Epic Games Knocks Out Apple + Cyberpunk Best on Switch 2?! | OTC EP 28

Welcome to off the console the hottest new podcast.

That's all About gaming tech news and anything nerdy this week.

We're covering the biggest news items including Apple is getting knocked out by Epic Games finally a win for us uh Gamers and developers, I guess I don't know.

It's a big win against Apple and that's it's gonna be it's gonna be fun ride Also, your shit is getting more expensive

Xbox is increasing their prices, but Also, the trifecta is fighting against the tariffs.

So we're gonna get into all these big topics and more in today's episode so please welcome in high-tech lowlife and also myself and There is no gardener today.

He has important business and

He just has somewhere, he has somewhere better to be, right?

And so, he, I'm sure he will.

He's having a good old time and we all need time off at times, so.

Okay, speaking of time off, kinda, but Derek, like, so how was your week the last week that you weren't recording shit?

You, what have you been doing, Hi Tech?

ah while I have been playing video games and working and working on videos.

Same show you do every week.

I also got a new phone by the way.

nice, yeah, you had issues with your last one with the fold.

so my folding phone, the hinge started messing up so I had to get...

I'm switching back to a regular phone, man.

I'm sorry.

I really wanted to like those smaller flip phones.

Flip phone style folding phones.

But I guess the whole concept of folding phones just aren't for me.

I mean, I could totally get over the crease that's forming in the middle.

but it's the hinge and the durability issues that really get at me, because that was like my second replacement.

And I'm just over it.

I got an S25 Ultra.

It's been pretty nice.

It's nice having a really nice phone in my hand again.

And I don't know what, I'm not sure what else to say besides that.

I am waiting for Apple to come out with their foldable.

They're going to do it.

All the rumors are pointing towards that.

gonna invent foldables and do it right.

Well, here's the thing.

Sometimes it's really annoying how behind Apple can get, especially if you're stuck in their ecosystem.

But when they release stuff, it's usually decent.

um Just saying, like I'm not going to say that it's going to be the best or whatever.

And I will see if I buy one.

I love phones, but they've just gotten so iterative over the years that.

I mean, I mean, realistic, like I got, I got my flip phone in 2023.

Had it not started exhibiting multiple times, durability issues, had it not been exhibiting that, I probably would have kept it for like another three years.

mean, I don't really replace my phone.

I don't really need to replace my phone all that often.

And like phone gaming kind of sucks, to be honest.

I'm just, okay, the type of games I play on the phone are the ones that will play on something probably from 10 years ago almost, depends.

Hearthstone, I've been playing Hearthstone on phones on and off for years.

uh I don't play them very much these days, but like certain types of card games, Plants vs.

Zombies, just games that are a little bit more simple.

That's all, if I do.

But there's, yeah.

I mean a lot of games are real like I know Apple was trying to put push publishing major AAA games on like iPhone like the Resident Evil 4 remake.

Remember that?

That's on like the iPhone 16.

uh

And honestly, you can hook it up to a TV and play it with a controller and it's not bad.

yeah, it's really for a phone.

Like, I don't know.

I really like how Apple's pushing that stuff because it adds more support for Atom processors, which is important because if, I don't even know if we have it on here, but

like a bunch of rumors going around about the Steam Deck potentially having a processor that is.

not going to be AMD is rising, like the rumors of that are rising.

not AMD as in like Intel or like not AMD as in like not x86.

not AMD.

So they're, I think they're exploring Intel and also they're exploring Qualcomm.

Intel?

Intel's an interesting choice.

You know, I mean, I figured Qualcomm would like be a natural.

If they were going with ARM, I would have expected them to go Qualcomm since they're still like at the top of the game when it comes to non-Apple processors.

Non-Apple A and ARM processors.

thing too they could have hinted at that and but AMD is working on Adams is tough too and so.

Sorry I'm arm I say I mix those up so much I hate it so much yes arm Adam is Intel's old processor.

Yes, I have nightmares about an old Adam laptop I owned, like, many years ago.

I was able to play World of Warcraft in college class uh on an old Adam laptop netbook I had, so good memories for me.

uh I wonder if Gardner owned an Atom laptop?

Probably, maybe, I don't know.

I'm not gonna defend it, but I'm just saying I've had good times with that and also an AMD APU netbook that I had.

Yeah, that said, recent atoms have been surprisingly decent for NAS usage, I have a NAS setup.

It's a LinkStation N1.

It's an all SSD NAS.

They sent it for, yeah, not sponsored by them today, but they did send me a unit to review.

think uh the company is Link Plus, L-I-N-C Plus.

uh

I've been looking into doing some reviews on some of those because I want to build an app and I love the idea of an all SSD or like all NVMe.

Yeah, so it has four NVMe slots and two SATA slots for like 2.5 inch SATA drives.

And so I'm using some SATA SSDs that I had lying around and I've just been uh editing off of those.

Oh, nice.

I have like four NVMe drives lying around that I wanna figure out how I can plug into my um network or into my Macbook or my Mac Studio.

honestly that's probably it also comes with a key it also comes with an unraid license too

Yeah, that's what I've heard.

so, uh, yeah, I just got, got to get off my butt and get onto content and get some of those review units.

I know.

I'm having too much fun.

Gardener's not here to make fun of me.

I'm having too much fun with vibe coding.

Vive coding?

Dude, you forget that I'm here too, dude.

uh

but you're not gonna make fun of me as much as gardener is but vibe coding is okay and to be fair I Am NOT I'm just having a vibe code like out stuff.

I don't want to do I'm making it like be my workhorse because Like if I had an intern or like a junior engineer, this is what I'd be having them do anyways, so It's just fun to

tell to do stuff

coding onto them.

That's so managerial.

That would be hilarious.

the prompt I need you to give it.

Okay.

I just micromanage them.

Dude, transitioning from a ground level employee to management.

Love to see it.

You're C-suite exec material, dude.

Yeah, well yeah, and then that junior developer like, okay, you're a senior developer because you have now the AI developer, that's your junior.

That's how you get a raise.

Oh man, but yeah, I mean, I don't know what to make of it.

AI...

is overblow.

I think some people give it too much shit, like vibe coding.

I think other people blow up too much about it.

I only say it a little bit mockingly, because it's funny to say like vibe coding.

Unless you're a developer or really want to dig into things, because you're still going to have to learn a bunch of shit.

You have to debug yourself, dude.

You can't trust an AI to debug your code.

If you're really, really precise with your prompts, and that's where it all comes down to, are you good at being detailed and creating a plan?

You can do, you can get 90 % of the way through, but then the last 10%, you better know what you're doing to get that thing launched.

And I think a lot of people are really shooting themselves in the foot because they're trying to release stuff without knowing what they're building.

Dude, we need to release a supercut of you mentioning Vibe Code in every episode of the podcast.

Dude, we should do that, make supercuts of us mentioning common themes and shit.

yeah, I'm down for that.

Oh, vibe coding.

It'll be surprised him when he watches this episode.

Dude, I do, like I mentioned last week, I really do feel like I'm villain maxing right now.

Because with all the kids are saying with the maxing stuff.

Apple, I'm Apple now.

I'm vibe coding.

I'm giving into AI.

goddamn Apple evangelist.

I honestly, I think I'm just done with Microsoft shit is I think kind of kind of what it is.

Like I don't mind their Xbox brand so much because I think they've done a lot of good in the sense of opening it up to Steam more and like Windows are like meaning gaming that is

like I don't have to buy an Xbox to play Xbox games, which huge win for me.

ah But I really like Windows is just feeling like a clown car right now.

every little product they just shove into there and I just don't know when they're all going to pop out but

dude I mean there's so much change going on in the world of AI no one no one knows what's going on you know my sister's a doctor and she and you know apparently she's been talking

about how all the doctors have been concerned that AI is gonna take their jobs too and like doctors are like known for having financial security like that's like the one thing

people like

think they want to be a doctor for is to have a really high paying job that you're not going to get fired from, most likely.

At least that's...

yeah.

those doctors are, I won't go to those.

I want to go to ones that want to be there for the patient.

I am kidding, though, partially.

But there are some asshole doctors that just don't care about the patients.

ah And it's just about paycheck for them, which I guess, whatever.

I just don't want to die under those guys.

well, I mean, like you can't even make it through med school if you don't at the very least want to help patients.

It's just probably just years of seeing a bunch of shit happen and then like...

Technically some, I think also lose the, they burn out too.

Yeah, that's a whole other thing.

That's where AI could actually help doctors.

They could help them diagnose and then they can be the second opinion kind of thing.

Like, okay, here's the diagnosis.

They go through and they're like, I'm not sure about that.

And be the reasonable guide.

It's just like with engineers right now.

Like lot of companies are replacing engineers.

And I think that's even happening in the game world a little bit.

with AI or at least reducing their account, but they're gonna have to realize like, they're gonna have a lot of spaghetti code that they're gonna have to be cleaning up.

And so there's a potential reduction of developers, but I do think it might rebound.

I was a little hesitant about this, but I think it might rebound back up when they have to fix a bunch of spaghetti code.

um Because really AI should be used as a tool, at least for the next while to um help engineers not to replace them.

Yeah, I mean, who knows?

We'll see how it shakes out.

AI is still very much in development and it's still improving day over day.

We have no idea where it's going to go next.

Honestly, when I hear AI revolution, I kind of think of like the Matrix where like we get into a massive like final war against the AIs and then the AIs win and then they like

enslave us, us into batteries or like Terminator 2.

where they're still in a final war against Skynet or whatever.

It's going to take a while before we get there.

The general artificial intelligence or is.

Yeah, like a sentience level is, I think we're a ways away.

It would be and there's usually.

governors on them.

So governor would be essentially, hey, you can't go outside, like you can't hurt a human.

You can't go out the side of the sides of these bounds and everything.

And AIs already kind of have that.

law of robotics are meant to be broken, dude.

Obviously.

I mean, it will happen, but that's why you have good robots to go against bad robots.

Dude...

know what this reminds me of?

Mega Man X.

yeah, you ever played Mega Man X?

I've played the Mega Man's.

I haven't beat.

I don't think I've beaten one, but I don't think I ever understood the stories because I played them so young.

classic Mega Man is just like, oh, good robot fights, bad robots.

But in Mega Man X, it's kind of more like Blade Runner, where you have Mega Man X and Zero going against their Maverick hunters.

And then they fight against Reploids that have become Maverick for number of different reasons.

They're either like political enemies going against humanity or like they've been infected by the Sigma virus and so they just go crazy and kill everyone.

It's kinda like that.

You should play the Mega Man X games, they're pretty cool.

do this.

Is there a collection on Steam that I could play on Steam Deck?

Okay, there you go.

I'm gonna have to pick them up.

I do like the Mega Man.

Those are fun games.

are, and that'd be a good game to play on the Steam Deck.

That's why I ask.

Okay.

Oh yeah, they're all pretty good to play on the Steam Deck.

Even the newest one, Mega Man 11.

There you go.

It's a lot of games to kill.

my gosh, there's so many games.

That's OK.

What I've been working on is setting up my I mounted my uh Mac studio under my desk.

So I 3D printed.

don't I forgot to show it.

ah 3D printed amount.

That can go under the desk and the screws in under the desk and my Mac studios down there now.

It barely produces any heat.

It is very quiet like I've never heard it.

I just it's like the perfect workstation.

And then I have my Windows machine over there that I'm redoing with my one terabyte NVMe to then and I have a KVM and I'm just going to switch between the two.

And so that or that's the first thing and then I'm going to eventually network like I've talked about in the past, but.

Yeah, I remote into my MacBook for work.

It is like, I have almost the perfect setup.

ah So it's getting there and it's all to prepare, because I need to get this done this weekend.

It's all to prepare because there are so many fucking good games on Microsoft's Game Pass right now.

It is not, like we should probably talk about this too.

