Steam Deck Prototype Sold with NerdNest | OTC EP 25

Welcome back to Off the Console, the hottest new podcast.

It's all about gaming, tech news, and anything nerdy.

This week we're covering the biggest news, including the Triple Initiative.

And we've got an interesting lineup for sure.

Steam Deck prototype was auctioned off.

And so we're going to do lot of speculating there.

And who's the famous person that bought that?

And so that'll be fun.

Last episode was one of the was it it was one of the most viewed episodes of the podcast yet We've been doing well So thank you guys for following and watching and listening on

the Fediverse or wherever else you listen to us on whatever podcast or YouTube you guys do To make this so much more fun Okay, so yeah exactly Today we have a special guest with us

bill

coming over after recording yesterday, your podcast.

Yeah, welcome, welcome.

Do you want?

Yeah, thanks.

So we're going to start off by like what everyone's playing or doing.

But could you also introduce yourself along with that bill?

Sure, I'm Bill.

I host the Nerd Nest podcast as well as my the Nerd Nest YouTube channel.

I've been covering video game content for a really, really long time.

Just recently started getting more into the PC side of things and really been having a lot of fun making making shows like this.

Like this is I always say that YouTube is my favorite video game.

So that's the game that I play the most.

I need to play that more.

I really do.

I do like it.

I haven't fallen off the YouTube bandwagon recently, but hey.

you've been falling off it.

I've been- I've just had less time to do it because I've been playing more video games.

There you go.

Yeah, you have to pick one.

You can either play games or you can talk about them.

Doing both is really friggin' hard.

Yeah, unless you're a streamer that does both at the same time.

yeah, I have a job so that ain't happening.

That's horrible.

Yeah, I did do streaming for a little bit, especially.

Yeah, that one's a hard one.

It's fun, but draining.

Yeah.

Like a lot of people say that like, oh, it's not a real job or oh, it's not difficult.

But like, it's a lot harder than you think.

You got to be entertaining to be a successful streamer and also kind of actually you don't even need to be good at video games.

just need to be entertaining while you're playing.

need to be entertaining and have a brand.

It's because it's a low entry.

kinda low entry job or a low entry career, you have to work your ass off.

People don't understand that.

Yeah, like to be honest, I don't think I could do it because when I'm playing a video game, I get really into it and I just kinda forget about chat.

With a good enough therapist, I think I could do it.

I think I could do it.

I've tried it, it's just...

Yeah, it gets a little overwhelming after a while of just sitting there non-stop and just like questioning existence of I don't want to play video games right now even though I

love playing video games.

I want to just play this video game in private.

So yeah, and also the backseat gamers, man, that's got to be the worst.

It's not too bad.

Depends on who you are.

But yeah, sometimes it'll spoil things.

Are you playing anything fun or doing anything, Bill?

I have been playing, I don't know how much you guys want me to talk about this because I am currently obsessed with Monster Hunter Wilds.

I cannot stop playing it.

I'm a huge Monster Hunter fan.

played Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate was the, think might have been the first one that I played.

And then I also played Monster Hunter World, Monster Hunter Rise, and then this is my fourth one.

And I absolutely love what they've done with Monster Hunter Wilds.

Have any of you guys been

playing Monster Hunter.

The last one I played was Generations Ultimate.

That was a long time ago, yeah, but I've played them since the PSP era.

I've played the one on PSP.

And let me tell you, you gotta play with a claw grip and it's kinda miserable because you to the D-pad.

You have to use the D-pad to move the camera around.

It's kind of insane, but I made it work somehow.

I don't know if I can do it today though.

yeah well with the new one you don't have to do that it has traditional controls and the thing that i like most about it is you have a mount and in old monster hunter games what

would happen is you would damage the monster enough and he'd be like jesus this guy's an asshole i gotta get out of here and he would run off right and then you gotta go chasing

him which is fine because you know you're hunting this thing you're trying to track it down it makes sense

but that artificially dragged out how long these boss fights are for a really long time.

And in the new one, you just call your mount, you hop on, you tell the mount, track it down, and then all of the other things that you would normally do when playing the game,

you just do while the mount is taking you to the next fight area.

And it's really great.

I think, mean, traditionally the case though, when you learn a monster's pattern, you can set traps accordingly in accordance to how they move around.

So like when you learn how a monster moves and when they try to run away, they might trigger the trap instead, which means you could kill them on the same screen if you know

what you're doing.

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm a filthy casual.

I'm not hardcore, so...

I'll sit there and play that game too much.

I've played games like it and I've played past versions of it, you know, and so...

I can't.

I'll get a...

It really is.

It's the same reason why Bellatro is fun and I played up to a certain point, but if I get too serious about that, I will lose my day.

uh...

man speaking of lotto i start trying restarted the journey to get the other side i started to back up again uh...

it i still uh...

yeah so i don't

he's been doing this for how many months now three or four months and it's like every episode

Like almost half a year to be honest.

I'm trying to 100 % the game.

I'm trying to A.

Beat the game with all the decks in gold state difficulty.

B.

B.

Beat the game with every joker on gold state difficulty.

See, you should be streaming that, honestly.

That's the type of stuff.

If you're do initiatives like that, you pay off by streaming it.

Yeah, that is true, but at the same time though.

It may not be a good idea because of a topic we're going to talk about later in the video.

No spoilers.

But aside from that though, I've also been playing Rise of the Ronin again.

Is that the Ninja Turtles one?

No, it's not, no, it's the one by Tecmo Koei, it's like open world.

It's an open world-like game, like based right before the Meiji restoration.

What there is there is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The last Ronin is a movie that's coming out apparently.

That's why I was confused.

Sorry about that.

All good,

Okay.

That's...

anything else you're doing, Hi-Tech?

thinking about what videos I should be making.

Yeah, what?

That is such a good question.

Ugh, yeah.

kind of that time, we need some valve to drop some good stuff.

good steam deck 2 announcement please.

That's happening for a year at least.

What'd say Gardner.

I was gonna say I could take a Steam Deck 2 announcement right now.

Yes, please.

Please.

I take SteamOS updates.

Like, good ones.

really good ones.

Yeah.

This month, this month, it's coming this month.

Because they said that it's coming before the Lenovo Legion Go S Steam Edition ships in May, right?

So it's gotta be this month.

Hmm.

Yeah, it will be limited though.

It's gonna be Yeah, they're in what alpha right now the next version so I I wouldn't like if you if you're planning on using steamOS for like an Nvidia GPU like good luck with that

I I had too much issues with my with doing it through not with steamOS but with Bazzite and I I gave up on that

I ran into the exact same problem.

The TV that I've got just over there has a computer hooked up to it and that computer has an NVIDIA GPU and I tried installing Bazite on it and it worked flawlessly and then the

next time that I rebooted, black screen.

I couldn't do anything.

So I ended up having to wipe it and go back to Windows, which is unfortunate.

And know somebody's gonna be like, well Bill, you cry this distro and this distro and this distro?

want to learn all that stuff.

I just want to turn it on and not have to think.

you know the thing is with with alternative like if you go with like bazlight for nvidia it's not it's not on bazlight to make the the steam os launcher like show up and film you

know in big picture mode that's the word i'm looking for like big picture mode like works but it doesn't

the overall thing doesn't work like as SteamOS does where it has like the the separate session, right, that has just big picture mode full screen exclusive.

And it's not Bazite's fault, that's on Valve to fix.

So there's a lot of like weirdness.

I have a Nvidia GPU on my living room PC and I have issues like the same kind of issues.

Is it my malphors on Nvidia?

It's on Valve.

well, yeah, I mean, it is on Nvidia to some degree because they don't really do things a standard way on Linux, which is really annoying.

I haven't had the black screen issue.

Now you can't let it sleep.

Like if you let it sleep, at least with my 3090 and you bring it back up big picture mode or however they does it, it will just get all screwed up like artifact D not that it is

weird.

But yikes.

If you turn it off and turn on every time mine worked, it's just if I play was I was playing games like It Takes Two with my son and it would just it crashed.

It crashed at every...

and then I bring...

it worked fine even running it on Mac OS with cross...

with...

what is this?

Not crossfire.

Crossover or on Windows, but for some reason, Bazai and those Nvidia drivers,

Yeah, it's not just it's not just Bazite though.

mean, I have Ubuntu on this machine.

Yeah, definitely, it's Nvidia.

I'm not meaning to throw Bazite under the bus.

I'm just letting people know, because that's an easy, the cool thing about Bazite and SteamOS, it's an easy way for normies or people that aren't as typical to go into the

Linux world to get into it, right?

And so, if they have bad experiences, it kind of sours at Bill's experience.

Yeah, and I'm a normie.

don't I don't know.

I don't know anything about Linux like.

OK, I wasn't sure I said assholes earlier and I was like, oh no, what did I do?

But yeah, man, I fucking hate Nvidia and I think we've said this a number of times in this podcast For number of different reasons too and like can we really trust Nvidia though?

They removed PhysX 32-bit support from the 50 series cards

Yeah.

No, I don't know for years and video was my go-to because I used to be a streamer and they had that chip on the The 2070 cards and up that would automatically That would you could

use as an encoder chip to encode your stream and it wouldn't be using your PC And it just made everything so much easier.

Now I don't stream anymore.

So what do I care?

Even if I was streaming, I just stream from my Mac.

I think AMD now has an equivalent chip, because I know, I think you're talking about the NVEC encoder, right?

Yeah, and maybe they do, but I don't stream anymore, so it doesn't affect.

Yeah, I mean you can use it also for rendering your videos too.

And even like Intel CPUs have that kind of hardware, like dedicated ASIC for that kind of stuff.

No, no, not.

Yeah, it's a more recent thing, but.

Now it's big deal, but yeah, a lot of them have it now.

so, I'll at least main, bigger one.

I've heard that a good idea if you're like going back, if you're going into streaming is to, you know, have your dedicated gaming GPU and then maybe have like one of those new

Intel CPUs for AV1 coding as well separately.

And I've heard that's a good, I've heard that's a good setup, but.

Honestly, think a better setup would be get the cheapest Mac mini you can find.

Have that be your encoder and then you can just play on your regular PC because the series chips are just stupidly good.

I am really curious about support for capture cards on the Macs.

They're fairly decent.

If it's a mainstream, I'm going be trying it out some more because going into my update, guess what I bought over the week, I'm successfully turning into Mac Revealed channel now.

Oh my Mac reveals The tariffs scared the shit out of me to where I'm like I want to get a Mac studio this year or like a MacBook Couldn't decide and I wanted it to be enough to

where I could do my game development on it and be beefy So I went ahead and bought a Mac studio.

Oh I got I got the m3 So m4 so

Because the way they do the fusion chips, to get the higher end Mac Studio, they do M3s that are fused together, so they have two to get the higher core count and higher

bandwidth, actually, memory bandwidth.

so, yeah, it's really bizarre.

I don't think they have it baked into the M4, so they had to redo the M3 chip.

I'm getting really into the...

Yeah, I get what you're saying, but yeah, they don't have an M4 Ultra.

they don't have you don't have that so i got the three i got them to i got the lake price your one with ninety six gigs of ram which is nice i'm i'm well i've been using and i can

game have my games

up and i got the clothes down my game them working on and this is great that's a great love and very cool games on it are pretty decent like crossover does a good job of like it

uses proton and wine to do emulation that you also use bottles i think it uses bottles under the but if you know if you've ever used like done some type of Linux

Is it called just Bottles on Linux?

can't remember.

Yeah, it's Bottles on Linux.

You can also use it your SteamRick as well.

Yep, yep, yep.

That's where I've done a lot of that, using Bottles.

so it uses Bottles to facilitate different games or environments, right?

And setting up the environment virtually.

And it's working great so far.

I will I'm probably going to have some fun with my 3090 because I'm going to set it up in such a way to where I'm going try really hard to make it so it doesn't lag but I want to

be able to use it between my Mac Studio and my TV out there so I'm exploring a lot of different options with that.

I'm going to have a fun year this year with just screwing around with my Windows machine and being able to place the more spicier games on it.

I'm just honestly my room's not overheating.

This 3090 I could probably render all day and my room wouldn't heat up.

It's such an efficient chip.

So there's a bunch of reasons.

know I'm just...

I don't mean to be a fanboy.

I used to not like Apple that much, but I fully dove into that sphere for productivity reasons.

I will try not to mention in the future as much.

Yeah, Gardner, what have you been up to?

So in terms of games, I haven't been playing a lot but I have been diving deep into Connections at the New York Times stupid game and today really pissed me off.

You probably can't see that Yeah, whatever Today's today's was really annoying.

It's a it's a word puzzle game.

I play it with Emily My girlfriend and a lot of fun.

Yeah

that one.

Yeah, it's the one where like if there's like a grid of four by four words and you have to like find the words that pair together.

It's kind of fun.

I've also been playing a GameCube.

If you can't tell, I've got my GameCube controllers over here.

I got an SD to SB2 adapter, which lets me dump my collection of games onto an SD card, which is plugged into the SB2 port.

Serial port 2 on there.

