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We, on the other hand, will keep making Tuesdays great again. But enough chatter. How about you? On to the show.
Greetings and salutations. Welcome back to Sacred Symbols, a PlayStation Podcast. This is episode 60. Whoa, unison.
It's a 10 number, so it's a... Every time we do it together, I don't know. Episode 80! My name is Colin Wary, I'm joined as always by Chris Rake on Chris.
How are you today? I'm good, you know? Eh, my kitchen flooded. That was cool.
Maybe there's no more roaches now they can't. Oh, definitely not. They're probably all like drowned. Thank God.
But, you know, I had to take care of that. I was like, what happened? Give me some specific... No idea.
I think it was like a leak in one of the pipes, and then I remember it was on the sofa in the living room. You didn't notice. Until I walked into the kitchen and splashed around like a salmon. Wow.
So, that was cool. That's, uh, that's too bad. Hopefully they'll fix that for you. If the pass is any indication, they'll fix it for you the next month or so.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, maybe when I'm in a different apartment, they'll fix it. Right. Exactly.
Well, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're able to swim out of your apartment and arrive here in Santa Monica, California. Chris, today's episode's big episode. Yeah.
It wasn't designed originally when I wrote it yesterday from when we were recording this. I didn't anticipate the biggest news that would be announced that we're going to talk about near the top of the show, but also there's some Gamescom news and some other assortment of knowledge out there. That's not until you make any sense. That's right.
I forgot the Gamescom was happening, to be honest. Yeah, well, entirely. It's probably best. You know, you don't want to go there.
I've said many times, I tweet all last night, I would rather have killed a man than ever go after Gamescom ever again. I'd rather have a prison. I like the implication that you would rather have had the experience of killing men rather than actually killing someone. I would rather have gotten away with killing someone than have lived with it than have ever stepped foot in Cologne, Germany.
Well, it's a good thing you didn't go. Yeah, it's a very good thing. Before we begin, Chris, I wanted to show you something. I'm going to get up.
I don't know. I'm always terrified when he shows me things. Now, that's okay. He's pulling over a box with a window on it.
What? So this box, I just want your first impressions when I open this box. Okay. I don't want you to just look inside it.
Okay. And just tell me what you think of that. What I've done in here. Those are GI Joes.
What the hell is this? And what I've done is I've made little boxes for each of them. They're all clean. I clean them all with an extra soft tooth brush and some dial soap.
Let them dry off. These look like sarcophagus. They're all in sarcophagus. Are they all in sarcophagus?
They are. They're all in sarcophagus. They're all in sarcophagus. They're all in sarcophagus, I think.
How do you feel about the organizational nature of what I've done with my GI Joes so far? It's good, but also I'm terrified. Because it's, you know, it's basically like a graveyard. It is like a childhood graveyard.
With like, see through coffins with labels on them with the years. They're birth years, but no death years, because they are indeed figures, and they cannot be sent in all of them. They'll disintegrate. I just wanted to see what your first impression was.
That was not what I was expecting at all. I just think there's going to be like a head in there. I don't know about what's in the box. Like it's seven.
All right, Chris, I actually had to cut down the show a little bit from a listener perspective. I originally had a lot of listener inquiries in this episode and I cut them out because I don't know if we talked about this in the past. I haven't cut them all out, but I cut some of them out because when I write the show on Sundays before we were right, I try to make it seven pages long and if it goes to eight pages long, the show gets too long. So I cut some back, but I did want to begin with a few notes before we jump into this array of news that we have, this confusing array of news that we have today.
I'm just going to do it. For starters, I just want to remind everyone merch, tinyurl.com slash sacred shirts. We're getting a lot of inquiries on that. I'm working on getting some new stuff, but shirts, sweatshirts, long sleeve shirts, all there, custom print, you can kind of get your own shirt size and color and then put your logo on it.
Also, if you don't have the money to get merch, especially for your peon audience and foreign audiences at the pay these ridiculous shipping fees and stuff like that, I understand. Just go to Patreon. There's a post there. It doesn't matter if you're a patron.
You can see it for free. You can download high-res versions of all Collins Last Dance logos to make your own merch if you'd like. And I also want to remind everyone, Sacred Sibbles Plus is going on strong. Sacred Sibbles Plus for the uninitiated is our supplemental weekly episode exclusive to Collins Last Dance Patreon, patreon.com slash Collins Last Dance.
Last week's episode was a big hit. By the way, we did an hour conversation or so about violence and violence in games, violence and media. Really great reaction to that. Remember, those episodes go live Fridays for $5 and then the following Monday for everyone else.