I'm gonna throw this in.

m

because it's such a good deal right now.

I don't usually go this route because I usually want to buy games, but I think just to save money so I can buy more shit, uh like more hardware.

getting getting ready for the eighty dollar video game shit spoiler alert we're gonna talk about the eighty dollar video game in this video in this video too or in this episode so

I can't believe you spoiled it.

We have to start over, okay.

Wrap it up guys.

Okay, let's wrap it up and get into the topics though.

So a little bit of call to action.

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Maybe not years yet, but hopefully years.

If you have not done so, make sure to subscribe on YouTube.

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So without further ado, I bring you...

the contender for top topic, there's two, tariffs.

We've been talking about tariffs.

And it's because it's affecting us.

And here's the thing, trigger warning, it's political somewhat, but I have a hard time with this politics thing because if it affects me in my daily life and it's politics, fuck

that because it affects me.

Once something affects me or we affect other people like I think it's fair game to talk about and I don't think this is a sides issue I don't think anyone except for Maybe some

people that just don't understand or refuse to understand tariffs want tariffs.

No one wants tariffs There's a lot of advocate like on both sides.

No one wants almost no one wants tariffs that knows what they're talking about.

So Yeah, why don't you why don't you lead into this a little bit high-tech with the like explain what's going on here?

The government has become a Godzilla-sized threat to the point where the video game Avengers have assembled.

You have Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo all teaming up against the Trump administration.

And one has to wonder, how bad does it have to be to get Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft together to do anything together?

The funny thing about this actually is that I think they have gotten together before and part of the reason they do this is that it makes their statements so much stronger to say,

hey, we're together, right?

ah Let's move this down to here.

yeah, absolutely, absolutely dude.

if one of them just did it separately, then it seems kind of petty.

They just want more profit, right?

But all of them are doing it together, and it makes a bold statement that no one in the games industry wants this.

The only way this could get any better is if Valve were actually part of this letter too.

I don't think it affects Valve as much and that's why they should be a part of it, but maybe...

right, yeah, because Valve doesn't...

Well...

Yeah, yeah, they do the CMake.

Yeah.

said, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, have done joint lawsuits before.

And so maybe they already have a team up here, so I'm not shocked.

But I will say one thing.

To bring this into the world of games a little bit, this quote, I believe this is from Forbes, is, it's not often Mario, Master Chief, and Kratos agree on something, but

apparently, tariffs are their final boss, which is cheesy but fun.

did someone should someone should like draw a picture of that happening

They should.

That'd be a fun t-shirt, actually.

Dude, that would be so awesome.

Final...

Dude, we should do that.

We should make...

Dude, write that down.

Write that down.

Okay, I wrote it down.

I need it.

I'm writing it down now.

ah

yeah.

Sorry for the throat clearing.

No, you're good.

yeah.

What else do you think of this?

do you think is gonna come up with this?

Do you think it's gonna work?

I don't know.

And honestly, don't, I mean, I don't know what to make of it besides the fact that it's happening.

It's a little too soon to say if it's going to work or not for sure.

But there are some very important statistics to look at.

mean, look at this.

It says 99.7 % of all video game consoles.

Hold on, no, I'm reading it wrong.

99.7 % of all video game companies are quote unquote small businesses.

That's something I never thought about.

If you look at it, there are like a billion different game studios out there that are really small.

Sometimes they're like small indie devs, sometimes they're like small support studios that are nowhere near the size of your major AAA, but there are very few major AAA publishers

out there in the wild, or developers out in the wild.

it's because it's really hard to get up to that point.

I think this is a very funny statistic because I bet you they even included anyone that's incorporated them or that has a business license that says they build video games that

maybe never released anything.

ah

probably be kind of a small business.

Heck my bunny strike might even con as that too because it's technically licensed for that so Yeah, it's just kind of funny they put it this way but I think it's to help really win

the argument I think at the end of the day like No one wants their shit to be more expensive for no reason like

is another statistic down, Olivia, scroll down a little bit.

It'll tell you.

In 2018, over 96 % of all video game consoles were from China.

They were made in China and imported, which is insane.

Which is an insane amount.

It makes sense though, but it's an insane amount.

Imagine how bad things would, I mean, tariffs on video games.

Everything is gonna go up in price.

Some companies have been off-shoring to other countries for seeing some of this issue with China.

I think Nintendo, uh Apple, and I think maybe another company has been doing more business outside of China just to circumvent this, but.

I know Samsung's been...

Samsung moved over to Vietnam.

Both of...

All of them actually moved to Vietnam because the labor's cheaper there, you know, believe it not.

That was the original goal, but now that these tariffs are happening, Nintendo is opting to ship all their Vietnamese Switch 2s to America, whereas everyone else gets the Chinese

ones.

inferior Chinese switch twos.

No, it's a joke by the way guys, like I really don't know.

don't, something just doesn't sit right with me by uh doing this whole exploiting another country to get cheaper labor.

Usually lends to poor environmental and workers rights just being decimated but.

I honestly that's kind of how we get all of these.

That's probably how we get all of this.

I don't want to say this is very cheap, but imagine how much more expensive it would be if this were a a country with actual workers' rights like America.

so here's the thing, if it was built in America, it would be a lot more expensive.

But.

I do think there is a little bit of a lie between profit margins with some companies.

I think they lie about their profit margins and saying, well, we have to do it this way.

When look at how high how much money these come like, how much are these companies worth?

How much do they make off all these and these divisions and stuff like that?

And so I do think there's a little bit of lies within the.

the truth um and what's recorded.

So I don't know, it sucks.

It sucks because at the end of the day, I don't necessarily think we need to manufacture our own game consoles.

It's not like it's a necessity.

I think we should have our own stuff for manufacturing necessities here.

But beyond that, it is what it is.

It's just, it's a...

as a necessity here though, that you wouldn't be able to man, you wouldn't already be the manufacturer here, like.

So manufacturing or production of like food, housing, anything that, like drugs that are life-saving, medical, like the coronavirus or the coronavirus pandemic and stuff like

that, kind of showcase some of the things that were more vital.

That type of stuff I think is more important.

But at the end of the day, like these tariffs just don't have a meaning behind them because they cannot,

It's not like with the game, like let's bring this back into the game industry.

ah It's not like they can ramp up a facility to start making Xboxes here anytime soon.

It is gonna take them a year at the least, and that's if they're cutting corners to get like a facility up and developing Xboxes here.

I've seen estimates point more towards it potentially being like five years before they're up and running.

because, well, I'm saying if they cut corners, that's, know, I am being a little bombastic here, but we have silicon, we have ways to make stuff.

It's just, we don't have very good silicon production.

So if we imported some of the items and they assembled them here, we could do it in a year or two.

But that's the problem though.

Like tariffs are going on now.

you don't do tariffs like this.

You just don't do it like this.

It doesn't help anything for where we're at now.

So if there was a purpose, maybe like a VAT tax, I could agree with that.

Like, we're going to be funding health and health care and some other stuff.

Like where it's a value added tax.

Sure, whatever.

These are just regressive taxes at hand.

The poor middle class pay for them.

And I really, if you're in that realm, you're just getting a tax.

I don't understand how people don't understand that this is just a tax.

And that is not a very big political statement.

I don't think most people want their taxes to be raised.

I certainly don't.

I like purposeful taxes and this is not a purposeful tax.

So I will, yeah, so on a kind of unrelated video games, but TiMu has actually stopped taking shipments from China.

And that's like their entire business model.

Like TiMu is gonna die in a year if this keeps going on, which I mean, some people really don't like TiMu.

And I mean, I'm not super big on TiMu myself.

I did a video once cause TiMu wanted me to...

showcase stuff so I think so my video was pretty honest though I got a few electronic knickknacks but mostly a bunch of random stuff and let me tell you I wouldn't buy like I

said I even said in my video like you get what you pay for and it's really cheap well I mean what more can you say right anyways

a few things that you can get from TeamMu that's okay and then everything else.

It's just a cheaper version of Walmart and Walmart already is a dystopian hellhole for me sometimes when I go there where I'm just like, this is gonna fall apart in like a month.

Like, I wouldn't buy anything video game related from Team EW unless it was like a carrying case.

It's hard to mess that up.

I wouldn't buy anything electronic, basically.

I will even say like, Timmu and AliExpress or whatever it is.

was a Shane as well.

S-H-E-I-N.

Sheen or whatever?

don't know.

It's like a clothing store or something.

It sounds...

and it's like super cheap clothing or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is Super G clothing.

You know, my parent, my sister was talking about it too.

Same sister.

Hmm.

Okay.

I

All I gotta say is every time I've bought something for super cheap, I've got what I paid for, which was not good.

Typically, there is usually a uh ceiling to this, but you get what you paid for.

you're, and people might not like the D brand kill switch, but I really like the kill switch and I've bought it twice.

And I've also gotten two kill switches for free for reviewing.

But I liked it so much that I've bought them too.

Oh shit, dbrand.

That's what I should do with this phone.

I should get a dbrand skin on that.

You should.

You should, can you still get the Linus big face skin?

You know what I'm talking about, right?

His enlarged face.

Linus big face skin.

No offense to Linus, but no.

fine, you'll just stick with your underwear that you got a couple of months ago.

I get it.

I think there's underwear of it too, but it might be a prank more than anything.

definitely a prank.

Dbrand and Linus have a kiss-kiss-slap-slap relationship.

Ah man.

Love-hate relationship.

well, you wanna know, you wanna know who else has a love-hate relationship, but not really, like, I think they, it's a hate-hate relationship now.

It's Apple and Epic Games, and here's a, this is a good thing, I think, for developers especially, and I was kinda hoping for this, even though, do I buy into the Apple

ecosystem?

Yes, but do I think Apple also needs to be,

put, you know, like, needs to be fought sometimes, of course.

I think every big company, even Epic Include, needs to be kind of put in their place when they really fall out of line.

And I think the iOS app store is a prime example of this.

So do you want to, you want to fill us in on this?

So the Apple versus Epic lawsuit has been going on since before this podcast ever started.

the whole idea was that Epic Games wanted to implement an alternative payment system outside of the App Store because Apple takes 30 % of all payments.

And Epic wasn't trying to have that.

They were trying to bypass it.

And Apple banned them for that.

And then Epic sued.

And now...

there have been multiple counts.

This is kind of a crazy lawsuit, So as you know, Apple is the master of malicious compliance where they will comply, but they'll make it really sting.

And the courts have found that Apple is the master of this.

And so they have laid down the law pretty hard on them.

So Apple earlier,

gave developers the ability to link to alternative payment methods, but they would also charge a 27 % fee on developers that would do that.

They've ruled that this is not legal and that Apple has violated multiple court...

uh multiple court orders and it's pretty serious stuff.

You can't do that.

It's dull, it's serious because it's a there are I think someone Apple is getting uh federal charges and so

it's not just that too.

They're also looking to see, they're also potentially looking to seek criminal charges against Apple as well.

That's it.

Well, and so there's a good chance if it's criminal charges and it goes through like that, that dude's in jail.

Like I think the guy that's over it, I don't know if there's gonna be multiple people, but yeah.

I wonder if Tim Cook is gonna be liable too.

ah Usually not.

ah And here's the problem with, when you get trillion dollar businesses, ah yes, you need to blame the CEO at times, but there are a lot of um departments and depending on how CEOs

let their, I think a good CEO usually lets departments run themselves to a point and they kind of just make sure everything is running smoothly and chime in when they need to be.

So there's a good chance that

iOS department has just been running on their own and it has been pretty bad though.

So I'd love to see the iOS department get what they deserve in that these fees and everything is just, they make so much money.

The thing is, if they could argue like, hey, we're losing money on this.