So it's pretty neat and it works really well with Swiss so you can launch your games really quickly.

I've actually been playing so much Game Keeper I'm thinking about getting a mod chip for it because I have to keep my...

action replay in the disk drive in order to launch the games.

So I'm thinking I might just go with a mod chip and then not have to worry about the action replay.

That's really cool.

Are you gonna get the Switch to GameCube controllers?

Man, I've looked at those and I love the GameCube controller, but they're impractical to play modern games with unless they're designed for the GameCube controller.

So unless the analog sticks are clickable, and I don't think I'm going to get one.

They might be they have X they have a lot of the extra buttons that you wouldn't see on an actual game controller that they have They have was L the whatever L one is Yeah, they

have they have that so I'm sure at the very least they'll have clickable sticks, but I don't know it's this Nintendo

Yeah, I mean they didn't add clickable sticks to the N64 controller, so I mean they might not have thought that might not have been possible, but I don't know.

We'll see.

I do love the GameCube controller though.

Yeah, that'd be definitely a welcome addition if you're going to use it for other purposes.

Okay, anything else?

Anything else guys like no surprise amazing thing that happened this week?

Okay.

Well, I can tell you right now one thing was that like we mentioned earlier the podcast especially on the Fediverse has been doing really well and as things to you guys

Subscribing so make sure to subscribe on YouTube off all our SS feed We'll throw some I'll throw some stuff up on the screen so you can I don't have to read everything out But you

can also fall engage with us on the Fediverse comment through it on things

on the Fediverse.

you don't know what the Fediverse is, go Google it.

a really cool piece of, I guess, tech or protocol.

yeah, yeah, that makes it easier for us to communicate and have it be more decent, like decentralized in a way.

So yeah.

Okay.

The one thing about that, because we mentioned that last week was really good.

So two weeks ago, we had 2620 downloads from the podcast, the audio feed.

And last week we had 2220 downloads.

So it was almost the number one last week was almost number one.

And the week before that was number one, which is pretty cool.

Hell yeah.

Hell yeah.

gotta punish Gardner's server.

Like it's all being hosted on his server.

You gotta punish it.

You gotta get in the territory.

that is so much work.

It's it's there's a great app that does it that handles most of it for me.

So it's just but it is like a bandwidth thing.

So if you guys want to like make this cost me a lot of money, go download the episodes.

Yeah, if you hate Gardner, just watch the podcast.

Yeah.

Listen to the podcast if you hate me because that will cost me buddy Last episode had over two terabytes of downloads

Switch to mono, you guys.

We are mono.

I gave HiTech so much crap one time because he uploaded a stereo version at like 192 kilobits.

Do you remember that, HiTech?

Yeah, I think that was like one or two gigs.

Yeah, it was was huge it was like three or four hundred megabytes and normally it's like 50 So I was like we got to make sure we do this, right?

the file sizes are like what between 40 and 60 megabytes.

60 megabytes now, yeah.

my god, so you guys, the people who watch this on the Fetiverse are gonna be very angry with me because I upload the, like, the audio show goes to Patreon and I put video on both

Spotify, for my show, both on Spotify and YouTube and the file size is just stupid high, ridiculously high.

I could not imagine hosting that kind of thing.

Audio, I could probably figure that out, but I just can't be bothered to not, to use a,

centralized thing or to do to roll my own seems like too much work

is a little different more for discovery and communicating, right?

Yeah.

protocol.

Yeah.

Where RSS feeds to host a podcast is really easy.

Right, used to do it.

I used to do an RSS only podcast, but then Spotify just does it all for me so I don't have to.

And they're not, that's centralized.

That sucks.

It's bad.

I shouldn't

You know how their interface works.

Gardner has some open source software that he installed on one of his servers.

Servers or whatever.

That allows to do pretty much the same thing.

I'd actually say it has a little bit more options, yeah, it also includes the Fidiverse.

It's pretty neat.

It's called Castapod.

ties into the Fediverse and it creates RSS feeds and it also handles distributing it to the various other platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify and stuff.

So it's pretty awesome.

I'm just a huge geek about this stuff.

I know, I know you are, and that's what I really...

I mean somebody has to be.

Yeah.

Make the fox do it.

The fox should probably know how to do this.

That's okay.

I don't want to have to ask anybody to do anything.

I just handle it all myself because I am a customer of the big company apparently and I'm okay with that even though I shouldn't be.

I yeah, I mean, it is your choice at the end of the day.

Also, by the way, Bill runs a pretty cool podcast as well.

I've listened to a couple of episodes and they have a very stacked cast, some of whom have shown up on here.

Yeah, all of them except for Cryobite.

Cryobite's doing all right, man.

I spoke with him on Discord the other day and he's doing all right.

I guess the only issue, yeah.

Lots going on with him though, still working 80 hour a week so it's just crazy to me.

been there done that don't want to do that ever again what is he is he an engineer I think he's an IT or he's an IT okay I'd have to double check to be honest so he's one of those

well before you double check let's let's get into our first topic yeah yeah so we had fun

Punishing Gardner with all the downloads and all that and will hopefully punish them even more this time like we need to have like a punish meter or something like that for you

gardener like To make it like gamified to make it really fun.

Yeah, like how far can you?

But if you're into the like indie or double a scene I feel like that's more even though this is a triple I like I feel like there's a lot of

indie games in this, the Triple I initiative just happened this week.

did happen this week.

was on Thursday.

I didn't watch it.

ended up being really busy in order to watch it.

But I am going to share my screen now.

I like this one.

This one seems like vaguely interesting.

It's being developed by the guy that did the pixel art for Celeste, which it does have really nice pixel art.

And the music's being done by Disasterpeace who did the music for Hyper Light Drifter, if you guys played that.

Hyper Light Drifter was my favorite game that year.

It's really I really like the color palette of this

Yeah.

It's very muted and I like it.

It reminds me of like playing games on my EGA back in the day.

Yeah, I was going to say it has kind of a retro PC feel, but tempered, right?

Like the EGA graphics palette was harsh, and this is a little more mellow.

I'd take this one.

Yeah.

I,

What is this one?

I didn't see what they call it.

Never way.

There it is.

Wishlist now.

So what I should mention if you wishlist on Steam, that actually helps developers in the Steam algorithm.

So yes, it does.

really want to support a developer, that's the best way to do it outside of pre-ordering, I guess.

Have you guys played Deep Rock Galactic?

have not.

It's really fun.

We'll have to do a team building exercise for the podcast sometime.

That could be a that'd be a fun special streamer or something like that as to play this while we chat about something.

the I don't know about necessarily Deep Rock Galactic, Rogue Corps, but all the previous are the original Deep Rock Galactic is just fun.

I I tried the demo for Deep Rock Galactic Survivors, though, during like one of the next fest, like not the last one, but the one before that, think.

Yeah, but that's a very different game because it's a survivors.

It's like a vampire survivor kind of style where this Deep Rock Galactic is originally a mining game.

If you yearn for the mines, like you go for this.

If you want to upgrade from Minecraft, you go for this game because you get to be a dwarf.

You get a badass dwarf that gets to mine through and escape big baddies and also take them on.

It is really fun.

It's a really fun cooperative game.

love these types of games.

It's up to like four player cooperative.

And so this looks like what?

And if you really like dwarves, you can upgrade the Dwarf Fortress afterwards.

That's true.

Who is the Dwarf Master here?

It was either you or Gardner, because I was the Ninja Master here.

Yeah, you were the...

I can't remember if it was me or Gardner, but that's funny.

Yeah, so...

it was Gardner.

So what happened, it was during the Steam...

Can you pause this for a second?

So what happened during the last state, what was it, year in review for Steam?

I had six...

Oh yeah.

It tells you your six must play genres of games or like Steam tags or whatever, and one of them was Ninja.

Now, Gardner was sports and you were dwarf.

Yes.

I might have been dwarf and I played one dwarf and it was like...

Deep Rock Galactic, but I only played it for like an hour that year, even though I played it a lot the previous year.

It's.

don't know, it's a good year.

algorithm is funny.

Was yours most played sports because of doodlings?

That's my thought.

was like, is he over there playing PGA or is it because of doodlings?

Yeah, was Tiger Woods 2025 or whatever.

yeah, you should talk about how Bill's also in Dude Links too.

Yeah, dude, Bill is one of the announcers and dude links and he graciously provided like I think the best voiceover at least compared to me and Emily.

It was so fun.

If you ever make more games and you need a voice, I freaking loved doing that.

It was so fun.

That's awesome.

I'm glad to hear that.

Bill sounds like legit sportscaster.

He should be at ESPN right now, not in our podcast.

Yes.

anything about eSports.

look at him.

he got the ball over to the thing.

Great job.

That's that's why you were so good at my game because it was it was kind of just making fun of like the artifice of sports

See, I'd watch it for that.

don't I'm not a fan of sports, Yeah, it's Bill just invented his own sport.

He could be the sportscaster.

That's right Instead of Madden, it'd be Bill just bill bill 2028 or something like that

Call it billball.

Alright, yeah.

Okay, tears of metal.

When I first saw this my initial reaction is this looks like Dynasty Warriors and I freaking loved muso games And that's what that's what I got from this where like you're

just running up and you are attacking and you're knocking down 38 guys with us with one swing your sword Mixing with rogue like elements.

It looks like from what you're picking up.

It looks cool

looks like it, yeah.

Not that you mentioned Dinosaur Warriors, that's a good one.

Open Beta is available now in case you guys want to play it.

It ends on the 17th.

Definitely, I love the style of that last one.

And this one is Sacrifier.

I looked into it because I wasn't sure what kind of game this was, but it's a JRPG.

I kind of love this like 2d 3d mashup art style like the pixel art meets 3d kind of thing

Yeah, like what Square's been doing since the Switch one.

Yeah, that is good art style.

Yeah, if you're gonna...

You gotta differentiate yourself out there.

gotta show that there's a reason to play that it doesn't look the same, I like the way that some of these more indie-style games are going.

Because it definitely looks fun.

actually is...

I like JRPGs, but I just they've been feeling very same Z lately and so Well, they all try to harken back to like Chrono Trigger and that's the one that they always mention I know

well that or if it's a 3d full 3d They try to look like Final Fantasy.

I'm like I have Final Fantasy.

In fact, I'm sick of Final Fantasy because they're not really evolving like they used to Endless what was this endless legend to?

I'm not really an RTS kind of guy.

I know this sounds like blasphemy because Gardner is.

But...

Well, we all have our different play styles.

Yeah.

Yeah, this one looks kind of neat to me.

Honestly, I I'm more into like the sci fi or or the modern day, but kind of retro one a lot into or like some fantasy.

didn't really care for any of the any of the Warcraft art.

really?

Yeah.

Did you play three?

I did, I didn't really care for that.

Because I loved what they did with the hero units.

think it made, it completely changed how you play RTS games and I really, really liked it.

Yeah, that's how Dota was born.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm more of a diehard Command and Conquer fan.

Nah, I don't really like Blizzard games.

I've never played a that I liked.

Starcrafts.

I know a guy that played Starcraft at a high level in high school.

He was Korean.

He was a Korean exchange student.

It sounds kind of racist, but it was true.

He was actually really good at Starcraft.

And he taught me how to play a little bit, but I'm not good at Starcraft.

Yeah, Starcraft's fun.

I got the Diamond League.

It's really hard to like if you take a break after getting up into the higher tiers, then you're pretty much screwed.

Strategies change like month to month almost.

am more of I do like 4X games where like they're all turn based and not real time strategy.

Those are fun, too, but those are time sucks for me.

I can't play them.

I really might see one of those I think this looks like the kind of game that I want to like and then I get it and I play it for a little bit and then I never turn it back on

again and it's not because it's a bad game it's just they never hook me

Yeah.

Yeah, just the hook man.

I like, I like 4x games, but I like, I really like Civilization 6, like that was super fun.

And I've been meaning to get into Civil 7.

But I can tell you right now, I prefer games like Rise of Nations, which is a real time 4x, right?

Like

is a good one.

I've never played it.

Rise of Nations is one of my favorite games ever made to this day.

love it.

It's real time and it's but it's like it's real time civilization is essentially and it's super fun.

Yeah, kind of like Age of Empires, but they had like that was it was very much like Age of Empires, right?

Yeah, but it it went much further into like contemporary and even into like future kind of speculative stuff.

Right, even their art had like a steampunk like years and stuff on it, right?

Am I remembering the right game?

Yeah.

was very brass, bronze, gold kind of mechanical stuff.

And then they did Rise of Legends.

Did you ever play Rise of Legends?

The same studio.

Yeah.

I it was more fallacy based.

It was was fantasy, but it was like it was like H.G.

Wells fantasy stuff.

It was so cool.

And it's almost impossible to play now because of like the weird like Microsoft dependencies that they needed.

But I've been meaning I have a copy of it and I've been meaning to like get it running in bottles and making a video about it because I love it so much.

Did you ever play Total Annihilation?

The last little bit on this.

No, I don't think I have.

Total Annihilation.

Go look up.

It's a very different...

It's a Hero RTS essentially, but it is very different.