You need to be a patron to get those episodes at all, though. And we were going to do just a mailbag this week, but actually we're going to do something else about the studios that Sony should buy now that we have some news about a studio Sony did just buy. So we're going to get into that in a little while. Spencer Brelen wrote in on us and said, Hey, see, I need some advice.
How do you balance playing games getting worked on and spending time with a significant other? I've noticed it's moving in with my fiancee. My fiancee. That my time that I would play games is pretty much dwindled into maybe an hour or two a week.
I haven't been able to find that proper sweet spot and to be honest, my girl does not have an issue with me playing games. So I wouldn't say that that has been an issue. Thanks for whatever insight or tips you may have on this matter. Keep making Tuesdays great.
Chris, I wanted to know if you had any insight for this gentleman. Yeah. How to balance all these things. It's weird.
I don't think anybody really knows how because I don't know how. Like sometimes I'll go like a week or two weeks without playing anything. Sometimes I'll spend a week playing something and be like, Oh shit, I should have been working. Whoops.
And then like my mom will text me like four months Chris, where are you alive? And I'm like, Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm not great about this either. I live with my girlfriend obviously and I'm probably a little neglectful of things in my life because of all the games.
But also because I just like quiet time. We talk for a living. I don't know if you feel like this. It confuses some people in my life when I'm like, I just don't want to talk.
I'm actually not a very talkative person in real life. I get it all out during these shows and then I just want to sit quietly. But it's not like David putty on the airplane where I'm just staring at the seat in front of me. That's right.
I want to go ahead and instead play games and read books and stuff. So I think this is a dance that everyone struggles with quite a bit. Yeah, I think so too. I'm the same way.
I'm not going to talk at all. That's my time away from speaking. Because I'm in a house or apartment with a bunch of people in it all the time constantly talking. It's just like the Uber is just like, I need to replenish my talk energy.
Are you doing the Uber? What is it? Uber's a selector? One of those things where you can tell them not to talk to you?
Have you done this? No, because I use Lyft. I just say Uber because it's for some reason. That's the verb.
Yeah, Ubering. Yeah, it's a noun to it. But I would never do that. I just put my headphones on and then pretend to sleep.
Yeah, if you're just going with the headphones, you hope for the best. I do love this thing on Uber though. And again, I mentioned the past. I'm an Uber stockholder so you can take what I say with your Anasalt.
But you, Uber, use it a lot. But they have this option now where you can tell them not to talk to you. And I hate being that guy, but I got to be that guy. Especially when I'm coming back from the airport.
I don't want you to ask me where I've been, how I'm doing, what the temperature was like, where you're front. No, that's the easiest thing for me though. That's the easiest thing for me though. Because I just be like, hey man, I'm tired.
I'm going to knock out and they're fine. I just feel like I'm rude if I would. I guess it's kind of a little passive aggressive to tell them before you even get in the car. I don't care who you are, I don't care what you do or what your personality is.
I'm care for best friends, potentially in a different reality. I don't want to speak to you. You can't speak to me. I'm sorry to say.
Well, Spencer, good luck to you. It seems like if your fiance is not really providing the problem, then you are the problem while you're not playing more games. Some people say that they're significant other stuff from playing it as much games. It's because you have to spend time with people.
Who wants to do that? Who wants to spend time with people anyway? Oh, God. Bryce wrote in what's inside, hey detective Collins.
What does this mean? Detective Collins scar an FBI? Is that from Parks and Recreation? I have no idea.
And Chris is a genogenes. I don't like that one at all. Quick point out fruits and veggies from last week. There's actually no such thing as a vegetable and science classification.
Where fruits are the seed of a plant surrounded by a fleshy covering, vegetables are actually a grouping of leaves, stalks, roots and fruits. So even the thing like squash cucumbers, olives and avocados are actually fruit of the plants they come from. Say classy friends. Well, first of all, Bryce, I didn't ask you to send us a botany right up here.
What about that one? Is that true? I also don't know if this is true or not, but I don't think he would lie. It doesn't seem like something that anybody would lie about.
I was under the impression things with seeds in them are fruits. So I already knew that avocados, olives, cucumbers, they're fruit. Yeah. I know that I believe that a vegetable doesn't really exist.
I don't know. This feels like Thanksgiving all over again. What is kale? Like when you learn about Thanksgiving in school and they're like, oh, they had a dinner and then five years later, they're like, oh, that was a lie by the way.
We taught you a lie. We lied to you on purpose with taxpayer money. Here's the real thing. We killed everybody.
Here's the real. Here's what really went down. It's weird. Why do you schools do that?
