hey hey hey hey hey hey heyy [Music] n [Music] a [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] n if this is your first time or your usual time with us then welcome to Xbox era we provide a platform for the Xbox Community from our forums and Discord our main site with the latest news and reviews and our podcasts like the Xbox earo podcast and you have me at Halo we exist our focus on the Xbox platform front and center because so many media Publications out there don't we love this community and believe Xbox really can be the very best place to play if you love what we do help us you can join as a YouTube member or even better subscribe to us on patreon you help us grow and get plenty of perks to enjoy as a token of our appreciation just head to patreon.com for / Xbox era and as always thanks for sticking around the Xbox era podcast is brought to you by executive producers top torn Raptor and Lael [Music] Hello friends and welcome to the final episode of the Year episode 192 of the Xbox Z podcast Xbox Z the Xbox Centric publication funded by and for you guys if this is your usual time with us welcome if it's uh your first time well welcome as well if you love what we do you can support us directly by heading to patreon.com xboxer becoming a YouTube member right here and as always keep your eyes peeled on Xbox z.com for all the latest and greatest in Xbox news I'm your host Sig mechanico and I'm joined as usual by special Nick what's going on nice to see you man merry Christmas happy New Year all that [ __ ] yes Merry Christ we JY here as well as per usual I'm back on camera last last week was supposed to be the the grubs Miss but he wasn't feeling great so John hopped in to to lead things but I stayed in the background because it still was about Nick and Jeff's undying love for each other why else would a man so sick stick around for that long but hi hello everyone yeah yes very true and we we're fingers crossed on Jesse's internet connection tonight so apologies I know why so I had streamyard open four times and it was trying to upload my video four times that's why it was struggling before it's fine oh okay okay good but yeah hi I'm watching the Stream is fine I'm watching The Stream it's actually fine even though it looks weird for us it's actually fine it's my direct video I will always look and sound perfectly fine on OBS it doesn't matter what you hear or see yeah that's fine okay that is fine and hopefully I'm not too quiet can people tell me if I'm too because I should be very loud and you tickling red overpowering overpowering Everyone by the way not going to be our last stream of the year I'm gonna do one tomorrow night starting I'm I'm bringing in the new gears playing some Gears of War tomorrow night starting around 900m Eastern happy new gears is the name of the stream so you can if you you don't have any plans like me and the wife we don't give a [ __ ] about New Year yeah yeah I playing gears I don't care either it's just another night it's a it's a forced fun everything's more expensive you got to St up extra light and I'm like got to get smashed got to get plasted yeah [ __ ] all that [ __ ] I mean I might get some boobs for tomorrow but we'll see but yeah uh hey Christmas was been gone before we get into what we've been playing you guys get anything cool for Christmas um I got AR shave which I needed I had run out of aftershave um I got voucher which I spent on socks cuz I needed socks [ __ ] incred good socks good underwear incred important as you get old yeah Nike these Nike socks are nice they're good socks I needed more socks and I Al I also need uh underwear which I'm going to have to get but yeah I'm I'm an old man now so you get old man present yeah yeah yeah I got some uh some new tows needed some yep tows uh my my my M has some slippers that were very fluffy and I've always been an anti- slipper person because all the slippers have ever been bought for me in my life have been those [ __ ] ridiculous comedic slippers where it's a giant animal of some description and they're just [ __ ] but she said and then I I had to take the bins out I was doing some things she wasn't in and I just saw her fluffy girly white comfy cozy slippers and I just slipped I just slipped them on right don't judge me and my feet were like oh my God where have these been all my life so I got some slippers um I've got a lovely Halo infinite art book and way too much chocolate you know way too much to the extent of like I don't want to eat it all and if it's not all gone by by New Year's Day I'm just going to bin it I want like save it for Halloween save it for hello well the smaller stuff I'll probably put in a in a box and when the kids are like Oh Daddy give me have a special treat I could just like grab one then you'll find it all in your son's room behind his bed again you know what else I got I bought for myself and it n a Christmas present it was just a post Christmas thing that I wanted Hot Cross Buns as soon as December 26th comes here the Hot Cross Buns go straight out into the supermarkets and I am there straight away controversial Hot Cross Buns I don't mind a hot cross bunless fruitless fruitless CR Cross Buns fruitless my man my brother no fruit that's [ __ ] right cuz hot fruit is gross all right it's it's not it's not that the hot fruit is gross I'm fine with normal Hot Cross Buns like I until until they started making the fruit free ones all I used to eat was the ones with the sultanas in them but you'd pick them out right you'd be like oh TR Sal I'm not I'm not I'm massive fan of them once those fruit free ones came out I was like oh man apple and Cinnamon's pretty