No, they are making hand over fist of money and it's very, in some forms predatory, especially the sneaky 27 % fee where I get it.

people trying to get around the fees on Apple is kind of sneaky on itself, I've worked with companies that are like, well, we gotta use Stripe, and we're gonna use a web portal

to get around these fees.

I'm like, well, we could get to a happy medium of like 10%.

It's not like serving up these apps and handling the app store and all that costs like the same as Steam.

Steam probably costs

drastically more to run than the App Store does.

um But here's a quote, and I don't know which source it's from, but Apple's idea of following keywords is like patching a broken server by yelling at it, right?

Like they just, they don't actually fix anything, they just get mad and yell at it.

So that's kind of my take on this.

So I really was hoping that we would get the alternate...

So you know in Europe you can get alternative uh app stores, right?

I was hoping we'd get some of that action here with this lawsuit, but I don't think that's happened just yet.

I don't know if I would gain anything from that, me personally, but I agree to a point.

It's just like with the Android, do you ever use an alternative app store?

no, but I do sideload apps, so there is that.

you side load, okay.

You can jailbreak iPhones and side load, but that's a whole other.

That's a whole other thing.

But you do lose security.

And with some users that do that, they're just not smart enough to do it themselves and they get screwed.

I.

yeah, it's a good thing it's disabled by default.

Yeah.

I agree.

And that is one of the nice things about Android.

I used to side load and do all that stuff.

I just don't care anymore.

um All my stuff's on the computer now.

And so...

too much you need to sideload these days.

But there are some very useful utilities, like for example, there's a moon...

You know of Moonlight and Sunshine, right?

There's a fork of them called Artemis and Apollo, right?

Do you know those?

So basically, the main difference is that Apollo, it's the Sunshine fork.

it comes with a virtual display driver.

so what I found, you know how like Moonlight's kind of weird with like multiple monitor setups or like unusual aspect ratios?

So this is how they resolved it.

They made it so that you can actually have a virtual display pop up at the same resolution, same refresh rate, same aspect ratio as whatever device you're streaming to.

And then you can have it set to where

whenever that virtual uh display pops up, which is it pops up when you start streaming, it turns out you can have it set to the turn off all of your other monitors.

And so it'll become like a headless display for a little bit.

And then when you exit streaming, your monitors will go back to normal.

That's a really good idea.

A lot of remote software does stuff like that, which is really important if you're gonna be using, like playing games, is to be able to adapt to the resolution and to the scenario

that you're streaming, like what you're streaming on from.

And so, okay, that's really cool.

So why do you have to side load that though?

Um, well, the other one, Artemis, is a fork of Moonlight.

And that's not on the app.

And Moonlight, it works with regular Moonlight, but it works better with Artemis.

And that is not on the Play Store just yet.

So you do have to sideload that.

Okay, like here's the thing.

I wouldn't sideload it.

I'd probably well since it's open source.

I should be fine.

Just I could probably just pop

and then you install it.

That's side loading.

just not signed.

It's assigned?

Is it officially signed?

Like, meaning, does it give you any warnings?

Hmm

It's not on the App Store, yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah.

I mean.

you can have a signed APK.

Can you even have a non-signed APK?

We don't need to into this.

It's been a while since I've done unsigned APKs.

if you're concerned, and that is on the Play Store.

But they say that eventually it's not gonna work with the...

If they say eventually it's not gonna work with regular old Moonlight, so you're gonna have to download Artemis or whatever, and that's not just on...

I don't know, man.

I don't know why they're disabling support for regular old Moonlight later.

They must be adding some sort of new feature.

Alright, well, we're getting off topic.

We're getting off topic.

No, but this is interesting because I it will fix one of my biggest problems with with that whole setup.

OK.

The virtual display thing.

Yeah, I it fixed my biggest issue, too

So I'm probably going to try that, but I'll just release my own version of the app so I don't have to sideload.

I have an Apple account and everything.

The only real caveat though is that there is no Linux version of Apollo, the hosting software.

of the way Apollo currently does it, know, virtual display drivers, I wouldn't know how it works on Linux.

That's probably more of a Gardner question.

So it's Apollo and Artemis.

Apollo and Artemis.

It just says two twins.

Dude look at look Apollo Artemis streaming.

They're named after they're named after Greek gods.

know what they're named after.

I'm just messing you.

Sorry.

it.

There we go.

so I just had to give some humor while I was looking for it.

So...

familiar with Sunshine, the interface is very similar.

That's good to know.

That's really good.

I really like so.

Is this so this is a fork.

So this is a completely different developer set that's doing this then.

Yeah.

It's a force.

This is a fork, but they didn't actually fork it.

They just copied it.

Interesting.

Because usually if it's forked, it will say if it's forked.

It doesn't say so.

Interesting.

Well, now I got something to play with.

I'm going to set my windows with this.

Thank you.

Well, look at the audience.

If you guys want to be able to stream your games to another room, another device, whatever.

Here you go.

Yeah, I have a video...

I do have a video on this.

uh Retro Game Core has a video on this as well, as does uh some of the other handheld guys, like uh Joey's Retro Handhelds.

Is that his name?

I don't know.

Sorry Joey, or Josh, or whatever your name is.

I sound like a dick right now, dude.

I'm not gonna lie.

a dick.

No, no, it's okay.

It's we can't all remember names and everything.

I'm lucky to remember my name Whatever

so we should mention that supposedly Epic wants to Apple, I mean Fortnite back to iOS.

How long has it been?

Like five years?

Shit.

It's been a couple of years.

they hit a, I think they took a big hit by removing Fortnite from Apple.

But it was to prove a point, because at the end of the day, were they making, yeah, was the cut, like a 30 % cut going to Apple?

Yes, but they were still making a lot of money from

No, Epic didn't remove it.

Apple removed it.

That was because Apple, um, Epic refused to.

Yeah, it was a breach of contract or something like that.

They uh were offloading um their costs away from the app store.

So when they would buy, I think, loot boxes and stuff like that, they were circumventing the system.

once again, here's the thing, though.

If you're gonna use the iOS services and use iOS, like, I do think that iOS deserves a cut if you're utilizing their services that cost money.

It costs money.

30 % is ridiculous though, and I still will stand off.

So I will say, there has been, I will say though, Epic seems to have no problem with the console manufacturers charging $30 for a cut.

30 % for a cut, sorry, 30%, yes.

charge 30 %?

I think they have some agreements with consoles though, unless I'm mistaken on this.

agreements that Epic has.

I think all big companies have contracts with console makers too.

That's usually, that's probably what they're mad about with Apple is that I think usually how this goes down, people don't realize, but once you get big enough and you're working

with business to business, like when you're working with other big businesses, you usually enter into a contract that is beneficial for both sides.

Usually.

usually.

guess, I mean Netflix has a con- I Netflix has a contract with Apple, but I guess uh, Fortnite wasn't relevant enough.

Is Fortnite still super relevant?

I don't know.

I don't have the data numbers.

is, but I think it's probably plateaued.

I wouldn't be shocked.

um I just don't know what else has been taking it over.

Like, Roblox is getting big, but I think it's plateaued.

I think a lot of these services are kind of plateauing because there's just a lot of, I think there's a niche for everyone.

And so people are just kind of getting into their niches now.

I mean, COVID time's over now.

Video games have to compete with people just going outside now.

Well, people gotta get back to work.

No, but you're right, you're right.

COVID times are over, people need to start getting back to going out, and it's a good balance.

At the end of the day, these companies need to realize, companies, period, need to realize, if you have a flat year, that's fucking fine, especially if you're making how

much Fortnite's making.

You're still making so much money, it's ridiculous.

And like pocketing it.

It's not going back to developers or anything.

Is Epic publicly traded?

Yeah, so I don't think they have to worry about that.

I mean, and I don't think Tencent is super, I don't think Tencent is super concerned either.

No, and that's the thing.

don't, the thing I like about Epic is that they aren't publicly traded, just like Valve is not publicly traded.

They have a little bit more leeway of not having to be uber profitable every year, but they still do have stakeholders and um owners of the company that they still have to

report to.

So, yeah.

Tencent and whatnot.

So.

This is a good thing.

think at the end of the day, this is a good thing.

think Apple needs to kind of be put in its place, especially for playing dirty how it has been with this.

And this has been a thing that I've been really frustrated with Apple for a while, but Android does the same thing.

They're 30%.

I don't know if they are as big into trying to charge you if you try to get out of the Android store like Apple, but they're still like, both of them are very similar.

uh

I know that, I like that.

And here's the thing, I'm glad that we're aligning a little bit more with Europe on this, because Europe tends to be the only country, the only place that actually gives a fuck

about us as a consumer, because they usually roll on the, on populist side where it's like, what's going to affect the, like everyone more than just the business and so.

The European Union has a great history of being consumer friendly, even with video games too.

Remember loot boxes?

They're technically banned in uh Holland or some shit like that.

Like, completely banned.

Which is it's not a bad thing, like once again, I'm a little bit on the fence on that loot box stuff, but I definitely think it needs to be put under an 18 plus because it is a form

of gambling and one, especially if it's for money.

But.

uh the big question now is will Epic actually...

Apple says they want to appeal this decision.

And I think...

Yeah.

I have a feeling because the way that this is ruled that they're not going to win that appeal, but I think they're gonna appeal it.

I think Apple's losing money by doing this though.

And they're losing, hopefully they just eat up the, just eat the loss because it also hurts their image.

And they're just losing money.

By not having Fortnite on their service, like, and,

know, Fortnite, I think what they need to do is come to a conclusion of like, Epic needs to give Apple some money for running on their services and then just get it over with.

Hmm.

Yeah, man.

I don't like how anti-consumer Apple is sometimes.

I also really hate how Apple killed the headphone jack.

I hate the headphone jack.

um

my phone right now.

My S25 Ultra.

There is a slot for the S Pen.

But there is- but there is no fucking headphone jack in here.

And it's thick enough to accommodate one.

What the fuck?

that.

The headphone jack is more susceptible to being like for water damage.

So it's much easier if you get rid of any of the ports to make it waterproof, ah which in turn makes the phone more durable, which then in turn makes uh less people angry at these

device makers than they don't get a bad rap.

I think that's kind of the realm of it a little bit.

ah

The pen slot, from my understanding, the pen slot doesn't need to be open in any way.

I think it uses wireless charging in there.

And so once it's inserted, or at least it uses just like a little single pin that's really easy to waterproof.

ah I think headphone jack could, I don't know.

I'm...

sure headphone jacks can be waterproofed.

They can, they have been in the past.

I just think it's harder and they can't get a higher rating with them.

I think Apple also wants to get rid of um USB-C jacks, but I am not in favor of that unless they have a really good um solution that's alternative.

What...

I mean, what is the solution to that though?

They'd be killing off, I mean, like MagSafe?

Oh god.

Oh god.

Oh god, imagine if they did it and then everyone else followed suit.

That would, like...

Oh my god.

That would be like...

It will probably end up going that way eventually, so I'd be prepared.

What's the benefit of, I don't fully understand, I don't fully understand the headphone jack thing.

Because you can get a little bit better quality, but if Bluetooth and everything keeps on getting better, why do I want a fail point of a cord?

I know we're getting into like debates and stuff like that.

I want everyone to have the option to have a headphone jack, but at the same time, I don't know.

Oh, it's the op, yeah.

I have a lot of really nice- I have a decent amount of really nice headphones that I can't use on my phone, because I don't have fucking headphone jacks.

Yeah, I could get a Bluetooth headphone jack.

I certainly do have a few Bluetooth headphones.

But like, Bluetooth-

adapter so you could use those nice ones.

It still diminishes the quality.

of like both worlds.

What the...

I mean, it certainly is a real possibility.

But like at that point, I may as just get a nice set of Bluetooth earbuds or headphones.

I agree with that.

That's what I've been rocking forever.

I'm not an audiophile either though.