Why do they teach you incorrect information? You serve it later. It's like a Santa thing too. The Santa thing's a little different because that's just completely made up.
The first thing is giving it half. But as far as we know, we don't know anything about it. I wonder if Flat Earthers believe that Santa Claus could potentially come from some Arctic place or something. Because they say that there's an ice wall or something, almost like Game of Thrones that surround it.
No one's ever penetrated. It's like Skyrim. This is really weird. Like, who believes this?
I can't in good faith believe that anybody actually does believe it. I think it's probably like a money laundering thing. I found a video of these guys getting together. I don't know why I was watching it.
They were trying to prove that the earth was flat by measuring some distance with, you know like when they have the survey things that they look through the lens where I don't really understand how it worked. But they put these two guys across the river from each other and then I think that the data proved that there was a curvature or whatever it's like. Yeah, there is because the earth is round. Fucking people.
Chris, what are we playing? You here have written Titanfall too? Yeah, we've gone back into it. Like I got by the bug when we were playing for the Let's Play.
And it's as great as it's always been. What a fantastic game that nobody plays. It's a shame. Are you playing it online?
Yeah. Yeah, it's fun. Like I got, I was watching that video that we put up where we did not win. Right.
The video for that video too by the way had another Titanfall too. Let's play for you guys up there. Yeah, that's a weird issue by the way. Only on your PlayStation.
Do I see this. Just me. It's just you. It's like I saw Ubisoft for instance.
They, one of their guys announced their director of PR announced their hiring an NPR intern, whatever. And I was going to respond, is that just another person that can ignore us? But I didn't. I didn't.
I make it even worse. Yeah, probably get called. But I think that we're just getting memory hold here maybe at this point. Who knows?
Who knows what's happening? Some random dude at Respawn has it really in for you. And doesn't want you to play this old game that they probably don't even have any jurisdiction over anyone. By the way, I didn't put this in the news.
But there is some drama with Respawn right now over Apex Legends. Did you see all this? Apparently there's a lot of quarreling going on on Apex Legends, pretty robust Reddit. I don't know.
I was just thinking about this and some of the fans over this new season that they released and these loot boxes, whatever. I just am so sick of talking about these things that I didn't put it in the news. It seemed kind of pressing and considering you just brought Titanfall. Yeah.
Or are you playing on PC? I'm kind of playing on everything. It's on my Xbox in the living room, but in my room it's on the PlayStation. Alright, great.
So I'm just kind of slopping, which environment I want to be in I guess. Chris, I've been playing Ona Naki, which is the new Tokyo RPG Factory game, Polichoy Square and it comes out by the time you guys hear this it should be about out. I'm not allowed to talk about it yet. I was actually thinking about delaying this episode of the day, so I could talk about it.
But that's fucking nuts. You can't say anything about it. You can't say anything about it. You can't say anything about it.
I have a mind for me to say that I think it's very good. And it's really quite different than their previous games. I actually think you might like it. Oh.
It's an action RPG. It's not a menu based RPG. It's a little up to us, but it's not like their other games. I will leave it there for now so that we don't break the embargo.
Okay. Chris, there is a lot of news. Yes. And there's a big piece of news that everyone is interested in talking about.
That's what we're going to get right into it instead of waiting. This is only like 13 minutes into the show or so. We usually wait 45 minutes into the show before we get into this? Yeah, six hours, three days.
Good for him. Number one, after literally two decades of speculation suggesting the inevitability of the move, Sony has finally and officially purchased Burbank, California based Insomniac Games. That's me. The team behind PS4 Spider-Man, the Ratchet and Clank franchise, the Resistance trilogy and a ton of other games Insomniac was founded way back in 1994, releasing its first game Disruptor on PS1 in 1996.
Insomniac officially became famous two years later when in 1998 it launched the first Spyro the Dragon game. It followed Spyro up with two more PS1 titles before jumping to Ratchet and Clank on PS2 in 2002. During the PlayStation 3 era, however, Insomniac and Sony's relationships seemed to fray, at least a little bit. It began seeking outside funding for games under IP, it controls, and it released Fuse with EA in 2013 originally called Overstrike, and Sunset Overdrive with Microsoft in 2014.
Beginning in 2015, Insomniac also took a long look at VR, mobile development, and smaller bite-sized console and PC development, working alongside Oculus and Facebook, as well as Game Trust, GameStop's ill-fated publishing arm. While Activision owns the publishing rights to Spyro, Sony already owned the publishing rights for end IP for Ratchet and Clank and Resistance. The purchase now gives Sony and Insomniac's other IP, including Fuse, Sunset Overdrive, Song of the Deep, Edge of Nowhere, Out-or-Nauts, and others. Chris.