nice the chocolate ones aren't bad but very messy extremely mess it's all about the stand butter lovely those fruit free ones what about you Jesse what did you get for Christmas anything ex and thrilling and wonderful a couple of things I can sh are just behind me the uh these four Halo figurines ah yeah I saw this on Twitter very cool anything over hopefully so I mean they were just at I got I like a Rost or something something so it's a mix you've got Carter from reach and he's got different hands and guns yes I'm a grun man you've got Linda from the books essentially you've got the venor armor Spartan I don't know why looks cool very reflective and then finally from Halo 4 you've got Chief the wife just randomly picked these all up for me cuz most of my backdrop is just stuff she's bought like the Halo Reach poster and the other stuff that book that's I think also right there oh nice yeah so I got this one the art of Halo infinite which is which is very pretty looks nice yeah it's just it's just all the stuff in there it's funny to me in some ways that reading it it's like got a four word from Frank O Conor and you know and and a four word from Spath the lead artist on the game and both of them have been they've both left 343 now so it's like really worked well and it talks about how the engine's incredible and slip space and I'm [Music] like my son finally got Xbox pajamas he's no longer a Trader yeah well last year last year he got PlayStation pajamas and this year he finally got some Xbox pajamas nice oh I got blue hoodie I got Bluey hoodie and my son it's a father funkos Loki and who's the other one it's Spartan Mark 7 with battle rifle just an armor set okay he's like you like Halo and Loki I was like yeah I do thanks well looks like we we did all right we've done all right this year now one it's a good thing I don't have it here one of the because my businesss and I we were like we've got enough [ __ ] like let's not spend money like budget 20 quid tops right and I got her a cushion that is my face right from some place in China somewhere and it turned up and the photo they like like they lopped off one ear and it was like it was overblown and like the Mohawk was like really pointy and it basically was a [ __ ] monstrosity it was like the worst because the joke is whenever I'm not there she like kind of hugs the pillow that I sleep on she calls it the John Pillow I was like well here's an actual John pillow that was the joke but honestly if I had it this this thing was a [ __ ] car crash of a of a cushion and if you just zoom in on the forehead on its own son was like it looks like a Greg's sausage bean and cheese like bake like just the pastry L to the color of it I was like [ __ ] hell yeah anyway fun times fun times Merry Christmas and we hope everybody in the chat had a nice Christmas as well your present to us can be uh hitting the like button right now and that would that would do us we'd be happy if you really want to go all out and up the budget feel free to go support us on patreon because uh you know we're an Xbox outlet that apart from Nick actually plays on Xbox so maybe few support that yeah every now and then every now and then yeah anyways speaking of games I say that and then Nick and I have like not been playing on Xbox this week we been playing nick man I wish I really wish Jeff grub had not mentioned suer game cuz I after he started talking about weer game last week I'm like I haven't heard of this swier game what's thiser game so I jumped on the website cuz he said there's a web browser version last week and I was like okay jumped on the switch it was $450 on switch so I'm like it's four bucks I'll just grab 269 in UK money started playing it and I'm just like man I cannot stop playing this game now like it's all I've been playing I mean I've played a bit of Rocket league and fortnite but this game has been dominating all my play time and then my kids got hooked on it then my wife got hooked on it last weekend we went to my cousins for dinner and we took our switches there they got sger game and they got addicted and we're playing it all night and it's just you know I went there and gave him my old TV like I bought my daughter a new TV took her plasma to my cousins and I said so you know what's your highest score now and you got like 2,000 and something I'm like I've now hit 3,100 got a couple of watermelons um it's just oh my God it I can't get over how addictive it is it is and no I'm not going to say addicting the word is not addicting it's addictive that is the word yeah it is super addicting um oh my God it's amazing it it's it's a great game and there are like if you if you're watching this on stream and you don't have a switch there is uh a couple of knockoffs available I think the best one I found on mobile um is titled uh Qs monkey land what uh king of fruits that's the Android name um okay yeah I you know I what can I say I don't know why they've chosen that name but it's got the one that's closest to the physics of the um the the Nintendo switch version so yeah yeah give it give it a download if you want to just idle away some time do you know the story behind this game though it's just as crazy as the game itself so tell me tell me the story Nick it's not made by a game developer swier game so there's a company called Aladdin X and they make projectors right they make projectors that's what their business they make projectors and they made suer game as a demo purely just to demo their projectors that's why they B this game and then they just they randomly decided to Port it to switch just for the and it became the number one game downloaded on the