Like I just need my music to sound good enough and that's it.

ah Like I've destroyed, like I've been on Bluetooth for 20 years almost for audio.

do get it.

is the future, or it can be the future, but I also...

But I really...

But I have some really nice IEMs I want to use on my phone, and I can't even do it...

Because my phone doesn't have a headphone jack.

Well, some companies, like why don't you buy an Android phone that has a headphone jack?

I think a couple of them do, don't they?

But like, what really nice phone has it?

And isn't like a budget phone?

That's what I wanna know.

I don't want a budget phone!

I use my phone a lot, so it makes sense to spend a lot more on like a device I'm gonna be using basically every day.

And I remember like really old phones.

I remember how slow like some of the budget phones are now.

I'm not going back to that.

I'm never going back to that.

nightmare again.

Yeah, no, an Android has some of the worst too, where it's just like, it's almost better just buy an old phone than a budget phone.

Yeah, buy like a old, like last generation's flagship, honestly.

Yeah, no, here's another thing with the Jacks, just to kind of end it on this, because we derailed.

They get jammed with so much crap.

ah I've had to go and help my dad out to the ranch and stuff like that.

And I've had to do a lot of stuff.

I go hiking.

I'll bring my phone everywhere I go.

And it gets jammed up with stuff.

And eventually, that port's not going to work anyways, ah which is annoying, especially with the old iPhones with their.

with the way that they did their ports sucked.

So USB-C is definitely much better than the old ones.

Because my last iPhone, the port stopped working because it got jacked up.

One thing I really like about the headphone jack is that it swivels around.

You mean like it turns?

Yeah.

Like, I'd be okay with USB-C being a replacement if A, there was a second one so I could charge and listen at the same time, and B, it swivels around.

But obviously USB-C is not designed to do that, so like...

you're not gonna like this ah there's an accessory for that do you can Know I'm pretty sure you can get one that's a splitter on it that can charge and also listen I'm pretty

sure there is

it's one of those dongles,

Yeah.

but it's an option.

It's what you get.

Like you can get it and then it will still kind of turn a little bit maybe.

Man, this podcast is making me sound really entitled.

But you know what?

the no this is making me sound like a frickin Everyone can fuck themselves except for you know people that Don't want any port

Dude, Apple better not remove the USB Type-C port.

That's like the one good thing they did, like, em for phones.

Sorry.

here's the thing, either you have the USB-C or you don't have it at all.

And I know they almost didn't do it, but now I'm like, the MagSafe has been such an awesome way to charge.

I've been doing, and the wireless, um I don't know how they do it.

It must be a Bluetooth, a mix between Bluetooth and WiFi, but like AirDrop, I'll record stuff on my phone and drop it on my studio and it's just work.

It's just seamless.

Like I'm not gonna lie.

I'm so fed up of tinkering to get things working.

that it's nice to just have things work and it works fast.

And I don't usually have to plug it in.

Yeah, but here's my thing though.

What about CarPlay?

There's no- as far as I know, there aren't any MagSafe, like, CarPlay thingies.

think CarPlay needs wired.

like, my car is carpooled and it needs to be wired, to my understanding.

but I don't, I think they're getting away from this.

I mean, my car is...

it's a company car by the way, I should mention.

My old car doesn't have car...

my actual car doesn't have CarPlay or Apple...

Android Auto or whatever.

Mine doesn't either, but my car right now doesn't.

It has a lot of good hookups.

It has all of the stuff built in, I wouldn't mind getting a car at play.

there are wireless CarPlay adapters?

Oh that's right.

There are, but I think they're also going away.

I don't know if it's out yet, but I think they're eyeing over wireless.

I don't know.

I want to get in my car and not plug anything in.

Which I do already.

Sorry.

I'm sounding entitled because I just want things to be easy.

Okay.

Well, talking about entitled, I think everyone's about to feel a little less entitled maybe because they won't be able to afford an Xbox.

Because them prices, they're going up.

Do you think Microsoft is entitled to an additional $80 to $130 of your hard-won cash for any of these devices?

I mean, I don't think they're doing well enough, like their sales are doing well enough to actually warrant a price hike unless this is tariff related.

And I really wish,

This is almost certainly tariff related.

I'm like almost certain of it.

Yeah, it probably is.

just, I don't know if I didn't read everything.

Maybe I should have read the article better, but I've been seeing this all over the place that prices are going up and it's like, but it doesn't feel like it's enough.

Meaning once the tariffs go into play, I think we're going to see them hike even higher.

Cause this is only like what $70 added, which doesn't seem like it's going to, they're going to be making some losses on this, I think, but the way tariffs are working.

So.

I mean, the way I'm thinking it, I'm thinking Microsoft understands that they're going to be making losses on these, but they also would like people to buy them.

So they're not raising as high as they probably could, or probably should, given, you know, tariff calculations.

And even then, like, let's look at the Series S.

It used to be $300, now it's $380.

That puts it above the original Switch.

the Switch OLED.

It's more expensive.

And honestly, with these prices, man, people are saying Nintendo is the cheap option now.

Remember how we were talking about how the Switch 2 was expensive as hell?

And now it's looped around into being the cheapest?

okay, if and when Sony raises the prices of hardware...

It's gonna, Sony's, all of these companies are gonna have to if tariffs go up enough.

They, or else they're, I think they also have like, I think this is preemptive, meaning I think they have a surplus and I've talked about this.

You probably won't see all these consoles go up in price until officially, unless they're doing preemptive to make some money on it, to maybe hopefully help pad in after they're in

a surplus, then import some more.

they'll eventually all have to up their prices once the surplus is over.

Yeah, and let's look at the most expensive Xbox.

So the normal Xbox Series X went up $100, so to $600.

And then the 2TB Galaxy Special Edition version went up $130.

That's more expensive than a PlayStation 5 Pro.

And it's definitely not worth it at that price.

Especially when you can buy a PS5 Pro for that much, and I'm not even a fan of the PS5 Pro.

Here's the thing, these are meant for X, like they're not really meant for us.

They're Xbox X Galaxy Special Edition and also the PlayStation 5 Pro are meant for fanboys that want the best even if it's just a little bit more.

And a few hundred dollars for people that if this is what you're doing every day, like you're an Xbox gamer, it's not a big deal for them.

It still is annoying in the sense of like it is a big deal, but it's not a

If this is their main device, it's like, it is what it is.

And it is what it is.

You know, it's funny.

It's funny that my brother's Xbox went up in value.

He's actually one of the few people that owns an Xbox Series X.

That is really funny actually.

In all this, think used devices are gonna go up and, my gosh, it's only gonna be for a little bit.

don't, some people I could see them like trying to buy up used stuff now for cheap and then selling it later.

They don't expect these price hikes to last forever.

But then again,

But honestly though, there hasn't been a good reason to buy Xboxes in a long time.

mean, every Xbox game is coming to PC nowadays.

Except for like some of the old ones, like Halo 5, surprisingly enough, is not on PC.

Every other Halo, but Halo 5 is on PC.

I mean, technically Halo 5 has like a Forge mode that you can like do in like custom lobbies you can do, but like the full Halo 5 experience, the like campaign and stuff,

which I probably wouldn't play anyways, is not on PC.

I Would buy an Xbox series X if PlayStation Just didn't they just have so many exclusives that I like and so I I'm usually a PlayStation Boy And then a steam, know, I buy most my

games on Steam and then I buy exclusive for a PlayStation Xbox just doesn't have it for me even though it is nice to kind of just have a little console to play games at At my TV,

but I'm trying to

get away from that and doing more streaming for my PC and stuff.

Yeah, but like, here's the thing though, Xbox games are coming to PlayStation now.

Like, we've had Forza Horizon, and I think Sea of Thieves came to PS5, is that correct?

They haven't seen Halo yet!

They haven't seen Halo just yet!

They haven't seen Halo just yet.

But I'm certain at this rate Halo's gonna come to PlayStation.

That's something you would've never seen 20 years ago, remember?

Remember how Sony was trying to fund all of these Halo killers?

Because Halo was the killer app of that decade.

Yeah, yeah, it's so interesting.

I don't know if I would have predicted exactly how Xbox turned out.

They're going the way of Sega and honestly that's not a bad thing.

Let's look at Sega.

They're making buttloads of cash and they're making great games too.

Heck, they even have some decent movies.

But they're still decent.

It's not a Halo TV series that doesn't do this.

my god, don't even bring up the Halo TV series.

uh yeah.

a better one.

uh

Dude, they should have gotten that guy that made District 9 to do it.

Apparently District 9 started out as the Halo live-action movie.

And he even directed one of the trailers for the live-action ones.

as a test.

It was marketing for Halo 3 but it was also secretly test footage for like how a Halo live action would turn out.

And it looks awesome.

Too bad they never went with that though.

Yeah.

Well, and there's a, I don't know, like, which is worse, that or the Borderlands movie.

I love Borderlands, but that movie was pretty bad.

I still enjoyed it, but it was bad.

The entire- my god, I haven't seen that movie.

I've heard so many bad things about it though.

And I mean, looking at it, the cast does not- I mean, come on dude.

The cast- the cast like the wrong people.

they should have gotten more people that are just either really good for those types of roles or just people that weren't so like, cause they almost got it based on just name

recognition, recognition.

And it's just like, okay.

Well...

And they have Kevin Hart as Roland.

That's...

I mean, that's...

They're all...

Okay, hold on.

You have to pull up the casting, because I can't remember, like...

I think Cate Blanchett is, like, Lilith.

I don't think...

She's a great actress, by the way.

But I think it's a terrible uh casting situation.

speaking of live-action movies, do you know they're making a split-fiction live-action movie?

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, they confirmed it when they said that Sydney Sweeney wants to be part of it.

What?

The whole point?

Okay, that's interesting.

But apparently Sydney Sweeney wants to be the live-action Gundam movie, too.

Okay, that's interesting.

Yeah, I mean...

I don't know what to make of Sydney Sweeney though, I don't think I've ever watched any of the stuff she's in.

Except for Madame Webb.

And Madame Webb was pretty bad.

Yeah.

due to Dakota Jackson though.

No, actually no, the whole movie was bad because...

everything about it was bad.

No offense to the actors and actresses that were on the...

10 %?!

That's really bad.

Here's the thing, I enjoyed the movie, but I also expected it to be bad.

So when I watched it, was like, okay, like this is bad, but I still had fun.

I don't know if I'll ever watch it again.

I mean, it might end up being one of those like bad, cool, I know it's not gonna be a bad, cool classic, but yeah, cause you got like Cate Blanchett, you've got Jamie Lee Curtis,

who I actually think, I think, yeah, I think she did okay as Tannis.

It's just.

It felt really weird to have her be in that type of position.

I thought she did pretty decent though.

But it's just, it doesn't feel like people really match their roles.

Like you're right, Kevin Hart as Roland just didn't make sense.

Yeah.

I mean, they don't.

Man, what the hell?

Thank you.

If you want a good, bad movie, you a good, bad video game movie, all-time classic bad movie, you should watch Street Fighter the Movie.

Street Fighter the movie, the, oh, the one from the 90s, yeah, it's.

think Guile was played by Jacques-Claude Van Damme.

It was the most baffling casting decision because Guile is this very American character.

He's like the embodiment of the American for the most part.

And he's played by this like...

What is John Claude Van Damme?

he's...

I don't know where he's from is what I'm saying.

I don't know, I don't, that's something I always ask my wife about, because she's the movie expert.

I don't remember that type of stuff.

But yeah.

To kind of bring this all back into the Xbox prices, I want to know, I'm going to ask people, do you think this is going to affect if you're going to buy,

I bet you everyone that's listening for the most part is like, bought an Xbox that wants one, or if they don't want one, they're probably not going to get one.

So I don't know if this is gonna affect everyone here, but do know that if you're planning on buying like another handheld, if you're planning on buying a PlayStation, this is a

precursor to all those other things going up most likely.