It's a good get. Sunset Overdrive was great. What do you think of this? I was surprised.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It makes perfect sense. They made the biggest, probably the biggest PS4 game, I think, actually, for real. Yeah, it's apparently announced by Sony today 13.2 million copies sold.
And it's worth noting that there is a Game of the Year edition of Spider-Man that was listed on Amazon. I think maybe pulled down by the end of the year as well. So this is a game that could potentially do about 20 million units. Yeah, it makes perfect sense to me.
They seem to be a very reliable studio. I think they've only had really one major flub with Fuse, and even that really was more, I thought it was more of an EA thing than anyone else. So yeah, I mean, I'm happy about it. Makes sense.
I think it's really that big of a change, though. No. Obviously Spider-Man's already a PS4 exclusive, so it's going to be more of what we're used to, really. I think that this is a movie.
Yeah, that's maybe I was a little surprised by it simply because... I was surprised by the timing of it. I was just talking to hear about it now. I would have expected to hear about it like PSX or something like that, like something not around Gamecom, I guess.
Right. I think they did it on this specific day specifically to take some of the heat out of Gamecom. There were some other interesting stuff announced during Jeff Kealey's Gamecom event. There were some Nintendo stuff, I think, I think, Ori in the Blind Forest, which is an Xbox game is going to switch, which is pretty interesting and some other stuff that's happening.
So I think Sony might have engineered it for that reason, but it was surprising just because I wrote a history of Insomniac that you guys can go read on IG and it's also on Amazon, I think, as an ebook. And so I'm really very familiar with them and their history. And this isn't the first time Sony tried to buy them. Depending on who you ask, Ted Price will pretty much never admit that they were trying to be purchased, but other people told me on and off the record that Sony has offered them money in the past and they basically refused.
And I think that this is kind of... It's like when a girlfriend and a boyfriend kind of break up for a little while and then they get back together and realize that they really love each other and want to be with each other and want to take it to the next level. Right. And Insomniac were not getting along very well for a while and while they were always working with each other, Microsoft was eagerly pursuing Insomniac and they got some sort of overdrive out of it and Oculus is doing stuff with them and EA, like you said, and yes EA totally ruined Fuze.
Overshrike was totally ruined by EA and that's something that people in Insomniac will pretty readily admit I think at this point. So the big thing is to me that they're in the family now, they have another office satellite office in North Carolina, that's where Ratchet and Clank is made and yes you will get another Ratchet and Clank game. I think we talked about this in the past. And so that was already happening anyway.
But what this to me signals is that there's going to be a third game and possibly a PSBR game as well because these guys actually have a lot of expertise in VR development and I think that that's another interesting component of them. Other than Sony London, no one in the first party has any experience with VR like Insomniac does. So that's another big component of it as well. Yeah, it's a good get.
I'm really excited about it. So we're going to get Ratchet and Clank probably on PS5. We're going to get Spider-Man game probably on PS5. And my third guess is a resistance game.
First of all, hopefully not a VR game but there seems to be a gap in what I'm hearing from what Gorilla is doing with their second team. Not so sure we're going to get a Killzone game. And so this makes, they need a first-person shooter. Sony doesn't have a first-person shooter right now.
And so resistance could be the game that comes back. Well, this is a tangent but at Game Sound they did show more of that predator thing. That's true. That's true.
Which looks asymmetric and one side is first-person shooting and the other side is third-person action with the predator. That looks kind of cool. So that's the only first-person shooter they have though right now. Yeah, that's predator hunting grounds.
Yeah, which is second party. Which is cool though. Yeah, it's second party but it's exclusive isn't it? Yep.
Yep. So that's an interesting kind of thing. There's a lot of interesting stuff marinating there and of course they're capable of making the IP but I think we rely upon them for some of these other games. And I think it's most funny that they only own SunSud Overdrive now.
So the big question now is what's going to happen with the original game. As far as I understand Microsoft pretty much has that lockdown on console. I don't think that game can be published on PS5 or PS4 without permission but the sequels can be. And so we'll see how that all shakes out as well.
But I actually think that that's kind of the interesting subtext all this is getting SunSud Overdrive and maybe trying to do something with that as well. Who knows? At least getting that game. Pay Microsoft to get that game on PS4 and seeing how the fans take to it since it's an insomniac game and there's that heritage.
I think it would be very fortuitous. Yeah, for sure. So my guess is Ratchet and Clank PS5 maybe around launch. Spiderman 2, PS5 probably 2022 something like that and maybe something in between those games as well.