Japanese switch store yeah like it just took off um and I'm just man I feel like they're leaving a lot of money on the table by not having this on iOS yeah not having it Android Xbox PlayStation just put it everywhere and you don't need cross save and all that sort of stuff cuz it's just a high score thing you don't need an account system Le boards why not maybe maybe cross leaderboards if they can be bothered but it's not something you need so you just Port it to everything like Ser I'll buy it on all of them I'll buy it on Xbox I'll buy it on Playstation I'll buy it on iOS to have it everywhere yeah it's a great little game come on like it's just I don't know how to explain it it I don't it's so simple but it's so it's it's Zen you get into this flow yeah it's Zen things you lose hours you lose hours like you're just there and you think oh yeah one more game but then one more game becomes two more games becomes three more games and you just keep on oh my God it's the dopamine hit as well when uh when the fruits combine you don't half the time half the time you don't even know how it happened you're just like and then all of a sudden there's a rock Bell in there and you're just like what do you mean and you just get so excited and it's oh man I so yeah like I said for the team that actually plays on Xbox uh look I you what are you been playing so I mean I literally I tried I was doing some I tried CH the kingdom again I can't get into it I don't understand the universal praise for it with how unbelievably similar it is to breath of the wild but it's still a good game but I had thanks to Nintendo sending over codes yeah since Nintendo sent over codes that gives you gold coins I use those gold coins I tried sua game I don't [ __ ] get it I don't know I played for an hour I I was like this is neat and then I was done I'll never touch it again I don't understand I'm glad you enjoy it for actual good games um I went back I was playing a [ __ ] ton of Halo infinite in its campaign um that game whatever they've done recently update wise runs insanely good on PC now for me like it used to be good it's pretty good but it was a little up and down but I have everything maxed out 4K no compromises everything and it was like a locked 120 like it it would have gone higher because my TV does 120 um Halo infinite still rules played a lot of Starfield oddly enough still really enjoy it after a couple hundred hours I'm sure once I hit well I think I get to get to 6 or 800 hours that's when you hop on Steam and you get a billion people to thumb you up by saying actually this game sucks I don't know why I played it for 900 hours I was so bored the whole time that [ __ ] gold I love why you gonna write an article about that uh what about how stuff sucks actually yeah the negative SEO star bait uh star bait essentially is what it is don't get me started there there's some there's some stuff I'll touch on later on in the in the show on that but uh and a lot of gear gears Miss on tomorrow you're gonna be doing a gear stream before the end of the year New Year's Eve tomorrow night which is tomorrow at time of recording um wow what a year it's been right and look this is a a show where we're not just going to go over the news of this week we're gonna going to dive back into some spicy topics from throughout the year and see if there's anything more to say have a conversation so you know folks in the chat you know send us your questions drop some super chats in we'll read them out on air if you want us to touch on anything in particular and revisit the topic we're open to ideas um we've got nowhere to be let's make the show a good one to end the year on because Nick said he was hoping it would be a short show which is immediately when it was he would he wouldn't mind a short show is what he said wouldn't mind a short show not that yeah you said you wouldn't mind it for the for the end of the year but the moment you say that you then invoke the fact that it would be yes I Tech I technically do have somewhere to be but I think my parents are not expecting me to be done at the time they want me at their place so fair fair oh well well hey look uh before we get into the news of the week if you've been keeping on on Xbox era.com over the last week you would have seen well all of our game of the year opinions go up quite an Eclectic list from from everybody I think um you know lots of variety in taste and genre across the team uh no Boulders Gate 3 literally came out two it came out two weeks ago and people keep yelling at us how no B Skate 3 is like mostly people who play on Xbox it's only been on Xbox for like seven a week by the time we were writing all these so you know we're not going to like jump on some bandwagon as soon as it come out play like a couple of hours of the First Act and just automatically give it a nine out of 10 we're not those guys you know right um but yes uh no Boulders go through but lots of different articles and uh I think there's also a bonus interview with uh the developers behind um the Indie smash crit hit cocoon so feel free to go check out teams I'm seeing it's all over the place and rightly so it's an incredible piece of game design um as I discussed with them uh but yes so lots lots of there and then uh upcoming content in 2024 just to briefly mention it as we come into the next week on New Year's Day we will have an article and talking at the camera video from yours truly on what to actually expect from Xbox in 2024 as we go over all of Microsoft's first party uh potential releases for this year that are known about as well as what we suspect are unknown ones so keep an eye out on