Like if they don't raise their prices and they run out, like that's, if they don't raise their prices, that means they haven't run out of their surplus.

because how an import tax works or how a tax works is that on import, ah when it comes from the other country to yours, you pay at that port.

Where if you have a surplus, that means you've already had stuff brought in before the import tax or the import tariff that is, and you didn't need to pay that because you

already have it.

It's the surplus that's in your warehouses, like let's say in America.

So.

That's why I think that's gonna be really important because I think people are gonna think that this is like the tariff stuff's a lie when they don't see some stuff go up in price,

but it's gonna be surplus.

And it could be that some of these companies really had a big surplus, but I'm wondering if Xbox is either capitalize on this now and just raising prices and maybe they'll keep,

like it will be like another pandemic raise, right?

Where that was with our groceries and everything and they didn't go back down even though they should have.

Are we gonna see a big impact

uh I'm curious.

if they're going to use this as an excuse.

goal was to upgrade my PC before the Tarif set.

I'm hoping I'm slowly gonna do so before the time comp.

Before...

I mean, graphics cards are like a...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

mean, could upgrade everything else I could upgrade.

And then get a gra- I could transfer my 3070 over.

That's still a decent card.

but everything else has started to age.

My computer just runs hot.

And yeah, I really hate it.

Well...

Dude...

That sucks.

I need, my 3090 is going to do just fine for another few years, but it needs, I need to dip it in a pool of like mineral water or something.

Dude, what a...

I think Linus Tech Tips, or actually Luke had a computer once that was mineral oil cooled.

Yeah, just submerge your entire PC in like a fish tank full of it and then...

yeah.

of caveats to it, though.

It's not as simple as that, but yeah.

It gets oily, for one.

And you still need to add a heat sink to it, And a fan, I think?

I don't know how that's...

I need to watch that video again.

Is my room gonna smell like oil?

I don't know what mineral oil smells like, so maybe.

how expensive is that going to be?

I think I'm just going to go with the idea of sticking in the closet or my kids room and just let them deal with it.

Dude, you're torturing your kids.

I only slightly kid.

Like they...

I only kid.

I'll put it into my dog's room.

ah like my dog has a room.

No!

Alright, I think I...

Okay, let's go on to this bungee stuff.

What is up with this bungee stuff?

So I've played quite a bit of Destiny 2, so I'm a lot more familiar with this than what you might expect.

here's some background.

So, Destiny 2 released, and it used to have a campaign called the Red War, which was part of the $60 video game you used to buy before it went free to play.

So, quote-unquote vaulted it, meaning you can't play the original campaign you paid $60 for.

and also the first two expansions.

They've been removed.

Like, you can't do anything from them.

And they had to retool the game to...

They had to basically retool the game to work around the fact that you can't do those anymore.

But basically, a writer is suing Bungie because of alleged plagiarism.

And Bungie literally does not have access to this version of the game anymore, supposedly.

They claim that...

it's not in a playable state anymore.

and that...

and here's what their defense was.

defense was pulling up a bunch of YouTube videos from third-party content creators that have footage of the actual game itself and also like lore dumps, lore explanations from

YouTubers.

And the court is saying that's not a valid...

that's not valid because like it's a third party source, right?

Because it could be like third party interpretations or Bungie's lore or whatever, right?

bright.

Yeah, like, they would need to have the game up and playable to show to the court.

And they don't, supposedly, because they content vaulted it.

and it would be really funny if Bungie lost because of this.

Yeah, it would be kind of fun.

It'll be interesting to see how this all goes.

Really, like honestly with Bungie stuff, like I've always respected them as a developer and I've enjoyed Destiny, but I just haven't been able to keep up with everything that

Bungie does.

But, so you think that, do you think Bungie's gonna lose this?

I don't know for certain, because I don't necessarily agree with what the author is saying, because it's going over a bunch of tangential bullshit like space roam, because a

bunch of the characters in Destiny from the uh

I can't even remember their race.

ah

so racist.

have uh Roman-inspired names.

Like, Gaul.

uh Dominus Gaul, believe, was the main...

The guy that's in the picture right there, his name is Dominus Gaul.

He was like, the first villain you fight.

And then there's also...

It's...

Space Rome.

Like, soon over Space Rome is kind of funny because I feel like there's a lot of games probably before this that has concepts of like a little bit of a Roman Empire in space.

Yeah, and then there's also like, I believe one of the other things they sued over was like, the idea of fate, and the idea of like...

being able to change like fate and stuff I don't know it's a real I don't remember the details but from what I remember it was a really stupid lawsuit I really almost

I really don't like lawsuits of this.

Unless it's blatant where it's like they still, 90 % of the everything is just barely try to, I don't know.

It seems stupid.

Concepts aren't really copyrighted.

Yeah, that said, Bungie did delete all of the content from their own game.

Like, they said they can't even access it internally.

That is probably going to really hurt them in the lawsuit though.

I do think so, yes, for sure.

You can't just, like that almost proves that you're in at fault if they do that.

Yeah, it makes it sound like you're trying to delete the evidence.

Yeah, it's admitting fault where you have to be careful with that.

could, yeah, I don't know.

it long before the lawsuit even occurred.

It's been a couple of years at this point.

I

I haven't played Destiny since uh I played like the last expansion, they released the final shape.

I really liked it, but I was just done with it because the story was over for me, dude.

The light and dark saga concluded.

It was a good ending.

In my opinion.

We win.

We beat the Witness.

We saved humanity.

you spoiled it.

No, hey, at least there's an ending.

I have a lot of games that I like that have not ended yet.

And so unless you have something else to say, I.

The problem though is that the game technically hasn't ended because guess what?

They're making an expansion.

They're expanding the story.

It's a new saga now.

Yeah, I mean, what story ever technically ends, but yeah, like, but you have an ending to like with Mass Effect one, two and three, there's an ending to the arc.

So there's just new arcs, right?

So humanity continues to fight on.

That'll be interesting to see how that all goes.

But I kind of wish they would go through a remaster uh both Destiny one and two into a more condensed down.

campaign before they did all this because I wouldn't mind playing through it.

just it feels very like it takes a very long time to get through.

And it's very expensive to go to play through all the story content.

Yeah, so if they want to do a remastered uh version that's maybe a little bit more condensed, might actually go and then release it for.

That would be pretty sick.

PC.

then I might play it.

uh But yeah, talking about like, stories that at least the arc ended, uh Titanfall, we're not gonna be seeing anymore.

I don't think we're gonna see a Titanfall 3.

don't, maybe, but I don't think so.

So EA cancels new Titanfall, lays off hundreds.

And I think this is actually, I think we knew that this was coming or maybe they did, this is another layoff, but.

Anywhere from 300 to 400 positions have been eliminated with an estimated, let me switch over to the proper thing.

Sorry.

Ah, the articles.

Okay.

With an estimated 100 or so being in respawn, also worth mentioning is that this Titanfall project would have been an extraction shooter in the universe.

Unknown if this meant to be Titanfall 3 or not.

An extraction shooter really is not,

That would actually be kind of a cool concept in the Titanfall universe.

So an extraction shooter is essentially you do a bunch of different objectives and then you have to extract out.

And oftentimes you're fighting against other players in the process while you're also fighting NPCs and stuff.

if you haven't played Titanfall 2, right, Hi-Tech?

Oh, you have, okay, okay.

The multiplayer, that's it?

Dude, the single player is so good for Titanfall 2 and...

you really should play the title.

Like the multiplayer is really good too, but the single player is just so fun.

Cause you essentially have your robotic friend that you get it.

And it's very different than any other type of mech game I've played.

And I just, think we need, I think that's what's, I've played other mech games.

I've played a lot of mech games growing up, but like a lot of the newer ones are great.

just, after playing Titanfall, they fall short cause I want to jump out and do like some shooting with my

my person and jump back in and play some more with my Titan.

I really wish they would expand on this world more in that realm.

think that they're losing out on a really...

ah

really good amount of profit by not expanding into this area.

But I don't know.

What do you think on this?

Dude...

I don't know how I feel about an extraction shooter, because like, a lot of the extraction shooters are really focused on infantry-based gear and stuff.

I couldn't imagine how you would be able to fit like, mech parts, or mech blueprints, or I guess mech scrap all in your backpack.

Realistically speaking, I don't know how they would have done it.

Or might have been like, kind of like Apex where there are no mechs.

and it's just in the Titanfall universe.

And that's the problem, I played Apex and it's like, it's not quite the same without the Max.

Like it's still fun, but it's, it just, I couldn't play it for very long.

Cause I just, I wanted Titanfall 3.

Made me sad.

uh And yes, as stated before, don't know if this was Titanfall 3 or if this was just a spin-off game.

I highly doubt an extraction shooter like this would have been Titanfall 3, but it could have been like a Titanfall or an Apex like spin-off, because I know they wanted to do more

on that universe.

honestly, so EA cancels the new Titanfall and lays off, you know, hundreds.

This could still, they could still regroup and make a Titanfall 3, we'll just see, I guess.

It doesn't give a lot of hope.

Maybe they're gonna lay people off and then rehire for the new Titanfall project.

I don't know, but like, it doesn't give me a lot of hope.

You know, the internet talks a lot about how great Titanfall 2's campaign is.

I'm surprised no indie has tried to make Titanfall, but at home.

I agree with that, because the thing is, it is a really, really good meta, or really good play style.

Jumping in and out of a of a mech, and it really worked really well.

I really liked it.

Yeah.

It's awesome.

You have your mech fight in one area, you get off, and then you can go around and then fight something else, and your AI's talking to you, like your freaking...

is very much the same way.

You can leave your mech and it fights.

Though your AI is not as good as if you were in there.

Obviously if your AI mech were to go against a player that was inside their mech, they would lose like 9 out of 10 times.

true, but what you do is you can get out and then you can sneak around and potentially use like an anti-titan missile or weapon or something like that.

There's ways to potentially use it as a strategy, but I think people don't typically.

them and like destroy the titan, like sabotage the titans.

Yep, yep, yep.

And so, it brought a lot of really fun strategy to first-person shooters that I really liked.

And so I really want them to bring it back.

I don't think Titanfall 2's multiplayer has been quite the same for a while, so.

No, it hasn't been the same.

A lot of people I believe moved to the North Star client because the like actual Titanfall 2 was infested with hack.

It became infested with hackers like most multiplayer games do.

Yeah.

If you don't have any like any real funds going into preventing that, then they just kind of die.

But what I will say is some enterprising indie developer should just make Titanfall the campaign.

They should just make their own version of Titanfall.

Do it.

Do it, indie devs.

do it.

And there could be already, I don't know, but I bet you it's mechanically going to be a little difficult.

But ah yeah, do it and make it a subscription because those are those are going up, right?

Mmm, quite the opposite, really.

which way are they?

They're plateauing.

uh Like all good services.

Over time, you can't expect anything to be like good and last forever.

Well yeah, there's only so many people in the world at a time.

can't have...

there's only like 6 billion people in the world right now.

What happens if you...

what are you gonna make them...

are you gonna make people sub twice?

You gonna make people sub multiple times?

Is that how you're gonna exponentially grow?

Well, and here's another thing.

um Costs of living has gone up drastically over the past few years.

so on top of that, like they should be lucky that it's flat and not just like nose diving because I'm sorry, if I have to decide if I'm going to be eating for a week for like a few

days to a week or a subscription service.

mean, I think it's pretty easy to decide on which one I'm going to be choosing.

Yeah, you're gonna choose the subscription service because you're not a true gamer if you don't give up food and water and shelter and clothing.

Nah, can never give up my Doritos and my Code Red.

Yeah, subscriptions are not doing so hot.

There was a small 12 % boost thanks to the new COD, launching in-game pass, but no real growth otherwise, and the analysts are starting to up hope.

They're giving up hope on these subscriptions.