But big get, congratulations to all involved. Yeah. He was already a millionaire but now he's got a lot of millions of dollars. The financial arrangement was not disclosed.
It's usually not. I'm curious how much money this cost. Probably a lot. Probably a decent amount.
So it's nice to get here. I give Ted Bryce a lot of credit. He really did hold on for a long time. If someone dangled all that money in front of me and by the way, Sony wasn't the only group that tried to buy and something like that.
You have to assume EA and Microsoft and other try to get involved as well. They just said no over and over again. I mean that takes a lot of balls. It reminds me of the, I don't know what's true but they always talk about NeoGaf.
Back in the day it was like where someone offered that Tyler guy $10 million for NeoGaf and you turned it down, NeoGaf's worthless. So that's the kind of risk that you take. And so eventually if I were Ted Bryce 20 years ago, I would like fuck it. Yeah.
No, exactly. So like I mean they had, it seems like they had really a decent amount of confidence in what they make. So and they should, because everything's pretty great. I agree.
I agree. They had a little bit of a dark period there with Fuse but again, to your point, but that was it. Yeah, that was not really, that was not really, that was really it. That's not a little bit.
It was great. You're all wrong. Yeah, SunSet Overdrive is, it was a great game and for people that PlayStation fans that like resistance, I find it a little weird since it's the same creative team that made both series. Yeah.
Drew Murray, who's now actually at the initiative, Xbox is big studio. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Co-created the game, or co-created, SunSet Overdrive and was a co-created director of resistance with Marcus Smith, who's a buddy of mine who still added Samyak.
So and I think was actually the creative director of the Spider-Man DLC that everyone really liked. So it'll be very interesting to see how this all goes. I wonder how, I actually have to reach out the Drew and see how he feels because you know, SunSet Overdrive was his baby and it all kind of worked out strange. I guess.
of those guys that are going to involve this brings a lot of stability to the studio. And I will also say, Chris, that as far as I understand, this isn't the last studio that will be announced. That's a little bit more. I think there's going to be more, I think it's, if not imminent, it's going to be by the end of the year, you're going to hear a few more studios.
And I keep hearing Remedy. Remedy. I think that probably will. Now a friend of mine's interesting sent me a tweet from a guy who worked at Remedy.
I don't know if it was the, like, social media manager or marketing guy or whatever that tweeted out at congratulations to James Stevenson, who was the buddy of mine who was the marketing guy at, and some people are like, huh. That's weird. So I think, I think Remedy is going to join the family, but we're going to find out. That's interesting.
I think it's, we'll see. We'll see. We'll see what happens. Yeah.
Number two, this is also an interesting one. On the back of Sony's acquisition of Insomniac comes a very, very interesting quote from Sean Layden, the head of all of Sony's dozen plus fully owned studios around the world. Here's what he told Bloomberg, quote, we must support the PlayStation platform. That is non-negotiable.
That said, you will see in the future some titles coming out of my collection of studios, which may need to lean into a wider install base. End quote, that's all he said. What do you make of that? I think that means PC probably.
I think so too. I think you're going to see it with Death Stranding, but other games is welcoming to PC and PS4, PS5, at the same time in order to expand on install base. I don't think that hurts them to do that. But this is the first time I've seen anyone at Sony acknowledge this.
Yeah. They never talk about that. They're usually pretty tight-lipped about it, and very protective. And again, as we've said in the past, there have been experiments, Journey is now out on PC, which I think flowers out on PC too, Hell-Divers, and obviously the quantum stream second-party games are out as well.
Two smaller ones. Right. So something to keep an eye on. I think that this is setting the stage for Death Stranding specifically, but I don't really understand why, because I thought that they announced it was coming to PC originally.
We talked about this last week. People are making a big deal about this. But I'm pretty sure this from the beginning was known. I don't remember that being announced, but I also remember not being surprised by it.
So it's weird, I don't know. Maybe they did, but I didn't see it. We'll find out. We'll see.
Well, all this Insomniac news, as I said earlier, is going to Feed Sacred Symbols Plus episode three that goes live this Friday, and will be live Monday for all patrons the following Monday, obviously. All this. So we're going to get into that. I'm going to talk about the five studios I think Sony should buy next.
Chris is going to talk about them. We've also solicited it. So that's going to be a fun episode to do. Yeah.
And kind of almost makes mood already. Insomniac is now in the mix. I mean, already did our draft. So we're going to have to revisit that as well.
Once everything settles at the end of the year, and a few teams probably join the family, then we can do it again and see what happens. Because Insomniac obviously would bubble up that list. Although, just real quick, Chris, where do you put them? In your list?