Loved the game, and there's a lot of different games.

It's like a massive world RTS that had nukes and they're all robotics, and it was a really fun game.

Yeah.

What is this game here?

This is Frost Rail.

And honestly, this is actually a game I might pick up.

I like survival games and bringing it into a train that travels around looks awesome.

You know what this kind of reminds me of?

It kind of reminds me of Snowpiercer, the movie with the Persevens in it.

That was directed by Bong Joon-ho.

Have you seen it,

The train piercer or snow piercer?

Yeah.

Yeah, that was a really good movie.

Yeah, I hear Mickey 17's really good too.

I should probably watch that.

Mickey 17's so good.

I just got a notification that that's already on streaming because it did so terrible at the box office.

Which I've heard good things about it, but also I've also heard that the trailer is not very indicative of what like the trailer makes it seem like an action movie and it is not

an action movie.

It's a bomb Juno.

Yeah.

I don't think there's.

Oh, sorry.

There's so much to it.

I've I've watched it in theaters.

I actually loved it, but it's still kind of my idea for my game that I'm doing.

So those 3D prints like you essentially you have you store the consciousness essential like and sync it up.

then every time he dies, because he like you have to watch the movie by.

he's there to be expendable, but be but he can reprint them so he can keep on doing the dangerous stuff.

And that's kind of the the route I'm going with my game.

so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Bong Ju Ho's movies are oftentimes about classes of men like the difference between upper and lower class.

I mean, parasites like the textbook definition of that.

yeah.

And also a snow piece to a little bit.

No, this.

Yeah, Mickey 17 definitely has the classes in it.

It's got, it definitely feels like it makes fun of politicians almost nowadays in some form or fashion.

if you like that, it's a really easy target to be fair.

It's really easy and that's kind of how they do it.

So yes, I definitely recommend watching it.

I loved it though, but I'm a big sci fi fan and yeah.

This is I'll say right now frost rail is definitely going on my wish list because I love what's going on here.

It looks right up my alley.

I love survival games like this.

It's like Choo Choo Charles, but like, you know, not horror, but not horror, not elder chore, elders or Choo Choo Charles is actually a fun game to stream at least.

Ross radio.

You know what?

go ahead.

I was I was I was going to talk about how this is Moonlighter 2.

yeah.

You know what game on this list I'm excited about is speed runners to speed.

If I could show you my screen, it's the top of my list.

Yes, it is mine as well.

I have not played the original Speedrunners.

You're missing out.

So my kind of games are simple arcade party games and RTSs and speed runners is a party game to its core.

So if you like having people over and playing like a local multiplayer party game, it's very, very exciting.

Usually, yes.

Yeah.

Usually the party games I play when people are over are Mario Party.

That's the main reason why I still have the Switch for Mario Party Jamboree.

And let me tell you, some people say the Switch, some people say the Steam deck can really emulate the Switch.

And yes, but I would never play Mario Party on an emulated like setup.

Like any of the new ones, I mean.

And have you tried syncing?

Actually, can you even do that?

Can you sync the Switch controllers?

I think you can.

they're compatible.

Yeah, I don't know if they have all the features though.

Yeah, that's what I'm worried about too, and I wouldn't I don't think I would even bother trying to be honest

But if you haven't tried speed runners, speed runners two is going to be fantastic.

Think Mario Kart as a side scroller.

That's what that game is.

It's a 40 minute mark, James.

you know that channel out of the street so you can like

Well yeah there's channels but I don't know how to do it I'm here to speed it up.

it is so fun.

So yeah, you're basically you're running and you got to pick up weapons and you can use the weapons to attack the other people.

And as you're running, at least in the first one, the the space that you're running in gets smaller and smaller and smaller and whoever is the furthest back gets cut off.

And they get left behind and your job is to go through the same loop a billion times until you're the only one left.

Dude, that's crazy.

Yeah, and it really is you're just running in a loop.

And there are sometimes like shortcuts you can take and you need to get ahead of everybody else because you'll get, you know, cut off the screen like Bill was saying.

And it's just so much fun.

And it becomes like that, like where the screen is closing in on you.

And so for.

If you're if it's if you got four people.

and they're all running at the same time and it's just super competitive and it's so close.

That's the kind of atmosphere that I love to be in.

You know, it's just with tons of people around screaming and competing.

It's great.

So there is one thing I do want to talk about in regards to indie games and that's indie publishers.

So one of the games on the list is Opus Prison Peak and it's being developed by Indie Studio but it's being published by Shueisha Publishing.

And if you're not familiar with who they are, Shueisha is a massive company in Japan and they run Shonen Jump.

They own the rights to Dragon Ball Z and like...

Bleach and Naruto and One Piece and all of those.

So they're a huge company publishing indie games.

I'm wondering what everyone's thoughts are on big indie publishers.

I guess it doesn't I I don't I don't care who the publisher is as long as I get to play the game and maybe that's Naive of me, but if it's a game that is interesting then I the

publishers the like I care about the developer the publishers just who's paying for stuff So I to me I don't really care

James, a lot of the stream is just the post show.

a lot of it is within the first hour.

I don't even see it in the first one.

Sorry, that's the train.

It looks like an interesting game.

Oh, and there's also BlazBlue Entry Effect.

It's interesting.

Yeah, it's a pretty fun road-like, but...

And if you're a BlazBlue fan, it has nothing to do with the games, because the story is just its own thing.

I mean, this game looks pretty interesting, though, to be honest.

I'm not gonna complain about indie publishers, but I do notice that there are more and more of them, and I do like what they're doing, though, to be honest.

I do like that they fund these indie games to let them make the game of their dreams.

I think with with indie games, the appeal to me is that it's usually a singular vision, right?

Like it's like an auteur game developer and and they get to put their passion on display and make a game that they would want to play and share that with the world.

I love that about indie games.

And there are some indie publishers that support that spirit as well, like

I'm blanking Adult Swim Games does it quite a bit and so does Devolver, right?

Big Mode.

new new blood

I think I've heard of New Blood, but when it comes to big, when it comes to like AAA game publishers, publishing games, or Indies specifically, I mean, it's okay, I think if

they're like funding the development, but when it comes down to like where the money goes when the game goes on sale, if it doesn't mostly go to the Indie studio, I think that that

really bothers me.

Like, surely, like the publishers should recoup their losses, or their investment, I guess, and maybe like a generous portion above their investment.

like after that, everything should go to the developer.

I don't know, I just don't trust the publishers.

really hard because you kind of need a publisher system if you want to build bigger games.

Yeah.

And it also helps because what usually happens like with the like with certain games, mean, let's what is it?

I can't remember right now, but there's a couple of different games where

Yeah, games where they started out became very successful and then they branch out and fund other indie studios and then become big and sometimes they, you become like Google do

no evil.

Now they just do evil.

And so they do the opposite.

But I do think we harp on publishers too much, but it's an easy target right now because they are an

essentially doing what every big business is doing, which is short term gains in a destructive way to destroy and it destroys long term like IPs.

There's a lot of IPs I'd love like Dead Space.

It does well if they would budget out properly.

They could keep on making money every year and the studio would love to do that.

But no, maybe not make a game every year, but you know, make games over years and they'd be successful.

And so

They're trying to hit the biggest pot of gold and sacrificing all the way there, all the stuff that keeps them going.

It's bizarre.

I will say one of the biggest successes of this year was an indie game published by a big publisher.

EA publishes all of Joseph Fehr's games and he developed Split Fiction, which from what I understand has done really well, critically and commercially.

Spli-Fiction is awesome.

I haven't played it yet.

Yeah, I mean, but I've seen a ton of gameplay on it.

Yeah.

A lot of the bigger publishers are starting to fund Indian adventures.

Yeah.

Like EA, like I just mentioned, but also Square Enix, too.

They funded a game I really like called Little Goody Two Shoes.

And it's a great game with a unique art style.

It's a horror game.

So, oh, yeah, this is Deep Rock, the survivor game that I tried out the other day, the other next fest.

It's...

It was pretty fun.

I'd much rather play this than Vampire Survivors.

It actually looks like a game I'd play, just haven't got to it yet.

Does it play good on the Steam Deck?

Because this is one I'd play on the Steam Deck, hands down.

Last time I tried it, it pretty well, the demo, I mean.

My barber plays video games.

And every time I talk to him, he's always telling me how great this game is.

And I've you know, I've, I've looked at it before.

I've never bought it.

But watching the trailer during the triple eye video, I was like, Okay, I think they finally sold me.

Like this game looks really fun.

That would you mean the original D brock already played that that game?

Okay, you

the original one,

Yes, that's a that's a wonderful game.

This one I think they sold me on because

There's a right there.

damn it.

All right, so at the end of that, like, Showcase said it was coming to Steam and Steam Deck specifically, which is interesting.

Yeah, it shows Steam Deck as its own, like, discrete platform, guess, which is kind of interesting.

I think that's a way that they can coattail their way to, know, you look at everybody wants that checkmark.

Yeah,

the same thing.

Yeah, well, that's true.

But everybody wants it.

And that's that that's kind of the same thing, I think.

You can just press the left and right arrows to fast forward a few seconds.

we go.

Coming to Steam Deck.

That's what I like to see.

Same.

I've mentioned this time and time again, needs to be the standard for...

When they say...

Even for recommended maybe, but the standard for even the lowest that you should be able to play it on should be the Steam Deck.

from now on for games that are for PC.

sure.

I think the highlight of the show for me though was Katana Zero, still getting its DLC, still in development.

In many ways, this was the precursor to how Silksong, like everyone's been waiting for Silksong, but I've been waiting for the Katana Zero DLC.

Have you guys played it?

I'm thinking that we should have just watched this through.

I feel like I watched I played katana zero on the switch at some point I think And it's like it's a side-scrolling melee combat Like metroidvania style game if I'm remembering

correctly am I right on that

No, it's level-based and you have to able to slow down time to better time your actions.

And if you die, you go back and it's one big drug allegory, I think it was.

I don't know what game I'm thinking of then.

It's a good game.

It's one of the last ones before they start the post show.

I it was the last one, yeah.

Oh Clover Pit's interesting though too, it's like a blotcher mixed with a shotgun roulette, I think it was.

Hmm.

But yeah, they've been developing this DLC for quite some time, to be honest.

ASCIIsoft?

I don't know if it's just one guy or if it's a team of people.

But yeah.

It's not going to be so how long how long have they been making in the works on this DLC?

Because this game came out like what five years ago or something like that.

It came out almost it came out six years ago.

Yes.

So I'm going to assume it's been developed for six years now.

What did the Hall of Night come out?

Hollow Knight was like seven years ago.

Shit, man, I can't believe in the big 2025 we got news for both Silksong and Katana Zero DLC.

Hmm.

Indie games are coming back, maybe.

They never went away.

They've been only been doing better.

That's what makes them hard, though.

That's what's so hard about indie games.

And I have to skip so many because they look interesting, but there's too many.

They are truly too many.

And so I have to stick to my genre, which eating well, by the way, like indie horror does really well.

And I love indie horror games.

Yeah.

I like, I really like the first one.

I think that one was a big surprise to me.

How much that one looks interesting, how interesting that one looks.

Vampire Survivors is getting a free update.

It's getting a crossover with the saga games, the like, romancing saga and all that stuff from Square.

I don't know.

Man, I'm not gonna lie, I'm kind of burned out on like, survivor likes to be honest.

I see like, I truly see a ton during the next fest and it really, like...

I get it, I can choose to play those games and not play those demos, but like it really pisses me off when I see them.

I don't know why.

Cause they're, they're easy in a lot of ways.

Not, I'm not saying that like vampires fires, you know, was easy to make.

It's just once you see something and you clone it you don't change it enough, it's just, it's trying to capitalize on something that was super successful and you can kind of tell

it's just a kind of a clone.

And if they don't do enough.

change yet to just yeah you'd rather see something else it's crazy how vampire survivors blew up the way it did because i wouldn't have ever imagined vampire survivors getting

fully animated trailers like this like maybe even a few years ago but hey it is what it is

Some of it has to do with Liam.

Liam was such, like, gaming on Linux, he was such an advocate for the game.

I think that, like, there was just like this, um, uh, groundswell around the Steam Deck and Liam was kind of an influencer at that moment.

And still is, but like, it really, I don't know.

I think, I think Liam had a lot to do with its success.

Which I love.

Interesting.

Huh.

Are there any other games we want to mention before we move on?

Um, Blazable Entropy Effect is getting a Dead Cells crossover, which is kind of funny because the game is basically Dead Cells.

But that's...

you don't have to pull up the trailer, I just wanted to mention that.

No, it's okay, I'm looking through everything, just to see.

It was before Opus, I believe.

So was like, go back...

go back to like the 20 minute mark.

Oh, you want me to go to it?

Oh, no, I was just saying you were looking for it.

Entropy Effect?

Yeah.

It's based on the BlazBlue franchise and it's probably the best selling BlazBlue game because the BlazBlue games are like a series of really hardcore fighting games.

And you'd have to be kind of crazy to be good at those games.