I think here's the thing.

They, Microsoft's interesting, because I do think they're hurting their, I think sometimes these companies think, a subscription is better than them just buying a product outright.

Well, if they're buying a subscription just to play that one game in a month and they cancel, you're getting drastically less money for that subscription or for that game than

if they would have bought it right outright.

Like for me, I'm going to be picking up, and this is a good way, maybe a little segue into, I'm going to be picking up.

um

the Xbox Game Pass again, even though I've on and off use it.

I like it for testing usually, but ah to kind of just cut back on some of my spending on games, because I bought it, I was forced to buy an expensive ah Mac Studio.

I'm gonna be uh playing some of these games, I think on the Xbox Game Pass on my Windows machine.

So.

gaming darling child clear obscure Expedition 33.

I want to play this so bad.

It looks so good.

it does look really good.

But I'm already committed to- what?

I haven't played it yet.

No, I'm- I'm playing another GIPG that released around the same time, the 100 line, uh, Last Defense Academy.

And they both propped each- on Twitter, they both propped each other up, the developers of both games.

So now I'm expecting some sort of crossover between what is essentially Danganronpa at home with, uh, Expedition 33.

So I'm gonna be playing Expedition.

Oh, I still to finish Indiana Jones.

I have Expedition 33.

I wanna try out the new Oblivion Remastered to see, you know, to see what's changed, if I have the horse armor or not.

But this is my number one game coming out.

I don't know about, Half-Life 2, because there's some rumors of Half-Life 3 that is dropping.

I know, but like the play, like we've never gotten.

Rumors like play tests that where they're in their final it's in its final form That is big deal

Are you thinking they're just gonna Shadow Drop Half-Life 3 on us?

No, well I shouldn't say it's final form.

I should say like they're in the later parts of development, meaning I don't think they're gonna be doing what before they've been working on Half-Life 3 on and off for decade plus,

but they always get to a certain point and then they like kind of shelve it.

It sounds like right now they could still like change some parts of it, but it sounds like they're more in the later parts of development of like a Half-Life game.

I don't know if it's Half-Life 3, but it's a Half-Life game.

And so if that drops this year, because I could see Valve being like, okay, sometime this summer, it's going to be coming this winter and then dropping in November because they

like to do Half-Lifes in November.

I can see them doing that, giving them a couple of months for marketing.

ah But could also come out next year.

Who knows?

All I know is if Half-Life comes out, that'll be my most anticipated.

But if not, Doom the Dark Ages, I'm so excited for this.

Dude.

It's gonna be hard coming out next year next to fucking GTA 6.

This isn't a topic by the way.

But GTA 6 recently had its release date announced.

For...

It was May the 26th I believe.

This year?

They're pushing it off another year?

Dude, if it was this year, that would be insane.

That would probably be our headline topic, be honest.

If it were coming out this month.

I agree.

That's why I would just tell us like, wait a sec.

What month is it?

Huh?

I think half why dude if half life comes out the same year as Grand Theft or yeah, Grand Theft Auto, I don't think it's gonna matter.

I don't think it's gonna hurt it sells in any way.

I don't think they're gonna be I don't think they're gonna compete much.

I think if they came out of this.

grand theft auto- I mean, what half-life is.

That's my point.

don't like, well, actually you'd be shocked.

There's a lot of, it might run into, I think maybe you get into that realm, it might be into the autism spectrum, but there's a lot of kids that like pick it up for one reason or

another.

Maybe I, I don't know.

Toilet.

They certainly know Skibity Toilet, but they don't know where that's from.

They don't know who G-Man is or what his relation to the story is.

gonna, if they market it with such a way to use the skippity toilet in the marketing, they've won it.

Dude, it's just gonna be some guy's decapitated head in the toilet.

That's what we saw!

Environmental story telling, that's great.

I don't care.

Like if you're a teenager and Half-Life 3 drops, you're going to know what Half-Life 3 is for the most part.

If you're a gamer.

Yeah, because everyone's gonna be talking about it.

All of the older generations.

about it.

they won't, like if you're a gamer in any way, you're gonna just see it everywhere.

So you're gonna have to know about it.

That being said, do I think GTA is gonna do better?

Yeah, I do.

But I don't think it's gonna do, yeah, I don't think it matters.

Like I don't care if GTA makes double the sales of Half-Life.

Half-Life will still be super successful.

Like there's just.

be game of the year that year if it releases?

That is the funny part.

actually, if given between GTA 6 and Half-Life, the chances of which one would be game of the year, think Half-Life would be game of the year.

It would stand a better chance unless Half-Life 3 sucks.

That's a very scary thought.

Like, people are concerned about if it's gonna release, but I have a scarier thought.

What if Half-Life 3 sucks and you've just been waiting for nothing?

Less than nothing.

You know what?

Some people are on the opposite end of this.

Me, I'm like, the least it dropped and then I got it Half Life 3.

At least it dropped.

I would, my mantra is I'd rather have more of something I like than not.

But other people are like, well, I wanted to stop at being good.

But I do agree to that point.

Let's say Simpsons, like, it needed to end a little while ago.

But I like getting more of what I like, but there is a limit, like three or four games, sure.

Half-Life could stop at three, maybe four, and I'd be fine.

uh

uh I hear the Simpsons ratings are going back up, but uh...

I've heard that too actually.

With this subscription, you think, so to kind of get back into this, do you think the Xbox Game Pass is going to go away?

uh Or like, they're gonna stop releasing so many games on it?

Or they're gonna redo it?

How do you think they're gonna get away from this?

Probably by raising the prices to be honest That's like the met that's like the subscription matter right now Get people locked in so that they basically can't live

without it and then raise the prices so that they have to pay them, right?

To be fair.

I don't see anything too wrong with that because if you're gonna be, let's say if you play a couple of games a month off this, you're saving money already, even if they raise it up

to the price of a game every month, if you're playing it enough.

But I don't know if it's gonna help their growth.

Like it will help probably their profits, but their user base will probably go down.

they'll probably, profits will go up, but their user base will go down.

Dude It's a I don't know what to do with these subscriptions because I mean I I think we could all agree that online subscriptions to like play games online on your consoles.

They need to die yesterday

Yeah, I think 100%.

um Yeah, I don't like it.

I know some of the services cost money, but they make the money up, I think, by their uh licensee fees.

So in order to release a game on the console, the console makers get a cut of the game, right?

Or they have to license it.

And so they're already making, I think, enough money to run those services because I don't think those services are the most expensive.

So, yeah, I don't know.

I agree with that.

I really hate it.

Steam has a great model and it seems to be doing fine.

Yeah, well, I don't know, man.

We'll figure it out.

At least Valve doesn't have a subscription yet.

I don't think they will either.

I think their 30 % covers more than plenty.

mean Gabe Newell can have like what 8 megayachts or something so

Gabe Newell should come on this show.

That'd be so awesome if we could get him on here.

I okay, I will only do it if we get to go on one of his super yachts to Do the podcast I'm kidding by the way

Dude, that'd be so awesome though, but anyways, talking about CEOs.

Yeah, what is this?

What is this topic?

I don't know, just thought it'd be...

I don't know, it's an article I saw about how gamers, although you talk...

they don't talk about the merits of games anymore, they talk about player counts, use Steam charts, they don't even talk about if a game's good or not, they just talk about if

a game fulfills their agenda by having enough players.

And I just wanted to rant a little bit.

My personal thoughts are that talking about player counts on a single player game is stupid.

I agree with that.

Like, multiplayer games, I kind of understand.

Like, it makes sense because if there's less players in a multiplayer game, you can't...

At some point, you're gonna be bringing the same people over and over again.

And it's not gonna be very good experience.

Fighting games are kind of different though, because they're always gonna be niche.

Because people are afraid of playing fighting games for some reason.

I don't think it's that bad.

Just...

Like, okay.

What are your thoughts on- like you've played a fighting game or two, right?

Yeah, I don't I don't play much but now

on motion inputs like a Hadouken motion?

You know how to do one, right?

Uh, years ago, I don't remember.

Oh, but like, you don't think, like, you don't think, like, a lot of players are worried, are afraid because they don't know how to do special moves.

And like, I don't think it's that big, I don't think it's that serious, dude.

A lot of what makes fighting games great is not necessarily how mechanic-y complex your execution is or combos and whatnot, it's about the interplay between you and the other

player.

Like, fighting, cause, you know.

Even if you were playing the same character, they can be played different ways depending on who you are.

That's just kind of the way it is.

Okay, yeah, no, I get that.

just had I haven't played fighting games a whole lot against other people.

I mean, my wife got really big into a few and I beat her and then eventually she got good enough to beat me.

So yeah.

games there are some great you can like look up on facebook your local fighting game like locals and go over there and play against like people in your area

I think that's the way to do it.

And that might be why player counts are like reflective, maybe as much because, yeah, with a fighting game, I'd much rather play with someone face to face.

Yeah, it's a lot better that way.

As good as fighting game Netcode has gotten, still doesn't hold a candle just playing in person.

Yeah, and I think that's my difference is like, don't like I if I'm teaming, let's say League of Legends, I'd rather have people on my team that I know.

So I like to play with people I know, but I don't need to be in the same room.

But with a fighting game, if I'm fighting with or get like if you're doing a team based one or you just fighting one on one, like I still would rather be in the same room.

for sure.

But yeah, just a little thing I wanted to add.

We don't need to talk about this in too much depth.

I think it's an interesting idea though.

Kill the CEO in your head, high profile failures in the video game industry have changed how we talk about the big games.

I think just how we talk about games gets a little wonky on, we get so critical about the stupidest things on games and just stop enjoying games, I think sometimes.

Yeah, like what really matters in a video game is not how many copies have been sold.

I mean that kind of matters because you want to get a sequel to a game you really like.

But what really matters is...

us, I do think it matters for us to talk about it.

But at the same time, I think an average gamer should not be as concerned and maybe we shouldn't promote it so much.

But the point is like what you're saying.

If it gets enough sales and enough player count that shows a return on investment, then you're most likely going to be getting another version of that game.

or, know, like a, you know, another sequel.

And so, but for the average person, sometimes you guys just need to enjoy your games when you're playing them.

Like if you buy a game, don't go look to see how everyone else is enjoying it in the moment.

Play the game, enjoy it, and then find a community that agrees with you.

If you want to have like.

Feel good and not be so worried about it.

But I needed to as a consumer that I made the right choice in buying this $80 video game and I didn't just spend my money on an IGN 5 out of 10.

I know that's the thing if you that's why I try to say like if if Borderlands movie do I feel like I wasted my money?

Not really.

I knew what I was getting into it.

I enjoyed it.

It was a 10 % rotten tomatoes, but I enjoyed it because it had elements of a game I like but I knew what I was getting into with that.

Yeah, like honestly, there's a huge culture on watching bad movies, but there really isn't that same culture for video games.

People really do get really upset when a video game is bad.

Like really bad too.

Like people can't enjoy bad video games.

At least that's what I've observed.

Maybe I've just been looking at the wrong people.

In past, I think we appreciated a little bit more, but now that we're so inundated with just so many games that we can be very picky about it.

And I still think there is a little bit of that, but people are so critical and we are so in need of connection that we watch YouTubers that they shit on everything and negativity

sells well, because people want to, you know.

feel like their opinions are heard and then they hear theirs and then it's just like a, it's a whole freaking clusterfuck of like a, of a system we've kind of created.

And I only shit on stuff that really like tries to, I don't know.

Maybe I shouldn't get on a soapbox, but like, I like Epic Games to a point.

I think they help a lot of gamer, game developers.

have grants for game developers, but they still do.

other shit that's annoying.

So I don't know.

I'm kind of going around in circles on this topic, but yeah.

you can't trust most gamers' Like, I know user reviews are super valuable and whatnot, but most users are...

Like, let's think about Sturgeon's Law.