I don't think that they're at the... I think it's probably some naughty dog Santa Monica sucker punch in that upper echelon. And I put in some. I put in some sucker punch.
But below naughty dog in Santa Monica. And Gorilla of course is in there as well. Keep forgetting about them. I think they're very, very happy about European.
We don't think about Europe very much. I just think they have... They're really... Their skill set is very diverse.
They've shown competency in a lot of different genres. Indeed. Well, this is exciting. I meant to look into this, but I don't think Sony has purchased a studio since 2011.
It could be wrong about that. But I think this is the first acquisition in eight years. Sucker punch I think was the last studio they bought. Sucker punch after infamous two came out.
And I don't think that they purchased anything else since then. They founded a few studios. Yeah, that's about it. You can be right.
Number three. This was originally the lead story, and this is already a big story, but not anymore now. This is no longer the lead story of our show. For starters, Ben Irving, the producer of the Ophated Anthem is leaving BioWare after eight years.
Irving noted on Twitter that he's leaving BioWare in order to accept a position at another company that was unclear as of now where he's headed. Prior to producing Anthem, Irving worked for a long time on BioWare's long-running MMO Star Wars, the older public. Making matters even worse is that BioWare is also losing Fernando Melo, the producer of Dragon Age 4. Melo likewise announced the move on Twitter and had worked at the company even longer than Irving for 12 years.
Melo was the producer of both Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2. He was also a production... he has also production credit on Mass Effect Andromeda. Unlike Irving, Melo says he's taking a bit of time off so he can disconnect.
Though with a long history in the industry far predaining his time at BioWare, Melo once worked the 2K on the publisher side on games like BioShock. It's likely he's ready to land somewhere else. Or he will be able to land somewhere else once he's ready. Basil Frank wrote in once and said, Greetings, Crackling, Colin and Krispy Kris.
Now, I have a problem with this silly because I think it would be better Krispy Colin and Crackling Kris. I think it's actually a better... It's better like a... syllable symmetry.
Yeah, I agree. About two months ago or so I asked that BioWare was in trouble because of the poor reception of Anthem, even though it had good sales. Your answer was that BioWare would be fine. Now the lead producer on Anthem left as their game-changing event launched.
And he put game-changing in quotes. Does your answer still remain the same and what do you think this means for Dragon Age 4? As always, gents keep up the best show and don't forget to pack away the dumbbells. Don't be that person at the gym.
Do you really, really think that I'm going to the gym? Kris used to go to the gym but I'm not hearing about this. No, I don't. I fell off it a little bit.
Yeah, a little bit. Just a tad. Do I stand by it, Basil wants to know. I don't think BioWare is in trouble.
But what do you think about their... They've lost their two new producers basically on their two games. Anthem and Dragon Age 4. Both producers are gone.
One seems to have been poached. I don't know what the other one is. Yeah, you have to look at it as like... BioWare's fine as a studio.
They're gonna be around. Dragon Age 4 might have a problem now. For sure, I think. But it could be, I don't know how late that game really is in development also.
So people leave studios all the time and the studios remain. And that's BioWare's fine. I mean, Anthem is so terrible. I'm surprised this is only happening now to be honest.
I'm surprised it took this long. I'm still left immediately. I'll see you later. I'm somewhat surprised that he seems to have been poached.
I mean, no offense to him. He's got a lot of bettering, he's got a lot of experience. But if I were making a game, I'd be like, I don't think I want the producer of Anthem working on their team. But maybe it's not his fault.
But production is really important. And losing a producer is bad. It would be much worse if they lost their creative director or their designers and stuff like that. But the producer for people that don't own video games is the guy that kind of builds very similar in film.
But he's the guy that makes it happen. He's the guy that lives in spreadsheets. That's always on the phone. That's making sure people hit schedules.
That's making things happen. He's the coordinator of the team. And so losing that is really detrimental to a team. Now, Irving leaving BioWare indicates to me that Anthem is winding down completely in that he doesn't have a role there anymore.
And was maybe allowed to find another job. But the guy leaving Dragon Age is not a good look. No, that's how it all goes. I don't think Dragon Age is anywhere near being done.
So I don't know if it matters that much. But that was the biggest story for all this stuff within Sonic. That happened within three or four days of each other's lives. Yeah.
Is that coincidence? I don't know. I don't know if it's coincidence. Doesn't seem like it.
But I don't know. Weirder things have happened. Yeah, I don't know. That's a huge sinking ship.
The Anthem thing. I think it's even if you're being nice about it. You can't pretend like that's not a huge disaster. And I'm surprised.