I've played a little bit.

I've played...

I typically pick the hardest characters to play fighting games.

know...

I don't know if you guys are really into fighting games.

To be honest.

I'm Street Fighter 6 is really fun but other than that Smash Brothers and arms are my favorite fighting games those those are the ones that I like to play the most and

everybody hates arms so

I Arms.

I mean, it's kind of silly saying that Arms is like a super-combatifying game, but like, I liked Arms.

Oh no, don't care if it's a competitive fighting game.

I'm not going to compete with anybody.

I'm a filthy casual.

Thank

I I got called out bill for being a casual two on my channel.

So no, no worries.

they can call me out.

I am a casual and I will admit it.

I don't have time to dedicate to a game to get good and I'm fine with that.

Same.

I'm decent at first person shooters and games like that that are very competitive because I played so much Unreal Tournament growing up.

played so much.

Are you as good as Elon?

Apparently Elon Musk used to be a Quake god.

Funny enough, I probably could wipe the floor with him on that game.

yeah.

Yeah.

So I don't have any further words on

the Triple I Initiative, it's cool, they should keep doing it every year.

Yeah.

I think that they should do it every quarter because having a four hour stream makes it kind of hard to cover.

You know what I mean?

But if they did it every quarter, then like, because I opened it up and I was like, Holy cow, these guys gave me some homework to watch.

And I did not watch the whole thing because it was just way too much.

It's four hours.

I mean, yeah, the trailer only like the first hour, like first hour and 20 minutes to be honest.

I do.

But I mean, there's how many games here in this list?

Right.

Like there's at least 35.

Right.

Or I would say I'm not counting.

the if they did it every quarter and they just covered the games that were going to release this quarter, it would allow each of that.

Like you break that up into like quarters that list.

You know, it be like 10 games and then it would get spotlights on those 10 games rather than.

And those 10 games would do better.

Yes.

You what I miss?

I miss the ads.

Said no one ever.

the hosts.

Hey, there could be good ads, but I agree.

These are...

trailers are ads.

That's what's funny, kind of funny about this is that...

You know what this...

you know what the Triple I initiative needs?

It needs like a solid 30 minutes on Hideo Kojima talking about his next game.

His new Strand type video game.

my god.

or the other one that no one knows anything about besides the fact that it has Hunter Schaefer in it.

Because I don't fucking know what that game is about.

Everybody gets mad at me.

have no love for Hideo Kojima.

I don't never played Metal Gear solid.

I don't care about death stranding or any of his nonsense.

And every time he gets up on stage and I feel like they're actively wasting my time.

Because he never says anything.

He's like, I'm making a game and it's gonna be weird.

And everybody's like, wow, what kind of game is he making?

And then at the end of the 10 minutes that he's talking,

You don't know any more than you did at the beginning.

Yes.

Definitely I did I felt that whenever a death straight and trailer dropped I didn't know what kind of game it was So imagine my surprise when I find out it was a literal walking

scene like it's a walking It's really funny to because you see gameplay of people dropping like they have these huge boxes on like their back and they fall down a cliff and all the

box It's the funniest thing ever but like I Wasn't I thought it would be like an action game like no no no don't get wrong there are like

moments where you have to fight bosses and whatnot, like I didn't expect it to be like a Amazon delivery sort of game.

And hey, people love it.

If they love it.

That's that's good for them.

It's just not for me.

And that's not everything has to be for me.

Do they have like a piss bottle DLC for it?

it's Amazon?

It's close enough.

They have a deal with Monster on the PS5 where the main character drinks a shitload of Monster energy.

gosh.

No, I'm not kidding.

Look it up.

What?

Oh my god.

I don't miss ads.

I don't think it's in the newer versions of the game, but they used to have product placement for Monster Energy in...

It's like a fully modeled Monster Energy can that he drinks out of.

By the way, this episode of off the console is brought to you by the manscaped.

Get that smooth feel on your yeah, okay, so We watched a lot of really good trailers I honestly I'm walking away with an amazing game that I am excited for now but Will I be

owning it when I buy it that is our next topic Ubisoft holds firm in the crew lawsuit

You don't own your video games.

is this these are important lawsuits too, by the way.

So high tech.

You will own nothing and you will be happy, says Ubisoft.

So if you recall, it's Ubisoft versus two guys in California who bought the crew.

And Ubisoft says the plaintiffs have no real case due to a nebulous statute of limitations that isn't really defined at all.

and that it's caused no real harm.

Like, no one lost their...

like, no one was injured or hurt or lost their job or lost anything financially, so to speak.

That's what Ubisoft says.

But here's the thing though.

The plaintiffs provided photos of their package, which says that the activation code for the game does not expire until the year 2099.

So Ubisoft really screwed the pooch on that one, printing that out.

I didn't know that.

That makes me laugh.

Yeah.

Doesn't expire until 2099.

The code doesn't expire, not the game, obviously.

Yeah.

I wonder if they would have honored that if they had already delisted the game.

No.

I mean, no, they'll probably...

I mean, so Valve will honor codes that have been for games that have been delisted, but that's Val.

Yeah, that's that's

do it for everything because if it if it were if it relies on a server, then valve can't.

You know, like, for instance, Marvel Heroes, which was a game that was basically a Diablo like in the Marvel Universe made by David Brevik, the creator of Diablo.

That game was really great.

And then when Disney bought Marvel, they shut it down.

But the thing is, steam gave me my money back on that game.

Ubisoft isn't willing to give the if these if Ubisoft give these guys their money back I'd be like, you know what?

That's fine Shut down your game and give the people their money back.

No problem

Yeah, so we should mention this.

think we talked about this a couple of months ago, but Valve did amend the process.

They did add to their, like, store that you're not technically owning these games, you're owning a license to play these games.

So Valve is now upfront about the fact that you don't quote unquote own these games.

I suppose only did that because they had to because of a new California law.

That's correct.

these guys are from California, so that's why they're able to sue Ubisoft for this.

Like if they were from Virginia, they probably wouldn't have a case.

Yeah, so the I Hopefully obviously this is gonna set precedence to so this is good That you know like the 2099 it's definitely gonna make it so that games that we buy from here

on out is gonna probably be even more Sketchy on what the agreements we have to agree to so we'll see further on what kind of happens, but

I'm not a, really don't like this idea of paying money and not owning a game.

think ultimately, and I think I've talked about this before in the past, the, if a game's going to have an exit strategy of not, allowing you to, to redeem a code to do whatever

they need to host an area, like a section where you can redeem it.

Or if they, let's say if it's an online game, they take it down to have the server code available, everything to run it.

They need to have an exit strategy.

And it needs to be, it's really something that needs to hopefully go to courts over to make it into like a president's and then or into a law.

just don't like, I don't plan on laws being made of this.

It's just gonna have to be a president's kind of thing.

Yeah, it's frustrating because it's like when you especially when there's a fun game that you love to play and it's and you you played it like 10 years ago or something you go back

to try and play it again and it doesn't work for whatever reason.

It's like I think I agree with you, James.

It's like we should have like a culture in the gaming industry where it's expected that when you make a purchase, you'll be able to play it.

indefinitely on the machines that you actually, you know, played it on if it's Xbox, if it's PC, if it's switch.

And so it you know, I get really frustrated when I hear people say like, Well, you know, I don't expect I don't expect to be able to play it like 10 years from now.

It's like, that's you today saying that.

But 10 years from now, you're gonna have you're gonna want to go back and play those games, maybe.

And what do you you know, you can't just think about now, you have to think about

the longevity of the products and services that you use.

It's one of reasons I don't like using cloud-based games, because they're not going to exist 10 years from now.

like how often do you do you sit there and you're like, you know what, I think I want to play this game from a long time ago.

Like I think James was just talking about total annihilation.

I looked it up while he was talking about that's 1997.

Right.

And, like, here we are in 2025.

It's, you know, 28 years since that game came out and James is feeling nostalgic for it.

If he couldn't play it, because

the servers have been shut down or something like that, then that is a loss of art.

And I think it's important to preserve that art.

But until people start electing people that understand how this stuff works, because the people who go into politics or who go into judges, those people don't understand

this technology they have no understanding of this technology which is why we've seen politicians talk about the idea of the internet is just a series of tubes i know that

that's an old reference but that's the kind of thing that they don't understand what they're making decisions about

Let me, just wanna, I do wanna preface by saying that I am running for the presidency of the United States of America.

I will make laws where video games have to be up forever and everyone owns their games digitally and microtransactions are banned forever.

If you do, I'll find you a billion dollars, two or $3 billion.

It'll be great.

Ladies.

You got my no, but maybe

You have to show your face before you can run for president.

This is so good.

You'd look at the presidents before they were elected and then after at the end of their term, they're like the age like 40 frickin years.

Yeah, I took it be the only one that looks the same.

I'm just that good at my job.

doesn't even stress me out a day.

I mean, at the top of the show, I talked about Rise of Legends, right?

That's a 20.

That's almost 20 years old.

That game came out in 2006.

And it's like, I have that sitting on my shelf out here.

And if I set it up, I don't think you can actually play it on Windows right now, like on a modern version of Windows.

But if I had an open as XP machine with air appropriate hardware, I could play that game, you know.

And that's like.

Huh?

Could you not do it through wine?

I've heard wine is very good with older games.

Typically pretty good.

Yeah, I think if you do, I think the only way I've been able to play it recently on Linux is with Lutris, like there's a Lutris script that will get it set up for you.

But it has like a bunch of it's using a geophysics like it's not Nvidia physics.

It's like the precursor.

Before it got dude, I know, right?

So and it's using like a very like that same weird version of Direct X that didn't get a lot of great support.

Is it Direct X 10?

One of one of them?

I don't know.

I think it was 10, because I don't think I've heard very much fanfare about that, but I've heard quite a bit about DX11.

Yeah, DirectX 9 and DX 11 are great and DX 10.

That was during the Vista era.

Yes.

So I don't know.

The thing is, though, like you can play games that you own physically today, most in most cases.

But, you know, there we're in an era now where stuff that kids, the adult young adults today were playing when they were kids that have been have gone offline and they can't

play them anymore.

And it's like, what kind of world are we allowing to be created when we lose control like that?

I hate.

You're losing Creative works is what it is.

You're losing art is really what it is and that's in Today's world where it's so easy to do preservation With real world art like we do we we work we spend billions to preserve

art We need to start and I know there's initiatives already and I've talked to a few people about this but

We need to do a little bit better.

Let's just make these companies do some bare minimum.

They need to have these extra strategies of, if this is going to go offline, you got to include whether it be some source code or the server stuff, something to where we can more

easily preserve it.

It's not a big ask it's and I I can be a little bit more on the uncaring side too because I don't usually go back and play games too often but there are games I do The thing is the

lot of the games I like to go back and play are very mainstream for those like half-life I'm not worried about half-life never being able to be played because valve does a good

job of making sure it's always available, right?

Total annihilation funny enough It's on Steam.

You can play it.

I have it

Nice.

So steam does do and if the game studios or the publishers or whoever owns the IP sometimes will also preserve it by uploading it or you know adding it to steam and usually

when it's a part once it's a part of steam Not every game will work but you can usually find workarounds but it would be nice to have a little bit maybe a little bit more

initiative on steam side to make sure things work which Does help let's add

99 cents right now for the total annihilation commander pack.

Yeah, I mean GOG is investing money and preserving games.

I mean, it's in their wheelhouse, but I think Valve with Proton, they're they're working towards that.

Especially trying to move the industry away from Windows.

that's.

A big deal.

Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, I mean, I I just looked it up because I hadn't I hadn't heard of it for a while, but like.

Did you guys ever play crush kill and destroy KK nd?

You want to talk about an obscure old RTS game?

KK nd is basically like a command and conquer clone.

And I played that when I was a little kid and I was like, I was curious because like I haven't heard of it in a long time, but that's a game that I'd like to go back and visit.

It's thankfully available on on steam right now.

So I'm gonna get that.

But

If it, you know, like you were saying, James, it's like, if, if it's a game that's like obscure and it has been delisted or whatever, like, how do you, how does, how is anyone

supposed to play these old games from their childhood?

You know, especially when.

know, kids growing up today, 20 years from now, every game's gonna be digital, you know?

Well, yeah, and the games that the kids are playing today are Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox.

Yeah, those will be up the first.

games, there's zero preservation that'll happen there.

Yeah.

So one thing I do like this current recent trend is of people decompiling games and essentially recompiling them for modern systems, making them open source basically.

And I mean, we saw this with the very recent Sonic Unleashed open source port, which is pretty insane to me that they managed to get that working.

It's a great, I mean, that's probably the second best way to keep it preserved.

or maybe even the first best way.

takes a lot of work and we've talked about this in the past.

think Gardner's one that brought it up like it or some.

I it was Gardner that brought it up that it's really hard.

Like this does not work for every game and you have to fine tune it almost for every game because there's a lot of dependencies.

like so like the Sonic fan base is extremely talented at doing many things.

They're very not they're very notorious for many things.

Christian, but they what they what they really put their heads together and like.

actually make shit work, they can do it really well.