90 % of things are bad.

Like, 90 % of movies are bad.

90 % of video games are bad.

90 % of user reviews are bad.

I think I'd flip that 90 % of media is not gonna be amazing.

Or you can say 10 % of media is amazing.

That's actually the best way to put it.

10 % of media that you're gonna find is gonna be amazing.

The rest is gonna be good to bad.

I think it's not fair to call it bad.

I think it's, oh my gosh, I'm going all, I'm all over the place, but yeah.

can be...

I mean, not Occam's razor, sorry.

Sturgeon's law can be adjusted to, I guess, multiple scales.

It could really be...

It could really mean 10 % is exceptional and 90 % is...

Okay, good.

Passable.

Below exceptional.

Yep.

And I agree.

I'd a hundred percent agree with that.

And that's just the nature of things.

Like you can't have just amazing every like, that's just not how this all works.

And we wouldn't be able to play that many games and niches are exist too.

Like there's a lot of games I love that you and Gardner are just don't care about, which is fine.

And vice versa.

It's just, but I respect that there's a lot of good games.

So

I think with, when it comes to content creators, find the content creator that you kind of like jive with, that's fine.

But if they're always just shitting on other games, then I would probably find someone else to listen to because they're like, I'll give a couple exceptions.

think, uh

Listen to us.

No, well, what's his face?

ah Angry dude.

What is his?

Soul Brent.

No.

Angry Joe?

Angry Joe, yes.

Like his whole brand's on that.

Now that being said, I like watching this stuff sometimes.

Sometimes I just don't, cause it does get grating to just always watch something be, someone be pessimistic about stuff.

But,

I he's not always pessimistic.

He does give good rating reviews to games that are, like, good.

his brand is usually that.

Well yeah, mean his is like an artifact of like the old angry gamer from like...

Like back when AVG, everyone was trying to be like the angry video game nerd.

Yeah, and I like angry Joe's stuff sometimes, but yeah, it's just one of those things where I don't know.

It's hard.

It's hard to have things be negative all the time.

And I know I'm probably a little bit too negative on this podcast on itself, but like tariffs are annoying.

So.

I I liked his content too, but I stopped watching it around the time he reviewed the Suicide Squad, the first one.

The first movie, the David Ayer one.

And he gave it a pretty high score.

And like, I don't agree with that.

So that's kind why I stopped watching him.

I don't agree with everything.

like watching the stuff that's like more relative to what I like.

And so I'll watch this stuff when it's relative to what I'm kind of interested in, which is fine.

I think that's.

yeah, yeah.

Well, at the very least, I don't really enjoy his movie takes, I'll say that.

Ah, yeah.

Okay, I get that.

I...

Yeah.

But, I mean, I do respect him as a creator.

I don't think he's listening to this, but if he is, I just want to let you know.

Yeah, no, I don't think anything poor of him.

There is a point where I just don't watch him as much because of just certain topics he covers that I'm just not as interested in.

So it is what it is.

Guess who's gonna be poor after this?

Us.

a bit because they don't have any they don't they don't ship anything

they're not...

oh no...

8bitdo is like...

honestly one of my favorite like controller manufacturers

I agree with this.

actually have come to really like their stuff.

Like I have that keyboard that, you know.

Wait, you have their keyboard?

Aw, dude, that looks pretty sick.

love this keyboard.

It's a little dirty.

I need to clean it up or else I'd show up more.

I love.

No, I I have a Logitech mouse that I really like.

It's time to throw that logic mouse away and get the 8-bit Dove mouse, the one that looks like an NES-like mouse.

Oh, that one?

No, that.

Like, no way.

It looks so uncomfortable.

No.

um

Yes, but uh, yeah, I mean, it's pretty clear why they're not they're not shipping things from China to the US, right?

just to give a little bit of context.

they have an Xbox looking one now that looks a lot less uncomfy.

It looks like an old-school Microsoft laser optical laser mouse that they came out with like 15 18 years ago or 20 years ago

mouse too.

They don't look comfortable.

Dude, your hands are a small sacrifice for greatness,

I guess I could do these ones, but that.

actually look like a mouse and not like that one.

Or you can use a Switch 2 Joy-Con as a mouse.

That'd be funny.

Switch to, God.

Okay.

That would be horrible.

So, the gaming controller company, 8BitDo, is suspending shipments from its Chinese warehouse to United States based customers per a notice on its website.

The temporary pause on shipments to the US is due to the Trump administration's new 145 % tariffs on imports from China.

That I don't know how Xbox and all these companies like Xbox is just raising their prices just by how much they are.

And I think it is to they have a surplus like I mentioned.

And then after that, I think we're going to see a huge increase in Xbox's prices.

Xbox's, buy it now probably.

If you want to buy 8-bit dough controllers, probably buy it now as well.

I mean, I don't know what more to say about this than this sucks.

No one wants this.

And I'm sure 8-bit dough is far from the only controller manufacturer, like third party Chinese controller manufacturer that's going to stop shipments to the US.

Like I'm sure GullyKit is one other company that does that.

uh

GameStar does too and actually they made one of my favorite controllers, the GameStar Tarantula Pro.

I got it for review.

Look it up, look it up, it's really cool.

What is it?

It's called the GameSir Tarantula Pro.

I don't know, Gamester?

Oh, Gamester.

Like SIR.

Tarantula Pro.

I'm not.

we're typing this in and looking up on the uh

to look at all the stuff they do and we're going to find it.

Hey, that's actually kind cool stuff.

Yeah, so they do make a lot of mobile controllers, yes, but

game plates and everything.

So.

I'm talking about is a TMR based controller.

So instead of Hall effects, they have TMRs, which are supposed to be...

It's also a different style of magnetic determination.

And it's supposed to be more power resistant.

It's supposed to be more power efficient compared to Hall effects.

There, right there.

Tarantula Pro.

Which one?

up the one that's $70 $69.99 right there it's the bit right it's the fourth it's the fourth one it's the fourth one you can fully see that one yes

I'm seeing trans- my gosh, I'm sorry.

I'll overplay something today.

Okay.

So what's cool about this one is that it can actually switch, the buttons can actually switch like their legends depending on if you're on Switch Mode or Xbox Mode.

So like the ABXYs automatically switch around.

I mean to be honest I don't really have an issue with that because I know a lot, but I know a lot of other people tend to have issues with that for some reason.

That's really cool.

That's so weird though.

feels nice.

It also just really feels really nice in the hand.

And the buttons feel nice too.

70 bucks I mean that's like the same price as a regular controller so

Yeah, and you can get a version that comes with a charging base as well.

I happen to have that version.

They sent it to me for review.

for the price of a Nintendo game.

The price of an Xbox game too, no doubt.

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Ugh.

But yeah, I'm willing to bet all of these companies are going to be feeling the pinch.

they're either gonna stop shipping, because it's just not gonna be worth it, because they don't want, know, they feel like they might not even sell and they'll probably, there's a

good chance that they're gonna try to maybe do some deals in other countries, like maybe they'll lower it like by $10 just to get some good sells and they'll clear out their

inventory in other countries.

So we'll see, we'll see what happens.

We're gonna fill the pinch I think for a few months until,

We'll see.

I still say like I don't trust that Trump is not gonna just give in I think he's gonna give in eventually I think he's gonna be super stubborn, but I think um Once there's gonna

be like uh just a myriad of shelves to have it like images of shelves being empty on social media I Think it's gonna be downhill from there I just don't think there's any

defending that even though he's already trying to say that but it's Biden's fault and it's not it's not how that works when you implement it

Yeah, it's Obama's fault and some people are saying that but When you implement a tariff like this, you can't blame anyone else except for yourself as this is how tariffs work

This is every economist even Even you know, they're far right economists are gonna sit for the most part some of them are not because they play Kate but yeah, they're gonna say that

this Tariffs

gotta watch it with the politics talk.

We're gonna get some more comments.

I mean, think I don't think that's a very like I think that's pretty objective in my opinion.

it ah is a I don't think it's opinion based.

You can go look it up like to see how many economists actually don't like tariffs.

so

But, speaking of opinions, do you think this is an accurate assertion?

I do think it is, in a way, accurate.

CD Projekt Red shares more Cyberpunk Switch 2 footage, says it's the best way to play it on the go.

Is that the footage?

Like, is this it right here?

Yeah, I guess so.

It's part interview, part gameplay footage.

So you can skip to where the...

I cannot hear it now.

Okay, good.

I don't want it to be a...

Yeah, that's-

We can talk about it though while it's playing.

Yeah, they say that it's the best way to play on the Switch 2.

They say the Switch 2 is the best way to play Cyberpunk on the go.

And yes, that includes devices like the Steam Deck, the RGLIX, etc.

etc.

And it's not that big of a surprise given that this is a fully, presumably optimized port, right?

I know it is like any like usually this type of stuff gets ported over and it's optimized and Nintendo Xbox PlayStation they usually get the full love but they also a lot of these

companies have metrics of like like standard metrics usually especially probably with with cyberpunk because it flopped it was so bad on PlayStation 4 they probably yeah

I'm sure Nintendo's like, it's got to, you got to optimize this as good as possible.

uh I'm curious to see how well this plays on my MacBook Pro because they're also, think when this comes out for the Switch, they're coming, it's coming out for the Mac, for Mac,

for Mac OS that is.

Yeah.

And if it, like my Mac Studio is a beast.

And so if it's optimized for my Mac Studio, there's a good chance it's going to beat my 3090, but we'll see.

Oh shit, those are big, those are fighting words.

But, I mean, yeah, it's not that big a surprise that it'll run better on this than it probably would on the Steam Deck.

mean, the biggest issue with the Steam Deck, aside from anti-cheat and stuff, is the fact that, you it's just running PC games.

You don't get games very often that are optimized for Steam Deck.

The most Cyberpunk did, the most CDPR did for Cyberpunk was like...

make a Steam Deck preset and that's not really the same thing as optimizing it, really.

Yeah, no, yeah.

It optimized the settings and maybe they added a little bit of something in there, but it's not truly optimizing assets, doing full run throughs.

Like there's a whole optimization workflow that needs to be done to really get this to work.

I am curious though with this to see if maybe some of the optimizations they did for the...

for the Switch could come back to handhelds in textures and stuff.

Well, the optimizations are gonna be for like a different architecture though.

So some low level uh optimizations probably won't, but some higher end ones might.

Yeah, so here's what I know.

I know that Valve has an option for you to um make set up depots.

It's an internal steam term for different uh repositories that have different contents based on a number of different categories, uh criteria.

Like, for example, there's like some games have a repo for like the Mac version of a game or like the Windows version of a game or like a Linux version of game or they may even

have repos for like different versions of the game too.

Like for example, like beta versions, stuff like that.

One criteria that you can actually categorize a repo by is if they're downloading it to a Steam deck or not.

you, so developers have the ability to set up repos where

It downloads low resolution assets, more optimized assets.

Heck, you can even make a completely optimized version of the game.

It's not just assets.

You can do an entire binary too.

An entire Steam Deck optimized binary.

yeah, here's, and this lies within the tools.

I'd love to say, and I know Epic, they needed to get their shit together and just not fight so hard against a Steam Deck and against handheld gaming.

They really need to get on the bandwagon.

So the Unreal Engine and Unity and Godot all could end up with pipelines that could build, when you do a build, and usually they have like,

different platforms you can build for that are optimized.

I'm curious if they could add into that pipeline like a Steam Deck-esque version, that'd be cool.

Or there might be some third party tools that could also optimize assets, but I'd love to see that.

The issue though isn't that the tools don't exist, it's that the developers, at least on PC, won't make use of them.

Well, the tools don't, I'm saying like very specific tooling for this could really help with this because when you're making a game, there's so much already going into it and

there's so much stuff when you're doing builds that the easier you can make it for uh up and coming like Steam Deck, I think the more likely of a chance you're gonna get people to

port it over.

