good if it wasn't Kyle would be Bob. I actually thought the style of it was really cool. But it just was not...
It would be like if... I'm not gonna say that. Never mind. Okay.
All right. We'll move on. We'll keep that in. I'm gonna get a note.
Specific order is a... Square Enix sheds all of its western weight. I thought this was a very consequential move. One that was very controversial.
So to catch everyone up. Square Enix sold three of their western studios. Crystal Dynamics, I'd else Montreal and Square Enix Montreal. Square Enix Montreal is now gone.
Erased from the earth. Since the sale. And with the addition of IO, which walked away from them a while ago on good terms and fair terms. And continued hitman.
This basically divests Square Enix from western studios. Although not Western games because they're still gonna continue, I think, to support Marvel. Avengers through something and then also Outriders. I think it's gonna get supported.
A group of people can fly and whatever. But a bracer group was the purchaser and the price was low, $300 million. This was actually shockingly low. And I think indicated that this was more of a fire sale and trying to shed weight.
Especially weight that was not bringing in money for the parent company. And the IP that was also brought over include Tomb Raider, Thief, Deus Ex, Legacy of Kane and more. So a lot of IP there. And so where it gets controversial and interesting is what is Square Enix doing?
And I think there are basically only two ways to look at it. Although I'm sure a third or a fourth or a fifth way could be possible. Which is either they're trying to really hone in on what they're good at and what they're known for. Which are their Japanese games with some exceptions.
They've got a little success with Outriders. They want to continue with that. A few other things, you know, bits and bobs. But that they realize that Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy and all these different things that they're really, that are Japanese.
And they're Japanese flavor with triangle strategy. And all the Dragon Quest 3 HD and all these different things. This is what people kind of want out of them. And that's one angle.
The other angle is that they're making themselves nice and nimble to be purchased. And they're getting rid of the things that a potential purchaser probably wouldn't want. And just getting some capital in the meantime. Because say a company, which again, we don't want this to happen.
I certainly don't want this to happen. Sony comes and sniffs around. I don't think they're gonna want any of that IP. I don't think they're gonna really miss a lot of that.
They're coming in for Square Enix or Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest and the Japanese reinforcement of the PlayStation promise of a great Eastern experience as it were. So I thought this deal was incredibly consequential. We almost don't talk too much about it anymore for a couple of reasons. Number one, I think that it's again, that low sale, $300 million makes you really wonder no one else could have gotten that money together.
$300 million is a lot of money. But for major corporations, they borrow that kind of money to buy small things all the time. Nonetheless, act in cash. $300 million is, I don't know, a sixth or a seventh of Sony's profit last quarter, just as an example.
So that really goes to show that there might not have been very much interest in this. And that goes to show also because two or one-third of the studios are closed now. And I don't know that they're gonna be finished. I think Crystal Dynamics is kind of working on something in Idaho's Montreal.
A few things that will keep them alive in Idaho's Montreal's working on something new as well. So we'll see what happens. But I think Embrace her group is becoming very big and unwieldy. And I think this is gonna come back to bite them in some way in the coming years, because I just think they're competing with themselves too much.
So yeah, I wanted to throw all that out there. Square Enix sheds its western weight. What is the intent? Unclear at the time that we're recording this podcast.
Really, really, really want them to stay independent. If someone has to buy them, I hope it's just some venture capital firm that keeps them exactly the way they are. That would maybe even be a good investment, I don't know. I just don't want one of the first parties to buy them or somehow they get gobbled up by something that's gonna mess around their cadence.
Because very similar to Capcom Square Enix is in a very good place right now. And especially getting rid of all that shit. Those are distractions. Tomb Raider, it's like, it's fine, but you make Final Fantasy.
You don't have to worry about that. Give us what we want from you. So shout out to them. Anyone have anything to add to this?
Yeah, I wonder if there's another possibility instead of an acquisition by either a hopefully not a Chinese company, but like you said, some other firm or whatever. What about a merger? Do you think this is possible? We've seen obviously Square, Soft, and Enix merge.
That was just 20 years ago last week from when we were recording this. Can we see a Square Enix, Sega, a Square Enix, Capcom, something like that? I want it to be Square Enix, I want it to be Square Enix, I want it to be Square Enix, CoA, Tecmo, Bandai, Namco. I want them all together and I want that to be the name.
It's like Sterling Cooper, Draper Price. Right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
That's exactly right. Jerry's trying to remember the law firm that that that girl works at. I think Robert... Oh my God, what the fuck was he repeats it like a million times?
Seinfeld. Robert. Robert. Robert.
I'm in Taft. Sagman. Bennett. Robin.
Robin. Robin. Robin. Robin.
Robin. Robin. Robin. Robin.
Robin. Robin. Robin. Robin.
Robin. Robin. Robin. Robin.
Robin. Robin. Robin. Robin.
Robin. Robin. Robin. Robin.
Robin. Robin. Robin. Robin.
Robin. Robin. Robin. Robin.
Robin. Robin. Robin. Robin.
Robin. Robin. Robin. Robin.
Robin. Robin. Robin. Robin.
Robin. Robin. over in Monroville or this one in the North Hills or whatever, so they're still popping up pretty regularly. But it will be interesting to see how the effect continues.
We've seen the present effect being that the cross-generation period severely extended, still with very little end in sight. But I also wonder how this will affect maybe plans for a mid-life cycle console in a PSI Pro. Maybe that's been thrown down the line, maybe PS6 has been thrown down the line a little further. It will be very interesting to see how that shakes out.
But it's also, I guess, it ends happy in that finally people can start getting these consoles and not have to bow to the whim of some scalper. And now hopefully there's some scalper out there that's just sitting on a bunch of inventory that they're going to have to sell for in current value. Good. That was eventually going to happen.
And it's interesting because one thing I find so fascinating is someone, I don't know where it was that I saw this that wrote into us and was mad at us about how we always said that you should just pay a little more for your PS5 if you're going to just bang your head against the wall. What is your time worth? I think you should figure that out if you can afford it so that you're not just fucking killing yourself on PlayStation Direct drops over and over again. But then some dude wrote in and was like, you know, fuck it, I couldn't get one anymore.
I finally found an Xbox Series X and I just went that way. So you waited two years and then you bought an Xbox? That's fine. I think it's a totally valid and valuable purchase.