There are very few fanbases as big as the Sonic fanbase that can do stuff like this.

But it shouldn't be on the fan base to do it.

The companies should do it and that's never going to happen because the Pete like, listen, I'm not gonna make, I'm not gonna call out anybody's age on here.

I think I'm probably the oldest guy on the panel.

And when I grew up, the people who were in charge were the people who made the games.

And now the people who are in charge are people who don't know anything about games.

business executives that went to business school.

They're just, yeah, exactly.

That's the problem.

The people who are in charge of the wrong people.

And you're never gonna get that changed.

Yeah, that is unfortunate.

That's why we like indie games, because oftentimes they're the ones running the ship and they're the ones actually making the games.

More often than not.

And yeah, to go back to the indie publisher discussion we had, on one hand, I kind of, deep down, kind of think kind of...

Because when you think of indie games, you think of a guy in his basement making a game in his free time, but when you think of indie publishers, it almost feels like it defeats the

purpose.

But as long as they're able to move the business side away from the creative side, I'm okay with it.

And unfortunately, a lot of modern AAA games are designed where it's business first, game second, like, know, microtransactions.

Like, I think Sha- Have you guys played Shadow of Mordor?

Yeah.

Yeah, a little bit.

Have you guys played the sequel Shadow of War?

I think so.

I think finished it.

One thing that really got people pissed off was because like towards the last third of the game, it became extremely grindy.

But it so happened that WB graced us with the ability to buy microtransactions, which in turn makes the grind a little less unbearable.

People hated it because it basically artificially extended the grind.

Yeah, and like, it's like one of the like they ended up removing it and they they ended up moving it and then also lessening the grind.

Which, you you know what that tells me that tells me they inflated it so that they can sell micro transactions.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, that's like arcade level, like deviousness.

Like back in the back in the day, arcade games were incredibly hard so they could suck more quarters out of you.

And like that's kind of where the industry has originated and where it's headed.

And that's why I like indie games, because it's made they're generally made by people who have passion for what they're doing and the games they're creating.

And that's why I like open source most of the time, because

these unpaid developers just have a passion and want to make the best software that they can versus most of the proprietary stuff that you use out there where it's like they want

to just find a way to nickel and dime you.

But let me as somebody who does not make games, but talks a lot about the industry, there's something that I want to make sure that I understand.

And maybe I'm wrong about this, especially as Gardner, you've made games and James, I just found out that you make games too.

Here's my question.

If I'm making a game, and I'm going to put it on Steam, I don't need a publisher, right?

Right.

I really only need a publisher if I'm going to put it on consoles, right?

I think even I looked into publishing my game on Xbox and PlayStation and even switch and I don't think you need a publisher to do that.

need a public like publishers are good for marketing your game and handling a lot of the business stuff that you want that you don't want to handle as a developer.

But I go, mean, I there's a lot of companies that will.

If you're an indie, you can work with marketing companies that will do a lot of that.

Publishers are there to fund you first and foremost and to help you.

And like what Gardner said, then they also offer additional services like getting on the consoles and other things like.

But you should be able to get on the console.

And I think 10 years ago, different story nowadays.

They have a lot like.

They noticed, like Sony and Microsoft noticed that like Indies art can get really popular.

They have a lot of initiatives to make it easier to get it onto the consoles.

I definitely remember back in the day, like during the PS2 era, that publishing games used to be really difficult.

You basically had to have a publisher because you guys know the behemoth.

They made Castle Crashers, Alien Hominid, I remember they published Alien Hominid on like the Gamecube and PS2 like back in the day.

And they definitely had a publisher.

They had to have one to get a physical copy.

Even in the even in the Xbox Live arcade era, Microsoft required Indies to have a publisher in order to be on Xbox.

But that changed.

Valva had to have one.

I'm sorry.

I don't mean to keep they know you're right.

Half Life 2 had to like the and they do not.

It's interesting because they definitely don't like like Sierra went under and I think they were a little soured by that with Half Life 1.

And so, yeah, that's interesting.

They have publishers for consoles, not first team, I mean, yeah, I think.

Sierra fault.

think Sierra going under that might have I think that might have inspired them to make steam as so that they could control.

Well, that and also the fact that updating games was kind of a pain in the ass back in the day.

had to download patches and get it confirmed with your friends that you were on the latest patch.

Yeah.

And you also had to be careful not to download patches from sketchy websites.

Otherwise you would have gotten a virus.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It had a purpose.

Yeah.

Yeah, don't.

Yeah.

Fuck Ubisoft, by the way.

should have changed your name to like just off the hate console or off the hate or something like that.

don't know.

But off the hate train, the hate train like X, X, poor Xbox and or Microsoft that is and Nintendo and Nvidia and Ubisoft, man.

They get the the IR every week, which to be fair, they need to be called out.

They are n****s by hiring these C-suite douchebags.

Yep.

Well, they've essentially destroyed their companies.

They're in all these, and what I get pissed off about is like, okay, cool, I want the company to go under, but I don't, because then it hurts the developers.

Developers in the gaming industry, I don't know if I could work for a game studio in the AAA, because I already work in the software world.

And it's already a little chaotic with all the layoffs.

so it's always like a little nerve wracking, like, oh, is it going to be, is it going to be this time that the layoffs happen to me?

But game devs have always had to deal with this.

so it is, I am no fan of the way that these big game companies hire C-level execs that don't know what the shit they're talking about.

They don't know what they're talking about.

I will say one thing that I think is really good.

You know, you're talking about a big company, Square Enix, the number of people that worked on Final Fantasy seven remake, and then they moved forward to work on the sequel,

Final Fantasy seven rebirth.

And it's the same, it's basically the same team that's

almost unheard of in the industry.

A lot of times they'll just be like, all right, all you guys are out of here, we're going to bring in some new people and they're going to be working on this next thing.

And they are keeping mostly the same people, which has a couple of benefits.

Number one, it makes it easier for them to spin up things and get get going faster because they're using the same tool set.

They don't have to train the new people.

But also, like that's job security for those developers because they know

All right, I'm working on the next one.

I mean, I assume we're gonna have Final Fantasy seven.

re-release games for the rest of our lives, because they're just going to keep milking that cow, which I'm fine with because I love those games.

But like, that's that's one thing where I think that they're doing it right if what I've what I've read is accurate.

Japanese publishers, especially really good at that Japanese publishers and developers, I think do a fairly good job.

They have a whole other like but they have a in some ways an opposite.

They still have they still have a lot of issues with like crunch over there.

So much.

The work life balance is ridiculous.

like, if I don't know if it's his fault, or if it's like the company's fault.

But what's what's the guy who works on Smash Brothers?

Yes, Sakurai.

Yeah, Sakurai like that dude just like works like

He's almost dead and he's still in there working on Smash Brothers making sure that it's coded right and like that that stuff is crazy to me.

Also, the fact that they sometimes send people to like rooms to just have them sit there in a white room with nothing to do until they finally quit instead of fire them.

That's also not a great way to do things.

Yeah, I've heard about that too.

I don't know what to make of Japanese word culture because I hear a lot of the stuff.

So at the same time though, there's a lot of crazy shit that happens in Japan.

I don't want to talk about it because I don't fully...

I don't want to pretend I fully understand it.

I don't know.

It's crazy.

They have a very...

Certain parts of Asia especially, but South Korea and Japan have really out of balance work ethic.

in the sense of like, you kind of work yourself to death in some ways.

Yeah.

And plus, nine times a day you're probably working for Samsung because Samsung owns a lot of shit in South Korea.

Like they all like also have, they also make a lot of military shit in South Korea too, I should mention.

So.

No, you're that that is a very famous thing that we do here.

Yeah, that's why it's two hours long every episode.

Let's see.

So let's I'm gonna steer this back on and This is what we've been talking about game preservation and a bunch of other things this next article this next topic has got me

Honestly confused on what I want to see come from this type of thing and that is an early prototype of The Steam Deck was sold on eBay

in the last week, I believe.

And, great ad.

I'm not a fan of this, but Hi Tech, you're the one that posts this.

Do you want to give us a little bit of a?

I'm not really sure what more can be said.

It's a Steam Deck prototype.

It will soar for $3,000.

And we were earlier, we were speculating on which famous YouTuber bought this, because it certainly sounds like something Linus Tech Tips would buy, but at the same time, people

were expecting it be Brinx, because, well, Brinx has also been on the rise in terms of running Bazite on whatever the fuck hardware he gets his hands on.

We should ask him about that, too, but...

It's an interesting little prototype.

It's got circular track pads, which honestly I kind of wish the current Steam Deck had, because the Steam Controller has circular track pads, and I really like this.

Yeah, Valve said that they went with the square track pads because it actually gives you more real estate for your thumbs for the size of the track pad.

mean it makes sense.

have the you don't have corners in this one.

You have like an extra area where you can get corners and stuff.

Also, it looks like one of the it looks like one of the thumbsticks broke off and also it also the left thumbstick that's still on it doesn't look it looks very different compared

to what we have now because what we have now is our touch capacitive thumbsticks where you can put your finger on you can put your thumb on it and it does something.

Yeah, I was going to mention that.

Like if you zoom in on the broken thumbstick, it doesn't look like there's circuitry or wire or anything in there, which would lead me to believe that it's not touch sensitive,

right?

Like, have you taken apart the Steam Deck's joystick module?

Yeah.

Anyone?

I replaced a ton of them.

I for my Steam Deck Ola, my LCD, not my Ola just yet though.

Yeah, so I it doesn't look like that material would be like capacitive in any way that's inside the broken stick there.

So I'm I'm curious if that was like a late addition to the to the Steam Deck or because if you look at the actual in that article, the last image at the bottom, it has like the like

Noah highlighted the revision that that's part of the whole.

history there.

Yeah.

So you can see that's like the 13th before the final steam deck, right?

So that this seems like a fairly late edition.

I don't know if they have every iteration of the hardware on this list, but it seems much closer to the final version than some of the other ones on this list.

and

Yeah, I'm super curious about the ones with the black triangles on the side.

That one, right there.

What the fuck is that?

What is going on there?

It's a prototype.

I know.

What about the one that has the little handle on the side?

click on that, it'll bring it bigger.

Yeah.

So that one, to me, those look like modules, like that detachable modules.

Because if you look at the one just next to it, it's like missing ones on the left, but it has that one on the right.

And it looks like it's swappable between the two.

You know what I'm saying?

Like

yeah.

It's weird and kind of cool.

And so those teardrop shaped ones, I'm wondering if you could pop those out and put different modules in there to mess around, to change the controls.

There's another one.

The one to the right of the triangles has looks like joy cons you can take out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That is interesting.

Yeah.

There's a lot of I and you, I think, has a couple of devices that allow you to swap out.

The IE of three has one that you can swap the you can swap them out so you can have track pads or so can have joysticks or you can even put them in upside down.

So you can decide if I want to have the stick on the top or the D pad on the top.

Yeah, that's an interesting one to say the least.

Honestly, Hi-Tech, you should look into this more if you haven't done a video on this, but the prototypes are really fun to do a video on.

There's a lot.

You know what would be more fun?

Getting my hands on one of these prototypes.

You know what would be even more fun?

Honestly, that would be fun.

Some of these I'd like to feel like see how they feel because it's really bizarre.

I'd like to honestly interview.

couple of the guys on these prototypes.

So fascinating.

You want to try getting Lierput, Penelography on this channel?

That'd be awesome.

Yes, I want to know why.

Some of these are very weird and I want to know why.

Because obviously, they didn't have screens on some.

They were trying to test out certain capabilities and features and stuff.

They didn't care about the other things, obviously.

And so it's interesting.

can we go back to so can we go back to the actual prototype?

I want to talk about the top of the device.

Yeah, you the picture.

Yeah, you see the picture with like, yeah, can you maximize that?

So you see there are blue accent buttons.

I'm not super big on this color of blue with the black.

I don't I don't really dig it.

I wish it were more like a neon blue.

I also see that the buttons jut out quite a bit, a lot more than they would on the actual device.

It's like a whole volume.

It's a volume rocker as opposed to just two buttons for the volume.

And the power button sticks out quite a bit as well.

But I am super curious about...

is that a headphone jack?

Yeah.

That's weird.

It almost looks like a barrel jack from what I see, but yeah, it's a headphone jack.

It's weird.

I feel like I'm seeing lens distortion here like they're using a point five lens or something because it's just everything looks compressed

Yeah, I think this is like a wide angle smartphone camera.

Yeah, he wants to take a close up, but get everything in the picture.

Yeah, can dig it.

But if you look at the next picture, the triggers, yeah, that one, the triggers, look like instead of being on the top of the device, they look almost like they're at the back of

the device.

Am I describing it the way that you guys see what I'm saying?

I see what you're saying, yeah.

Yeah, and I think the analog triggers don't look like they have much in terms of like analog play, right?

Like they look like they could be digital.

If I had, I mean, if I had this, if I had to guess, maybe they were testing out something like pressure sensitive triggers.

Cause I know, you know, the, you know, the Hori controller that's, that's they made that works with steam input that has pressure.