I'm surprised it just took this long. For anybody to leave or whatever. It seems weird. But I think that that shows the stability to Basil's question.
Yeah, I guess I'm just like, oh, the game can happen. Oh, yeah. I guess it happens. One game fail.
Yeah. I don't know. I think we'll be around for a while. I don't think anybody needs to worry about that.
Anthem is one of the top five best-selling games of the year. Just to put that in the context for you guys. It's even critical failure. Right.
Even if the game failed critically, like Chris was saying, you could make the argument that they might be saving money by the game not being big in a weird way because they don't have to support it for years. They're going to start dwindling down the community management and servers and all that kind of stuff. Presumably so. You could make the argument on their books that they sold $60 copies of Anthem probably to the two and have like 10 million of them and they're like, all right.
Well, bye. Yeah. But I think that they're supporting it because they have to optically. Yeah.
Here's an interesting one. Number four. PS4 exclusive game, Erica, first announced way back in 2017 has reemerged and it's available to download on PlayStation Ork right this very minute. Sony describes Erica as an interactive thriller and quotes very much in the same vein as Quantum Dreams or supermassive games, only far cheaper, shorter and less involved.
The game is only $9.99. The game is totally live action with different choices to make and pass a take and was developed by British team FlavorWorks, who have not actually put a U in their name. Sony originally announced Erica on the PlayStation blog way back in October of 2017 and we've heard very little of the game since. Some people thought it may have turned to vaporware, but here it is.
So Erica, for those of you who have wondering that game actually started to pop up the last couple of weeks, there were rumors that were ready to go. And here it is. It's available on PSN right now. If you want to go check it out.
It was originally supposed to be playable on your phone via the PS4. There's another game that Aaron and I were playing. I can't remember what it's called. It's another one of these interactive thrillers where you download an app.
I actually have the app on my phone. It's called Hidden Agenda. Weird. And Sony was trying to make this thing called PlayLink, which is very similar to what they do with Jackbox party, which is really cool.
You put your phone and you put the codes in. It's awesome. It's a really nice idea, but apparently they've removed that functionality for this. You have to download an app that's specific to Erica or you have to use the controller.
But I don't know if it's going to be any good. I'm sure there's a lot of people who pop up. I remember hearing a bunch of people like, wow, Erica's finally coming out. I'm like, what?
What are you talking about? I don't remember this at all. People are like, oh, remember the announcements? I was like, no.
We don't remember Erica. No. Maybe it's great. I don't know.
This whole interactive live action thing is not exactly my scene. I feel like I don't know if I'm really all that. And I remember they did the Black Mirror Banders Natch thing on Netflix. I'm never going to think about this again.
Yeah, I didn't like it very much. Although I use Tops and Twins hold me now in very powerful ways. What did I like? Number five, European megapoblisher THQ Nordic has acquired two new studios outright.
Oh, yes. As well as minority investments in five others, according to Press releases posted by the company. For starters, the publisher has purchased Italian developer milestone, a sizable team in Milan, best known for its racing games in the long running MotoGP's franchise. Now, they really seem obsessed with getting racing studios.
I don't know if anyone's noticed this yet, but there's like five different racing studios that THQ actually owns now. And MotoGP is a pretty well received franchise, so they own them now. They've also developed a ton of other racing titles dating all the way back to the mid 90s. They also purchased Gunfire Games, the American team in Texas, that started working with first with Deep Silver and later THQ Nordic with Dark Cider 2 as we released as well as Dark Cider 3, which came out last year.
Interestingly, THQ Nordic has also purchased a group called Goodbye Kansas Game Invest, which is a fun that owns minority shares in four small Swedish studios as well as a Danish team. Poundrome Interactive, working on a strategy game called the Mortal Realms Vampire Wars, Fall Damage, a team not recently released a strategy game called Battlech, Neon Giant, a team working on a yet unannounced steampunk game, Kavari, a studio working on an equestrian game, like a horse game, and Frame Bunker, the lone non-Suitist studio in the bunch, and a team working on a tactical shooter called Static Sky. Chris, you find this like fun. This whole thing is so interesting with THQ Nordic.
You just put this smile on my face because I just imagine this dude in a really tall chair who acquires all these studios. You're all making racing games, and they put them in a Hunger Games kind of like, you make the best one, you survive, you move to the next round, or whatever the hell. I feel like I'm going to go home for Chris this one day, my parents are going to tell me my dog was bought by THQ Nordic. It's very weird, man.