And so, yeah.

That's just my opinion on it though.

I could be wrong.

That's true, It's hard to know what's going on in the developers' minds.

A lot of indie developers are trying to optimize for the Steam Deck, I will say.

So I'm not saying no developers do, thankfully.

But it's just the big developers aren't.

Not only are they not optimized for the Steam Deck, they're not even really ensuring the fact that the games even run on Steam Deck.

Like, and heck, I've even seen some games that are Steam Deck-verified that...

straight up do not run well on Steam Deck.

Like, we've seen this happen multiple times with The Last of Us Part 1.

I think that got patched up in his work, but Ramnet 2 was one such a game as well.

Yeah, there's...

I just want...

We've talked about this so much that I just really want to see like really good standards for Steam Deck.

Maybe some sort of like, Panic Button Studio does some of these switch ports, What if we made like a panic button equivalent, but for Steam Deck?

Steam Deck optimization services.

You pay a fee and you give us access to some of the source code.

You give access to some of the source code and then we port it over.

It's not a bad idea actually.

You have to get really good at optimizing though.

And I don't know if I'm that good at it.

I know like some techniques that could be used, but I'd be shocked if they're not using it.

But if they just want to like, just cause they don't want to think about it and they just want to push it off, I could definitely think of a couple of things.

Some compression techniques and some other stuff, but yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't even have to be us.

It can just be anyone.

Any enterprise and developer does not want to do it.

You just need to have...

You just need...

Unfortunately, you just gotta have the reputation.

Well, if you want...

If you're up for it, you should...

You should totally do it.

gonna ask ChatGPT.

Hey, how can I vibe code my way into optimizing?

Into an optimization studio, okay.

But yeah, I mean...

Well, what about Gardener?

Don't...

Don't...

Don't expect Gardener.

Garner doesn't want a vibe code.

I'm not going to exclude him.

I'm not, I'm just excluding him because he's not here.

That's it.

And then, I mean, I'm not sure what else to say about this besides Cyberpunk 2077.

It probably is going to run the best on the Switch 2, but then we're going to get the next generation of handhelds.

Hopefully.

as good as it shows here, if this is it, I'm honestly, it's a selling point for me.

It probably is using some type of DLSS, right?

uh Yeah, but I can live with DLSS.

I'm fine with that.

For my stuffed on to go, I'm fine with that.

But if it looks as clear as this and it's DLSS, and this is what it looks like.

I'm not going to kill myself to find a Switch 2, but I might have my eye out later on when tariffs are done and they're available.

it might take me up to, who knows?

We'll see how Nintendo does, but it could take me year or two, but this might be a selling point for me.

I'm gonna get it for my kids, but this might be a selling point for me.

Because I like cyberpunk a lot.

And every time I tried to play it on the Switch 2, it sucks.

And not Switch 2, God.

The switch, it sucks.

Not the Switch, the Steam Deck.

Damn it.

Okay, I'm a little tired, but like, the Steam Deck, just doesn't play well on the Steam Deck.

In my opinion.

I really wish more games, like, more big-budget games optimized for Steam Deck besides just having a Steam Deck preset or having the Steam Deck controls show up in the loading

screen or something like that.

It's good.

start.

And I think for some people they're fine.

just, I can't do Steam Deck um Cyberpunk.

It could be because I played it on the 3090, you know.

And so going from a 3090 to a Steam Deck, I was just used to having 60 frames plus almost maxed out.

Yeah.

man.

And I think, oh yeah, Proton.

This is our last topic.

Proton 10.0-1 beta.

What's up with this?

Um, well, it's the newest version of Proton.

It jumped up an entire number.

And now, plenty of games are considered playable.

Many of these games required Proton experimental, but now they've been folded into a stable version of Proton.

Or, well, it's a beta version of Proton.

gives me a lot of hope.

I really wanted this to work.

The Arkham Asylum.

Wait, did Arkham Asylum not work on Steam Deck?

Really?

How come?

I never knew that.

Arkema's, well.

I think Arkham Asylum didn't.

I'd have to double check that.

Maybe I'm getting my version.

This is the first one, right?

Yep.

Yep, okay.

Yep, it didn't.

Even in Experimental, up until recently, it didn't work.

And I think Experimental's been more of a recent thing, because therefore, a little bit, it kind of worked with a workaround, and then it stopped.

But I like this game a lot, and it's a good Steam Deck game, if you can get it to work.

but it would run into some dependency issues with Windows.

so, yeah, it didn't work very well up until now.

it needed codecs from windows or something like that is that what's going on

it was yeah, it was some weird arbitrary probably window like Windows live service or whatever Windows live, you know There it was probably some stupid dependency thing.

I can't remember all I remember is that it was really annoying that you couldn't get it to work unless you went and Did a bunch of extra work to get it to work?

um And I reformatted my drive and lost that I just didn't want to bring it back up.

So um

Well hey, now it works.

Now it works.

think that's the biggest one on this list too for me because I think people, if you want a really good game that's on the go, and I think it holds up graphically well too.

Go play that.

I think it holds up really well.

Play style sometimes is kind of weird.

it's a little bit of a brute in it, but it's still a good game.

so Proton does have...

so Proton 10 is mostly fixes for games.

Like sometimes there are specific fixes.

There aren't too many feature ads, but there is one here.

uh Added support for game mods that load via custom D input 8.dll.

If you scroll down, it's right under the one that says fixed rivals of Aether 2, Stalker 2, yada yada yada.

crashing with Intel's GPUs.

that's another thing we could talk about, Intel GPUs.

Am I at the right spot?

I'm...

Okay.

I'm not gonna be...

I'm not good at parsing text right now.

So added support for game mods that load via custom D input DLL.

So a lot of game mods, they inject code via a DLL.

And on Windows, it's as simple as downloading that, like copying that DLL over to your game directory and just running it that way.

on...

Steam Deck, have to enable support for that.

There are some command arguments that you have to type into your game entry to let the deinput8.dll hook into the game itself.

It's not hard to do, yeah, it's something that, yeah, now it basically is automated.

It hooks into games and then you can load game mods onto it.

Very rare are the mods actually loaded into the DLL itself.

It's mostly like typically it's a mod loader that's loaded onto the DLL.

Interesting.

Okay.

That's generally what happens.

It's lot easier than having to modify the EXE itself, that's for sure.

uh Let's see if there's...

see, so they mentioned Intel GPUs.

I don't really know all that much about Intel support on Linux, to be honest.

And that sounds like a Gardener question.

I have too, but I feel like that's a...

Damn it, that's a Gardener question.

He knows about Linux.

We're missing...

I think he said that Intel GPUs are better on Linux than they are on, than like Nvidia is.

I'm not surprised to be honest.

That's interesting, on Intel GPUs.

It's interesting.

Yeah, sorry.

is, our Intel GPUs a viable option for like a bazite like HTPC?

That's a good question.

I don't know if they even support Intel GPUs.

Do they?

the thing with Bazite, the thing with Bazite and Nvidia is that Nvidia does technically work, but I remember reading a lot about game mode issues.

bundled.

The thing is you can get builds of AMD or Nvidia.

So when you're getting the ISOs, I don't know if they have Intel or not yet.

That'd be interesting.

I to ask Kyle, I'm from Kyle Gaspenetich.

He's the lead guy behind Bazzite.

where you just, I mean, they could say it all they want, if they don't offer it, this is where you can find it.

So.

say desktop.

Yeah, they support Arc.

Look at that.

good shit.

We just need to know if ARK works with game mode, because I know Nvidia's had issues with GameScope.

Yeah, I'm kind of curious.

hold on, it says multiple.

Wait, go back to Intel Arc.

So they have modern GPUs and they even support older.

And it's because there's already those GPUs that they just fold it in.

They have a build process where they build out the ISO and they include the drivers that need to be installed a part of the build process.

yeah.

ah

Yeah.

And see, there's also a number of other fixes too.

I'm trying to see if there are any super relevant fixes that we can think of big ones.

I mean, these are all, like, you can think of these types of especially big increases like this that they're going to, oftentimes help individual games, but as a whole, everything's

gonna become more stabilized.

So maybe some games that they fixed issues with, uh those fixes could affect other games that were even more minor.

ah This is always a good thing to see these, like, big updates.

know, speaking of which, they also, it also mentions included initial work for speech synthesis requires manual installation of proton voice files confirmed to work with the

thief, the witch, the toad and the mushroom.

Wait, that, that, wait, is that one game?

Is that the name of just one game?

Let me look that up.

I know I doubt it.

The thief, the witch, the toad, and the mushroom.

What?

uh

game, I've never heard of this game before.

It almost looks like a book, so to speak.

But anyways, voice synthesis, so like Microsoft Sam, is that what it's getting at?

Probably, right?

That is weird though.

added hack to allow Steam Overlay to function with EAC EOS games.

So.

Epic Online Services, I believe it was.

m

a lot of niche things.

Do you want to point out anything else or should we wrap this episode up?

the bottom.

There's some things that might be worth mentioning.

Lots of driver updates, upgrade DXVK, VKD3D proton, Wine Mono, Wine 10.

It's moving over to Wine 10.

What uh, it's probably basing it because proton's based on wine so

there's a lot of, and shit, has its own massive change log of fixes too.

yeah, Wine is more just all around software and Proton is more dare towards games.

And so you can kind of think of that.

So it's a subset.

they're probably, maybe they even try to keep their releases similar.

I could see that.

So.

ah

I mean, I'm not sure what to make of it besides...

Added Steamworks SDK support, interesting.

So yeah, I mean at the end of the day, this is really good.

uh I think if you have some more obscure games and some other uh weird glitches, it never hurts.

Let's say you had a game that you've been wanting to play on Steam Deck for a while and you just didn't play quite right, go get the newest version of Proton, download it and see

if it works now.

if they mention any games I know of.

Gal Gun 2 is in here?

Oh no, you can't mention this game in the changelog.

It's one of those games.

Look at that.

Galga on here.

It's a weird ass Japanese game.

Yeah, isn't it a...

I'm pretty sure you've heard of it.

Yeah, I've heard of Galgon too.

I've heard of Galgon, but yeah, there you go.

played some of the games in that universe too, like the GalGuardians games are like 2D action games that are set in the same universe somehow.

It's got a 9 out of 10 on the Steam, the audience knows what they want.

It's a very niche product, so I'm assuming it would do really well.

Well, I hate to say this, Hi Tech, but I think we should call it.

I think we should too.

It's been a good episode.

Regardless of whether or Gardener wasn't here or not.

RIP Gardner.

At least.

this man, we know that we love you, man

uh Yeah, so I'm gonna unless tariffs, okay, I think next week or the next few weeks if tariffs come up it has to be because like a major thing like Xbox again I Need to stop

talking about tariffs because I get so angry about it

Dude.

uh because I feel like it's layoffs, tariffs, and something else that we're going on.

I'm going to bring some good vibes, think, with some games.

In the next two weeks, I think I'm going to be playing a bunch of games on Microsoft service.

I'll bring some good vibes and some good news on those, I hope.

Dude, I sure hope so too, man.

ah So yeah, with that, thank you guys for watching, listening, wherever you're at, whatever you're on.

Make sure to, if you're on YouTube, make sure to like, subscribe, bash the bell with your crowbar.

If you're on podcast service, make sure to follow along so you don't miss out on all the goodies every week.

And so just let us know what, also, yeah, let us know in the comments, like any topics we missed that we should maybe bring up next week.

uh I'm yeah, I'm not gonna apologize for other comments.

We try to do our best, but you know.

in a way I guess.

Let us know what you think.

We can always try to improve.

ah And with that, let's head out unless you have anything uh else to say, high tech.

Stay safe everyone.

I don't have much else to say besides that though

Don't get tariffed to death.

Peace out.

Later.

bye.