Yeah, that one.

have one of those too.

I ordered it from Japan.

They, a pressure sensor.

Yeah.

They're pressure sensitive.

Like you can't, like, if you look in the software and test it out in steam input, if you look at the, like,

They have analog values that are tied to how hard you're pressing those triggers.

Yeah, but okay, so I played a racing game with this controller and it was freaking terrible.

Like you could not control how fast you were going.

It felt like it was on or off.

I mean, that makes sense.

Are you on the Steam input mode or are you on the Direct input mode?

I'm on Steam.

So I know those have pressure sensitive triggers, because I've tried them out.

And I can confirm that.

And I even recorded it for my video on it.

But yeah, they have pressure sensitive triggers.

But that doesn't seem like something Hori would do on their own.

It seems like something Valve may have contributed to as well.

So that's what I'm thinking.

Because these don't look like they have a lot of give or take.

They don't have a lot of analog range, from what I can see.

But I'm guessing they tried pressure sensitive triggers for like trigger functionality.

Also, I see the macro button at the bottom.

I really do not like where they're placed here.

Yeah, I thought it was interesting because it looks like it almost has like the the long single paddle on either side and then also the r4 r5 l4 r5 So it looks like there might be

three buttons there even though On each side, know what i'm saying?

Yeah, it's like the the the the steam controller has a single Long paddle you can hit with any of the butt that your fingers on the back, right?

Yes, and that's almost what it looks like here

but they also have R4 and R5 style buttons too.

It's very interesting.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense because valve, you know, with steam input, they're trying to do as much as they possibly can to give you options to play games that weren't made for a

controller.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, mean, they still need to do the PS5.

They still need to do the PS5 feedback trigger thing.

dude, that would be so awesome.

I know we've talked about that.

That's so good.

Have you tried the PC stuff yet, James?

a little bit I have I want to see I want to get it working on the Mac I don't know if that's what I have it it's probably gonna work like the dual sets features on PC I know

some games on PC you know feature like they have support for some of the duals

Like the first party like the first party Sony ones that are released on PC

Yeah, definitely.

But there are other ones like there are a lot there's a whole list of like third party games that use the analog trigger feedback

think the Call of Duty games support it.

Like you have different trigger resistances for different guns that you use in the game.

Yeah, and there's also like a thing you can get on Steam that like enables support in some games that don't support it out of the box.

So I have the DualSense Edge.

I freaking love that controller.

I absolutely love it.

It's so it's so good.

I mean, in the battery life on it's abysmal, but I don't play for hours at a time.

And I just plug it in when I'm done.

But I just assumed that 99 % of the features just weren't used on PC.

So I'm very interested in checking that out.

That's thank you guys for letting me know.

Yeah, I mean to be fair that is the case for a lot of games on PC.

the end.

But I mean, if a game is released on PS5, and it's also on placed on PC, there's a there's a decent chance that it supports many of the features.

Half the games, no, that's not fair.

80 % of the games on PS5 don't support those features.

Right.

Right.

It's like, here's this cool feature, but Xbox doesn't support it, so we don't bother.

Right.

Like, that's the thing that, like, that drives me crazy that Xbox still doesn't have gyro.

If they had gyro, then we would have gyro on, like, every freaking shooter that's available.

Yeah, the Fortnite kids are learning to embrace are embracing the gyro.

I've seen it happen.

It's crazy.

And if they in all this one, come on, come on, we thought we got switch mouse controllers before we got gyro on the Xbox controller.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Yeah, that's true.

All the kids are going to be using mice and Splatoon and it's going to be kind of scary because like

The guys that were playing gyro already are really fucking good.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm not super great with gyro aiming.

I still have to master it.

My years of playing Halo on Xbox has not serviced me well when it comes to gyro.

Have you guys I know that this is another aside.

Have you guys tried one of these controllers yet for the audio listeners I'm holding up probably the weirdest controller that any of these guys has ever seen.

You have an alpaca

do, yeah.

Mine's black and green.

Yeah.

So this thing, it has one stick on the left.

And then it has a scroll wheel for the audio listeners, it has a scroll wheel on the right.

And then next to that scroll wheel is this little, it's an eight way.

Well, this one's not eight way this one, because the original one that came out had like an eight way square hat on it where you could just kind of

point to say, okay, if I push to the top left, that's one, this one has a few more options on this, I'm working on a video for this, for this thing, but it's a really weird

controller.

And you know, the coolest thing about it, two gyroscopes.

And you might think, why the hell would I want two gyroscopes, they have one that's super sensitive.

And the other one, which is not nearly as sensitive.

Which means you can do really big movements and really small movements really, really well.

It's fantastic, but only for certain games.

Interesting that looks cool.

Is that gonna Rick you switch between it or is that like a game?

I'll have to support it and if I

No, it just reads it.

When you plug this into a computer, it thinks it's a mouse and keyboard.

So that's the one the one big issue with it is it's like press F and then you have to like which friggin button is the F button.

I don't remember.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Does your D is your D are your D pad also is your D pad also like four individual buttons and not like on a pivot?

Yeah, it's four individual buttons.

So it's not good for fighting.

that's the one thing I don't like about the controller.

But it is a very unique controller.

It's very cool too, I thought too.

You can actually, it's open source as well.

can 3D print the shell and it uses a Raspberry Pi.

I forget which Raspberry Pi, but it uses that for the firmware of the controller itself.

The zero or whatever?

Or it might be a Pico or I'm not sure.

All I know is that

I have one these cool, it's pretty cool.

I think they use, are these torque screws?

I think these are torque screws that they use.

You don't have to.

not something I could open it.

It's like a little it looks almost like Alan keys

That is, it does look kind of like an Allen key, yeah.

Isn't that Torso?

Yeah, you're right.

Yeah, prototype Steam, I want one.

Just to keep it.

favorite part of the prototype steam thing is on the back it says, not for resale.

Yeah.

Yeah, you think vows gonna ask for that one back?

They I wouldn't be shocked.

I that's the thing.

Okay, first off How did someone get a hold of this to where they could sell it?

I mean, I'm sure once they were getting to this level they were They mentioned in interviews that I believe that they

Friends and family kind of thing tried helping Test it out did like some family member get on hard times need $3,000 and sell this like What is going on and then that's that's my

first thing then too.

Is this going to do?

So if they have multiple versions, are we gonna have a version that ends up in a museum?

I'm kind of hoping

There's some preservation.

don't really like private ownership of stuff that's rare.

I prefer to be, I'm like Indiana Jones, it needs to be in museum.

It in a museum.

You got a point.

That was a fantastic impression.

Thank you.

I thought it was pretty bad.

That's really fucking good.

It was good.

I'm gonna do a new Indiana Jones game.

I'll get you.

right.

I'll voice it for you.

Oh, you think darkness is LA?

You nearly found it.

I was born in it.

Molded by it.

Yeah, that sucks.

Bill, I got a voice for you.

They're gonna go off the rails here.

Do know Homestar Runner?

Yeah.

What are doing here, Bill?

I thought this was the...

pretty freaking great.

is really good.

Raggy.

Raggy.

Yeah.

Alright, I'm done with my voices.

I can only do like three voices.

I don't do voices.

Every time I attempt to do it when I like in this type of situation always ends up being bad.

You know the most talented voice like imitators can do Donald Duck voices.

pretty yeah that I can't do Donald

think any of us can.

Unless Bill can.

You'll never know.

Yeah.

So, what's the next story?

Bladerunner.

Yes.

So it's actually not about Bladerunner.

That's pretty good.

It's about the company that's...

So I don't know if this...

I don't know if this document...

I have ad block on it.

I don't know why these ads are popping up, but whatever.

OK.

So I don't know if this article actually has the Elon Musk AI generated picture.

But so basically what happened was that...

Elon Musk for a promotional picture for the next Tesla.

Generated an AI picture.

And it looks strikingly similar to this minus the car.

Yeah, because AI is just stealing people's work.

Yes, and that's the story here.

Alcon Entertainment, the guys that produced Blade Runner 2049, is suing Elon Musk and Tesla for copyright infringement and trademark infringement.

So they lost the trademark claims.

That was tossed out of court.

But the copyright infringement case is free to move forward.

that's the story.

They dismissed the trademark claim as it was working off of quote unquote

information and belief, as per the judge, but thanks to that they can move forward with copyright infringement, which is arguably the more important lawsuit that needs to be

pursued.

I have two opinions on this.

Number one, Elon Musk is a douchebag and anything that hurts him is okay with me as long as it's not like physical harm.

But at the same time, I mean, it's a picture of a wasteland that happens to be orange.

Yeah, think there's a lot of ways that you can come up with that and not have it have anything to do with Blade Runner You know what?

mean?

Yeah

I I get what you're saying, but at the same time though, you've seen the picture in the document, right?

I mean I scrolled down I can see the two pictures there's one with a car and then one with a guy standing with a trench coat on with no car.

Are these the two pictures that we're supposed to be looking at?

I get what you're saying, it's an orange wasteland, but at same time though, they didn't have to make it look strikingly similar to this shot in particular.

Minus the car.

I'd rather have that Blade Runner car to be honest, it looks pretty cool.

It also opens up upwards like a Lamborghini, so yeah, that's the picture right there.

That's the generated one, Yeah, so I think this is objectively a good thing, this law, that lawsuit can move forward in terms of copyright, because I mean the main reason why

the trademark failed was because there wasn't like a Blade Runner logo on this picture, so that's probably why, that's most likely why it failed, but the visuals...

And it has been confirmed that this is AI being used.

So it's not like some artist made a picture that looks like Blade Runner.

It's an AI that did it.

it's going to

know, AI just steals.

My question here, if you look at that picture that's on screen right now, what does that have to do with Tesla?

What that have to do with fricking cars?

It's just showing like a cityscape that's covered in orange dust.

What does that have to do with cars?

that makes sense, okay.

He yeah, he has a big fast and I used to like that he did but he's lost the plot Honestly, I don't mind if he moves to Mars.

Let him let him let him have Mars.

Well, what I mean, he's not gonna do any harm there Mars You need to watch the expanse man wars happen That's a good sci-fi show by the way that everyone should watch the expanse

Yeah, it's it's car commercials commercials period can be so bizarre, right?

Sometimes.

So I get where he's going.

But the whole AI training thing that's going on where it uses existing art, copyrighted art, just so much to train it to them be able to create new pieces of art is

troubling because the people that are not getting paid for it.

there's some ethical like I it was interesting.

Recently I was contacted by a company that wanted to process a bunch of my YouTube videos for payment.

Same here.

Yeah.

And so it's like well it's a little bit more ethical but I don't know to trust or anything like that.

But it's like at least they're asking and paying for it.

That's

No, I hope you said no, a good yeah, I would know I'm a kid

should accept but you should make like a thousand really shitty videos well where's this you saying a single like letter and then it trains off of that instead of your good shit

and then you sabotage their AI and my videos prior worth much but if I did I'd be like okay yeah I have to be I have a big payday cash first to sell out cash out

so i can become a publisher and you know go to sea level or exact route as a business even published

I'll be wiping my tears off with cash.

ugh.

man, just don't pretend to play Path of Exile 2.

And also don't pretend to play it on stream.

It's okay, I don't think I'd play that.

I have other games I'd rather play.

I'm not saying it's a bad game.

It's not a bad game.

You know, at first I was kind of wondering why they didn't ban Elon Musk, because I mean, if they were any other person they would have banned him for account sharing.

But at the same time though, Elon Musk's getting obliterated by a tutorial boss in Path of Exile 2, I think it was worth keeping as a count around.

And also he was getting- Sorry, go ahead.

I just gonna say I think it's a good thing that they didn't ban him because he would have retaliated by buying them and then ruining the game.

Oh no.

Probably true.

Oh, speaking of You don't, sorry, don't ban your cash cow or your well.

That's what the term is.

You don't ban your wells.

He's a well.

They make a lot of money off him.

Yeah, so here's the thing.

So he's also been getting a lot of whispers from guys he's renamed Elon underscore is underscore a underscore pedophile.

And then the guy spamming his DMs in a

Path of Exile 2, you have no real friends and will die alone.

And you can see Elon's face as like he sees the message in his private jet.

And on one hand, harassment is not okay.

But on the other hand, I don't feel sorry for Elon.

But do you

feel sorry for him, but I think that stooping to his level is.

I don't like harassment, at least do something on point like, hey, stop meddling in the government or whatever else you want to do.

Like least have a pointed message that bothers him a little bit.

That's not just.

Yeah.

Because.

We he has plenty you can complain about.

yeah, well, yeah, harassment is not OK.

Off the council does not condone harassment.

And I think I speak for all of us, right?

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

But yeah, Blade Runner 2049 is a really good movie.

You should watch it.

Support the art tours.

made it.

Yeah, just realized high tech has an orange background.

You're frickin cooked, man.

You know this used to be a blue background actually.

I uh...

Oh shit.

Did it?

It did.

I don't know if I've ever seen it blue.

Blue?

It wasn't ever blue for you guys, but it's that the actual image itself is blue.