They have investors that believe in them. They're profitable, apparently with what they're doing, and they're investing in these studios, and they're probably getting them for cheap too. I mean, they're pumping stuff out too, so I mean, Disroll Humans is actually a thing, which I didn't expect, but they bought minority shares in these teams, so in five of these teams. So what that says to me too is that when each of these teams releases a game, if it's good, they'll just scoop up the team entirely.
But it seems like they're really interested in some weird stuff, like, I guess not weird, but more niche stuff, the racing series, and then Dark Ciders, which is kind of a niche game. And then the Goodbye Kansas game, they're getting a strategy game, two strategy games, a steampunk game, and a quest-rein racing game, and a tactical shooter. Like a horse racing game? Yeah.
Okay. The team Cavalry in Sweden is working on a quest-rein game called Quest-rein. So I don't know. I'm really wondering, like, how much did it cost to buy?
Just for instance, how much does it cost to buy Gunfire games in Texas? They made Dark Ciders 3. Does that cost $5 million to buy the team? Like, to buy the team?
Yeah? I don't know. Yeah. I wouldn't even know how to appropriate that value.
As opposed to Insomniac, I'm just throwing a number out, but I would think Insomniac was purchased for somewhere in the region of $30 to $40 million. Really? Yeah. Shit.
It's pretty high. We'll see. Maybe I'm totally off, but that's not right to me. I never spent a million dollars on anything, so first we have to have a million dollars.
Exactly. There's more CHQ Nordic news, and it just gets even weirder from here. Don't buckle in. Number 6.
THQ Nordic has revealed that Dead Island 2, first announced way back in E3 in 2014, has moved on to its third developer. Fourth, if you count the fact that Techland was originally supposed to develop it, but opted to develop Dying Light instead. Why's move? Yeah.
Why's move? Dead Island 2 is first developer, Germanteen Yeager, the guy behind the wonderful Spec Ops, the Lion, were removed from developing the game in the summer of 2015 by Deep Silver, the publisher of the original Dead Island, who was later gobbled up by the aforementioned THQ Nordic. So just to catch everyone up, Deep Silver was a publisher, is still a publishing arm. They had the publishing rights to Dead Island, and then THQ Nordic bought them.
So they all had a lot of stuff came with them. So that's easy enough to understand. British Mega Studio Sumo Digital took over from there, the guys behind Little Big Planet 3 and a ton of other games, and were in charge of development for seemingly four years or so. Now that's no more, according to THQ Nordic 3's and Financials, which note that Dan Buster Studios has been entrusted in quotes with the franchise, and are now leading the charge on Dead Island 2's development.
Dan Buster Studios, located in England, has a heritage in Crytek UK, which was known before then as Free Radical, the team behind the original two Time Switters games, as well as the Crisis Trilogy. As Dan Buster owned at the time by Deep Silver and now by THQ Nordic, the team put out the woefully inadequate Home Front of Revolution in 2016. So the guys that made Home Front of Revolution are now making Dead Island 2, which has been in development now for 60 years over three or four teams. So it's going to be great, I'm sure.
There's something poetic about a zombie game that refuses to die. There is. Very nice. I think they should put a bullet in that game's head.
Oh yeah, kill it. Because dying light was already way better than Dead Island 2 was looking. Yeah, that's the weird thing is that the magic in Dead Island was tech land, and tech land was wise enough to fuck off. So what a wise decision.
Did you like Dead Island 1? No, not really. Genuinely. Which was shocking that dying light was so good.
Too many things to open. That's what I remember about it. There was always shit to open. There was like a bunch of suitcases and boxes everywhere to open.
It was too open. Yeah. Scratch my OCD in bad ways. I keep hearing about Dead Island 2 and I keep being surprised that it's alive still.
It was a nice embryonic thing. It reminds me of Assassin's Creed 1 or something where they're like, oh, we're on something interesting here. And then they're like, yeah, there's something we're on to is dying light, which was fucking awesome. And they went with a different publisher.
They just went with WB. And now I think tech land is publishing Dying Light 2 by itself. So what a wise decision they made to get the fuck out of there because they would be in THQ Nordic's tractor beam at this point. And who knows if they would even survive.
Yeah. Although maybe Dead Island 2 would have just become Dying Light or vice versa rather. But anyway, I think you should just kill this game. If you want to do a Dead Island 2, just start it again in the future.
But you've got to let it go for now. It doesn't make any sense. This doesn't make any sense. No.
How can this game possibly be any good? No offense to Dan Buster, but they didn't do a very good job with Homefrother Revolution. I can't even believe they exist. So yeah, it's a lot of the talent involved and more about the fact that it's just so poorly mismanaged.