Boy, and it looks like you're getting ready for the next topic.

I am.

Yes.

Switch 2.

Yes, what is this, Hitech?

So there's a lot more Switch 2 shenanigans.

Last week, Bill, you missed it, but last week was Nintendo week, baby.

All of the time.

Yeah, but the look.

So there's a lot that's been announced since that week.

quite a few things.

First and foremost, we don't know if...

I think Nintendo has since confirmed that Switch 2 editions of Switch 1 games will be in, like, all in one cartridge.

Or at least that's what one source says.

Another source says that it'll just be the Switch 1 cartridge and a download code for the upgrade pack, which sucks.

So that was from somebody getting a hold of Nintendo support.

And then the other one, the first one that you said where it is on the cartridge was from a Nintendo spokesperson.

So I would trust the one that says that it has this stuff on the cartridge.

so we can we can we're not we don't have to worry about that point anymore, which is good.

Um, that said breath of the wild Switch to edition does not come with the DLC For breath of the wild you still have to buy that separately and I don't know how much that costs now

So that's a fact so if you were buying breath of the wild for the first time that's like effectively a $90 video game

Don't lie.

Yeah, I actually DLCs are difficult because I if I beat the game before the DLC comes out, there's a good chance I might not play that DLC ever.

Yeah.

And so sometimes I like to wait for complete additions to them play the game.

Then I'll play it with the DLC.

But come on now, Nintendo's not exactly a complete edition of a single video game ever.

do they not do that?

Yeah, they did.

when Mario Kart 8 was originally a Wii U game, and then when it came to the Switch, it included all of the DLC that you could have purchased on the Wii U.

What I'm saying is, we didn't get a Mario Kart 8 DX Completes Edition where it included all the DLC that we got on the Switch.

Like Smash Bros.

Ultimate, for example, has a shit ton of DLC, they never...

and that's like one of the...

like fighting games are pretty popular because they do re-release the games with DLC.

And yeah, Smash never got that treatment, of course.

Nintendo games don't tend to get this treatment.

The Mario Kart, well, 8 Deluxe is kind of a weird situation because that was a port.

I don't touch games like that very often.

I like playing those types of games, but I don't get the DLCs typically because they're just scattered everywhere.

It's a mess.

I don't like it.

Another Nintendo controversy was due to the fact that Nintendo, I think it was Doug Bowser that said that they understand that the Switch 2 may be priced too high for certain

consumers.

That's why they're keeping the Switch available for the poor people.

And you know what that reminds me of?

I think you...

think...

Oh, god damn it.

is this it?

what's wrong?

sorry, the- oh you're good, you're good.

oh this is gonna be a fun edit.

yeah.

such a edit for me.

Just leave it in and then sell t-shirts with a garage door opener on it.

Alright, so back to the topic at hand.

Doug Bowser said that the Switch 1 is still available for families that can't afford the Switch 2, which doesn't make any sense.

I'm not saying it doesn't make any sense.

What I'm saying is, all I'm getting is Don Matric vibes.

Yeah.

I love that moment when Jeff Keely is like, so your so your message is stick with the Xbox 360.

And he's like, Oh, no, that's not my message.

I wish someone had called him on it right there.

duck buzzer or well I mean the problem is that we're not dealing with Microsoft we're the fucking Nintendo and people are okay with Nintendo and whatever they want apparently power

world lawsuit no big deal the joycon drift no big deal and I mean shit man the switch to you I mean the joycon 2s they're not getting analog they're not getting hall of fx takes

And one has to wonder if it's even possible given the Switch 2's magnetic functionality.

Right?

Yeah.

That's something I didn't think of when I was when I was thinking about it.

But when you get the switch to and you just it snaps on on the side, because of the magnets, if you have a hall effect, if you have a magnetic joystick here, that doesn't

make any like it wouldn't I don't think it could work.

Is there a way to shield it?

I don't know.

You shield electronics.

Hell a lot of shielding.

You can shield stuff, but I don't know how much it'd be worth it, especially with that strong of a magnet.

I don't think you could fit it in a Joy-Con 2 chassis, to be honest.

I feel like if you put like something in there that was magnetic or ferrous in any way, it would end up becoming magnetic over time.

I don't think it's possible.

So that means no no hall effect, no TMR.

That's right.

You'd have to come up with some sort of newfangled

Please just.

Yeah, but Nintendo says that they made with made it with more durable materials.

So I might be the outlier here doesn't matter that much.

I don't know like I know they've had issues with the switch one, but That was you know, they remedy that unless you're playing like like they're absorbing an amount on the

controller and putting a lot of stress on it like I Don't typically have issues with stick drift with my controllers unless my kids get a hold of it and like do some damage and I

don't even know

I don't know.

I mean, to be honest...

nice to my controllers and I did get drift on one of my I think it was my right joy con on the Nintendo switch the one advantage like if I had drift on my steam deck or on my ROG

ally or any of those other devices that would be bad that would be real bad because this is a whole freaking device at least with a switch and a switch to you could take the joy

con off and just say I'm gonna mail this to Nintendo and in the meantime I put another one on there and be fine

So there is a good thing about the controllers being separatable from the main device.

Well, and that makes it even easier to replace the joysticks on it.

Like I might be an outlier here, but I've replaced multiple joysticks on switch switches because my kids and then also Steam Deck.

I've never had problems actually with the original Steam Deck controllers or joysticks, but I've had actually issues with the Hall effect ones.

And so, yeah, the first go.

We'll see.

Go ahead.

The first Gull kit ones weren't that great.

think they locked into specific areas on this stick.

don't know.

They've improved it.

I've used the newer ones, still.

people that really...

It does...

Precision and some other stuff, it does get a little better.

For people where that matters, I think it's worth the upgrade.

I think most people will not really notice, and it's not really worth it.

I think a lot of people think hall effect is just better and that's not necessarily the case.

Hall effect is different and less likely to experience drift, but it doesn't necessarily make it better.

I think it has to do with what kind of materials go into the process of building these things.

And if you pick cheap shitty materials and make a hall effect controller, you get a shitty hall effect controller.

And if you pick nice materials,

and build a potentiometer controller, then you'll have a nice potentiometer controller.

It's not necessarily that one is better than the other.

Hall effects also use up more power too.

That's part of why TMR sticks exist because TMR uses less power than Hall effect sticks.

didn't realize they used to the...

I don't think they use so much power that it'll like take your...

it'll like have your Steam Deck's battery life but I think it just does use more power intrinsically.

No, that is interesting.

The Hall effect...

yeah, I'll say this.

Hall effect...

if you want to avoid stick drift...

go for it, whole effect all the way.

But I rarely experience it and I'm at this point where I can just replace a joystick if I have to.

And that's usually due to kids because they're really rough on those sticks.

will say replacing the stick in the Steam Deck or other more modular devices like that, much easier than in the Switch.

pulled it, I took a Joy-Con apart once.

Could not get it back together.

no.

I was like, it's just so small and my hands are too big and I couldn't get it to go back together.

So I eventually just threw it in the trash.

no, you should've...

Yeah, it's definitely...

They don't make it too easy.

I've replaced a few.

And I can definitely tell you, to get it back together can take a little bit, for sure.

gotta have everything in exactly the right position and then you can close it up.

I could not get it to close

Just treat that one as a practice one.

You just toss it and like, this is a practice and go to the next one.

And then break that one and then just keep practicing until you get one together.

You'll eventually get there.

Yeah, if you don't have enough control, you got to buy one anyways

Yeah, get I can reach right now I can reach like 12 controllers in here

Yeah.

So one more thing too, the switch to will not come with a system wide achievement system.

What are you talking about?

That's not surprising.

So weird.

SheaBit systems are really fun and they're already being done on everything else.

So why not?

Like it's a easy win to just include that system that can integrate with and be more compatible maybe with other systems.

It's just an easy win.

I like knowing that I can 100 % the games I love.

I don't usually do it, but it's a few games I will do it.

Yeah, like.

Honestly, the main reason why I'm even trying to 100 % Pilato is because those are tied to achievements.

I know that I'm a weirdo and I do not give a shit about achievements.

When I play a game on my Xbox and I get that stupid pop up saying, Hey, you just earned an achievement.

I find it annoying.

I never go and try and do achievements.

My son does he thinks the trophies and achievements are cool.

I know that I am the minority here.

I don't care about achievements.

I still think Nintendo should do it because a of people do care about it.

But

The switch is a weird thing, because the switch is not always online.

An Xbox and a PlayStation, they're almost always connected to the internet.

And I wonder if Nintendo is thinking, we can't guarantee that these achievements aren't going to be like you'll do something in the game.

And maybe it won't be able to issue the achievement because it's not connected to the internet, or maybe people will game the system and get achievements that they didn't

really deserve.

Not that anybody gives a damn.

But maybe that's a reason why.

I if you take the Steam deck offline, you still get achievements and it still properly documents when you got it, I think.

It's been a while.

There's ways to do it.

They have so many examples that would be very low effort.

I just don't think they want like.

Nintendo does not do live services and do certain services very well.

Like their subscription.

service all their subscriptions are just garbage in my opinion and so It definitely looks like switch to will have better services like you watched Like if you watch the reveal of

switch to or whatever.

Well, like was like last week

I their discord like chat was kind of.

Yeah, that's what it was too.

I don't actually.

And here's the thing.

I actually don't mind how they're doing because it's such a step up above of what they already have.

Like it's so much better, but it is they just what they charge for is doesn't feel like you get what you.

You should out of it.

Yeah, they charge too much.

So I will say this.

Whenever you see a new game release on Steam without achievements, I guarantee you, one of the first things people will ask for is achievements.

the demand for achievements are there.

I would like to know why Nintendo doesn't do it, because at this point it can't be like a, they're just behind the times thing.

Because they basically fucking implement a Discord.

But like a bootleg Discord.

So I'd like to know what the philosophy is behind them not in...

not implementing it.

What discord or achievements?

achievements, achievements.

geez.

Yeah, no, I agree.

Like, I think it's laziness.

I think it's partially like they the whole their whole live services, all that stuff, except for the new video chat actually doesn't feel like it's laziness.

But everything else feels like just that they didn't care about they did not give it the time of day.

Yeah.

But what's weird, though, is that

quite a few games that Nintendo develops and publishes have like little in-game achievement systems in the game itself.

Like not tied to the system of course.

Which I do find, if they're gonna do that, why not implement it system-wide?

I bet you it would save on game storage or whatever, I don't know.

They must not have very good inner team communication or...

When you get into big companies like this, how things work, if you don't have a good cohesive system for inner, especially systems that would touch each other, if you don't do

a lot of meetings and design meetings and design the systems out along with the developers, you end up with stuff like this, personally.

it's...

God damn it, Nintendo.

Yeah.

So maybe eventually they'll implement it.

Who knows?

Maybe there'll be a system down the road.

Like it doesn't have to be tight.

They could easily.

It's a software system, the thing.

So they could easily implement it, not tied to switch to, but like a year down the road as an update.

So also one last thing, too, this kind of a small point.

They're still making switch to cartridges taste bad, which I do agree with, because, you know, kids will put that shit in their mouth for some reason.

The latest TikTok challenge putting switch cartridges in your mouth.

The latest?

they already did that.

I've had my son lick the cartridge and it was when he was little and it was he didn't he knows not to ever eat or try to eat that.

Good on the time for that.

Now.

That's a idea.

They should do that with micro SD cards too.

Yeah, you can also probably get a spray for it too.

Like get some of that dog spray.

I'm sure they Oh, yeah speaking of chewing on stuff.

Speaking of which one thing I do like about the switch too is the fact that they're forcing micro SD Express which is which is the hot so for those who don't know it's a It's

a faster version of the micro SD card and the fact that Nintendo is forcing it means that more of these will be made

Which in turn means that hopefully they'll be cheaper in the long run and that we'll get support for for Micro SD Express and like I don't know the Switch, the Steam Deck 2 or

something.

Yeah, Micro SD Express is faster than SATA drives.

Wow, I did not know that.

That's cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I don't have anything else to say about Nintendo.

I think it's just Nintendo.

We need to get to your favorite topic.

Bellatro!

Bellatro.

So Bellatr- the reason why I probably can't stream Bellatro videos is because Bellatro videos on YouTube are being age restricted.

And local thunk is not happy.

So they're being marked as 18 plus because of gambling.

The fact that Bellatro is gambling themed is definitely drawing some...

It's definitely exposing some of these companies for just looking at cards and just saying, it's gambling.

And like, yeah, okay.

Yeah, okay, it features real poker hands, but it also features fake poker hands, like five of the kinds, or flush fives, or flush house.

and tarot cards, which are definitely not real poker cards.

I don't know, man.

It's a weird situation that Bellatro's put itself into, and I will bat for Bellatro any day of week because it's such a good game.

If they can have gambling themes in like a casino themed level in Astro Bot and that could be rated everyone.

I don't know why they can't just do the blotter doesn't even have that really.

Well, you see the problem with pointing that out is that they did that.

This is a couple of years ago, but they pointed out that the NBA games literally had like a slot machine for their gotcha system for the.

Yeah.

My team or whatever it's.

and then people kept pointing out that Pokemon had a slot machine like back in the day, Pokemon Red and Blue, and you know what Australia did?

They rated Pokemon fucking 18 plus because of the gambling systems.

They retroactively changed it.

And they didn't change the fucking rating for the NBA game, which is insane to me.

Yeah, I mean even Mario Bros 3 had like slot machine mechanics.

Even Super Mario Bros 2 had slot machine mechanics.

Dude, you can't have slot machines in video games anymore, No.

I would like to see some data behind this honestly.

want to have them do a wide survey to really see what games they played in the past that would end if they have an issue or an addiction to gambling.

Because I do think it's amazing.

Once you're addicted to gambling, can really fuck you up.

Hey guys.

But yeah, I don't...

I don't agree with what YouTube is saying.

I mean, I might be a little biased because I like Pilacho, but at the same time though, I mean, it's not really a gambling game.

there's no...

Outside of there being poker hands, there is no mechanic where you can actually gamble money.

Like, I'll admit, in the Pokemon Red and Blue games, you can certainly gamble money.

You can exchange over, like, tokens, and then you would gamble those tokens, which I guess is textbook definition gambling.

which means Pokemon has more gambling mechanics than Blattro, which is kinda funny to think about.

Yeah, I think he had a good point in that quote that you put in there, Hi Tech.

Apparently, Belanger videos are being rated 18 plus on YouTube now for gambling.

Good thing we are protecting children from knowing what a four of a kind is and letting them watch CS case opening videos instead.

I mean, honestly, like, I think all forms of gambling should be rated.

I mean, even if it doesn't have like that veneer of like traditional gambling, which I would say that's kind of what Bellatro falls under.

I think that like, if there's actual prizes you win by luck based mechanics, I think that they should be rated like 18 plus.

But as far as Bellatro on YouTube, think it's completely inoffensive.

I think Bellatro is completely inoffensive and I think it's annoying that YouTube is doing that to this game.

Well, first it was Australia, then it was Europe, now it's YouTube.

Yeah, again, people who make decisions don't know what they're making decisions about.

That's what it is.

They saw cards and they said gambling.

Well, guess what solitaire you can literally play solitaire in a friggin casino for money.

What is solitaire?

Yeah.

No way, I'm good at Solitaire.

I'm good at card games.

Okay, well, I just ruined high-tech low-lifes life.

My life was already ruined.

On a previous episode, we also established that Hi Tech is a card counter and he's not welcome in many casinos across the United States.

Yeah, that's how I paid for my college textbooks.

gambled money.

Indian reservation casinos let you gamble at 18.

The difference is they don't serve you free alcohol, unlike in Vegas.

So 58 % of PC gaming revenue came from microtransactions.

I mean, I don't know what more to say.

It's oh, it's two.

It's $24.4 billion.

Here's what you say about this people who keep saying how much they hate microtransactions.

I think that they're liars

Yeah.

Yeah, well, I mean, I think that it's like it's hypocritical, right?

It's like I know a lot of people who say that they hate it and then they go and buy the micro transactions.

Yeah.

So it's like, you know, what what do you do about that?

If you you know something's bad for you and you keep doing it, what do you do about that?

Right.

Some people are like, we can't do anything about it.

But there are solutions, you know, like elect people who know what they're doing and make good decisions.

Stop buying horse.

Yeah, stop playing Dark Cyber.

Yeah, that's useful.

Gamers are not very disciplined and and honestly, I don't think I've ever seen a gaming boycott succeed.

Like I remember a couple of years.

I remember a couple of years ago there was a huge boycott for Hogwarts Legacy, primarily because of J.K.

Rowling.

And that didn't.

Yeah, of course.

That's a really hard one because the studio that makes it is actually here in Salt Lake and they're a fairly progressive studio, meaning.

You're just you're hurting developers that are actually fairly progressive and was kind of injecting a little bit of more progressive stuff into the game, whether people like that

or not.

And so it's really hard with these boycotts, whether or not you should do it based off of the main person.

Yeah.

Or if they've created something bigger than themselves like LucasArts or, you know, Lucas, LucasArts Studios games, you know, they've or even movies have gone beyond.

yeah george what's his face itself yeah and i mean to be fair the boycott didn't succeed either it's a hugely successful game that's also coming to switch to by the way

But they canceled its DLC.

They did cancel- so stupid!

Yeah, because they're shifting towards their microtransaction strategy for some reason.

Yeah.

There's also the fact- There's also a couple years ago- I don't know if you guys have seen this, but there was a group on Steam, like, a very long time ago.

This was back when Modern Warfare 2, the original, was coming out.

They announced that they wouldn't have dedicated servers, which at the time was unheard of on a PC game.

And so there was a boy, there was a boycott Modern Warfare 2 group that they said they would, they would boycott it because there were no dedicated servers.

While James, if you look up, if you look that up, you'll see, if you look up, you'll see the group.

And guess what game most of the people in that group are playing.

I don't know what look up, but yeah, I...

Warfare 2.

It's...

it's...

it's...

what?

Hold on.

Send me a link, okay.

Send me a link if you want me to throw it up.

I'm not gonna...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll do that.

I'll...

I'll...

I'll send you the...

I'll send you the link right here.

I'm not Jamie from...

Joe Rogan's thing.

There you go.

It's on...

Jamie, throw that up.

It's in the Discord?

Whatever his name is.

Um...

okay.

It's a Reddit link.

That's...

So, I don't think there's been a single video game boycott that's actually succeeded.

I think they recently tried to boycott Assassin's Creed Shadows, which I don't actually know if that's been successful or not.

I mean, I'm not talking about boycotting, though.

Like, I think we need legislation that actually regulates, predatory, industry activities.

Oh yeah, I understand, cause the gamers aren't gonna fuckin' do it.

Right.

So yeah, this is an image from like, several years ago.

Like, Steam doesn't look like this anymore.

Modern Warfare 2 was almost probably, wasn't it like 20 years ago for God's sake?

That was yeah, was almost 20 years ago.

Shit.

It's coming up there and don't that makes me feel so old.

So a successful I've been looking.

This is another reason I was trying to look something else up.

Star Wars Battlefront to the newer version.

There was a boycott and a huge outcry there and actually did cause some major problems with their cells.

they did affect stuff with it.

Is one of the like there's a few times where it's actually helped I think fallout 76 also had a little bit of like an outcry I don't know if there was really so much of it just

didn't do well because people didn't want to buy because it didn't it came out bad but battlefront 2 was they had so many microtransactions that I think they went back to it

eventually but They were going to my they were microtransaction out of that

Hell out of that thing.

Well, not just that but the microtransactions that they had planned also affected gameplay It wasn't just it wasn't just you know playing dress-up.

I have zero problem with people paying money Yeah to play dress-up if that's what they want to do in order to enjoy their game more if it doesn't affect gameplay fine Go ahead.

I don't care.

It doesn't affect me.

Go nuts.

What walk around is Darth Vader in Fortnite if that's what you want to do.

I don't care

That's me.

only don't like it when they affect gameplay and the ones that they had planned for battlefield to battlefront to did affect gameplay.

They took all those out and that game was freaking great.

It was really really fun.

On the topic of Battlefront 2, this actually just came up just now.

The game on PC is quote-unquote completely unplayable thanks to hackers on PC.

I hate hackers and cheaters.

They're the reason why you can't play fucking Destiny 2 on Steam Deck.

Or, well, guess Fortnite if that's more your jam.

Or Apex Legends!

Shit, man, remember when Apex Legends used to be Steam Deck supported?

Yep.

I'm the mythical Linux cheaters.

They're so good at cheating on Linux that they ruined the game for Linux players.

Yeah.

Once the steam deck and SteamOS is going to continue to get more traction, once it gets a certain point, they'll figure it out.

I think it's a money slash excuse for them to just not have to spend any resources on it.

It will eventually come back.

And that's why it's additionally important to install.

As SteamOS gets better and more supported, and hopefully Nvidia gets its shit together on that, if you...

When we so steam will do surveys like once or twice a year on your hardware, the more that we do that survey with steam hardware, the more likely that it will show that the

percentages go up of people using it that will indicate to the industry to start supporting it more.

In my opinion, there'll be a point where it will happen.

Yeah, so 58 % of games, PC game revenue came from microtransactions.

Now, here's my take on this.

This is a very big statement.

And if you actually dissect this down into, I bet you into what games they were, very different.

you're gonna get executives to see that and like, well, we should just only go into microtransactions.

Well.

You know, a lot of those games are very unique to their space.

if you like live service games in the like just the past year, so many have failed because people only have so much time to spend on these types of games, especially the ones that

micro micro transactions.

Careful, careful executives like what you you need more data than this.

If you dive into successes of like indie or individualistic,

games that are not aligned with this.

think you'd be shocked that actually there's a lot of success there too.

Hearthstone, GTA V, is it live or whatever it is?

There are a lot of games.

where they make a lot of money off of microtransactions, like a filthy amount, but they are very specific and it's very hard to get into those niches and into those realms to

make that money.

I mean, yeah, I agree.

I mean, at this point, all of successful PC games are already entrenched and you're going have a really hard time pulling people away from them.

I mean,

Marvel did it last year, but that was kind of a that's kind of a big outlier.

I know I know rich Still plays.

don't know if he still plays Marvel rivals, but for a while we he was just grinding the hell out of that as was I Well, there's the thing with that too is they fired didn't they

they laid off I think half like a big portion of that team.

No, it was I was

part of their support team.

is a team.

thought they laid off more than that.

But okay, yeah.

So if it's just the support

is that they laid off people who like were hired to do this.

They did this and then they were like, All right, see ya.

And that's just my understanding I could be wrong about that.

Okay, I could be wrong too, I swear that they laid off some developers too along with that, but yeah, I'm not gonna go any further out to that and try to say they did.

But it's still crazy how successful a game like that can be and how much money it makes.

but they did break out into it so there's definitely ways to do it just don't sacrifice everything else is what I'm saying to the industry don't sacrifice really good IPs by

either morphing them into something they're not to get these micro transactions or you know yeah really that's it don't don't don't don't fuck up your IP microtransactions

man i don't understand why wb is pushing the suicide squad ip so hard okay like first we had the suicide squad movie the first one with will smith and margaret robbie that one was

terrible and then they made the second one with james gunn as the director and that one was pretty decent and then but then they made the suicide squad game and like i don't

think if single person wanted a suicide squad video game

I think of a single person that wanted it.

I wanted it.

Before they announced it.

I wanted it.

It looked cool.

But they fucked it up.

They did.

I mean, here's the thing too.

I can believe Deadshot and Harley Quinn using guns, but like, come on.

Captain Boomerang?

King Shark using guns?

They should be like, throwing boomerangs and just eating people.

That's like their thing.

it just wasn't done right honestly if they would have i don't know i don't know how they could have done but they could have done it but yeah anything else or should we wrap this

up i don't really have much more to say to be honest

Yeah, I don't either.

Yeah, I'm pretty, I mean, we're starting to get into the realm of we've beat the hell out of this topic because we've talked about it before, but yeah, screw microtransactions.

But I mean, if you also if you enjoy them, if you enjoy buying like skins and stuff like that, I'm with Bill on this.

I don't mind it too much, but yeah, the gameplay.

Yeah.

Don't let someone tell you that you can't buy the Hatsune Miku skin on Fortnite.

Buy it.

Yeah.

It's your money,

Yeah, like there's some absolutists that are like you can't do any micro trends.

I like what I'm like, just do what you want, man.

But at the same time, know what you're supporting.

Like I don't I don't get my actions out of just pure I'm going to use this a little bit and that's it.

Why should I buy this?

So yeah.

Sometimes I have bought cosmetic microtransactions in the past only because I have like when I have played a game and I'm like man I have put so many hours into this game and I

paid zero fucking dollars for this game I don't mind throwing a little money at him in order to have my character look a little bit different I'm not against it.

That's the thing.

I just don't want it to affect

A free model?

100 % I agree with you.

If you want to support the developers, go for it.

It's when they start doing this, let's say games are coming out at $80 now, and then it's like, okay, well, if you want to get any extra stuff, you think that would come with

pretty much everything.

But then they're going to be like, well, if you want to get these extra little things, you have to buy them.

That's where I start to have a little bit of issues.

Or you buy the hundred dollar version, the gold edition.

fine with that too.

Give me everything.

Dude, buy the version that gives you early access for like a week.

You

Yeah, that'll really show them.

Yeah, I don't know.

Okay.

Well, Bill, anything else you have to say on this or anything you want to shout out at the end of this to kind of promote?

No, it's just you can find my stuff over at Nerdnest, wherever Nerdnests are found.

yeah will give the description down below

Thanks for having me on guys, it was fun.

Thanks for being here.

for joining us great great having a sports announcer on that's what you do right you do sports announcing That's your day job Which is awesome, okay It really is Okay.

Well everyone say goodbye and We're out of here Watching I take care of my bar Later guys, don't forget to subscribe follow do whatever you need to do.

Peace out