YouTube for that one and on the site obviously for the article if you prefer to read because we'll make that pretty too uh We've also got a little surprise launching on New Year's Day for fans of the Xbox platform I won't tease too much but it's pretty cool and uh I've already seen a preview of it from our wonderful art lead predrag um and I think it will be a constant and enjoyed resource throughout the year and probably the years to come um yeah anything else I should mention oh Prince of Persia lost lost Crown review will be coming uh the game comes out on the the game comes out early access I think on the 15th if you buy the deluxe edition so it should be around then KN I don't know yet when it'll be and I'm also doing a review for this Corsair keyboard our first Corsair product they sent it's only a $40 keyboard or $50 but it's really nice they didn't give me an embargo so I'm just going to say right now if you like really good feeling membrane keyboards that are nicely made and very pretty the 50 the k55 core seems to be very good comes out in I like them for their quietness like I like my CL keyboard but the quietness is often useful um and we'll also be going back in time to have a look at hellblade one in a kind of r review of that game CU we never reviewed it I don't think we existed when it came out so there you go um yeah there you go that's everything um let's dive into the news shall we no before we do that it wouldn't be we should probably power up yes we should probably should prepare ourselves for for a long discussion of the news and what better way than with some control mate the new form formula as well which the Aussie's can get now or happy maam yes go to www.r control.com Xbox era and use our code for 10% off Xbox era and get this amazing I am I am shockingly low Nick you need to you need to let them know I need another bag yeah on once you reach out to Alex and ask him delicious oh yeah I'm glad I'm glad you're feeling so good um right much better ready to go news of the week news of the week um well where to start let's start off with some Sony discussion um the insomnia hack as it's now uh amusingly called uh pun has kept kept on giving some interesting details and Peaks behind the curtain of Sony's strategy and development um including a ranked list of all of PlayStation Studios games sell through in the millions of units as of different points in time um fairly underwhelming numbers there I think that's the big thing that's made people go huh you know but why would they be surprised well Nick if you look at the narrative across the Internet it's Game Pass that's unsustainable not standard triple gaming not even that it's it's more so that we kept saying PlayStations don't sell for their exclusives that's not why people are buying PlayStations and those numbers show it like if you look at the top three if you look at the top three Horizon zero Dawn Spider-Man and God of War heavily bundled yeah and Horizon zero Dawn's been sold for 10 bucks 15 bucks for the look cuz remember Sony even pointed out in one of their slides about we need to sell this many million at full price so they acknowledge that some of their games sell at a discount Horizon zero Dawn is constantly sold at a very very cheap price for the complete edition and that game was bundled almost from the start so it makes sense that it's right up there yeah but a lot of those numbers are just man I was very happy to see Killzone shadow Fall above Killzone 2 very very very happy and the order was above Kill Zone 2 which was amazing um cuz Killzone 2 is just this overrated Vaseline infused mess of a game um but yeah but my take away from that list was that like we've always said PlayStations don't sell for their exclusives like you've got your exceptions don't get me wrong I'm sure a ton of people bought PS4s for Spider-Man my cousin did yeah he bought a PS4 just for Spider-Man and so but that's one that's one game like PlayStations and Xboxes sell based on things like momentum like the PS4 is a perfect example of the fact that people were just buying it to buy it same with the PS5 now the PS5 has [ __ ] all games yet people are still buying it on mass why y because that's just the console you buy you buy the PS5 if you want your big boy console like that that's the console you buy because you know apparently Nintendo's for kids one of the issues with that is it's people a lot of people are buying them but it's right around what they had with the PS4 it's like it's not going up which has been the thing for them like their actual user base in their sales and everything for them is and it's actually going down their Maus are down in the last three years despite oh they out sold Xbox 3 to1 but then Xbox's Maus are actually up because they're diversifying and going everywhere instead of just trying to steal more audience from this very small overall console pie instead of going after every everyone else's pie essentially yeah like fundamentally for me if if if the if the narrative is PlayStation exclusive sell the console and the consoles are selling 100 million units or 85 million I think for the PS3 the PS3 was 85 PS4 155 even something crazy for PS2 right yeah why isn't there like one or two games that are [ __ ] crazy like yep exact because the majority of players play FIFA and cod and that's the people used to get upset at me people used to get upset at me when I said that the PS2 first party was [ __ ] all on PS 2 there was hardly any PS2 games in that list console that sold 150 million and there's hardly any PS2 games on that least like the PS2 was a third party machine I don't know why people get so upset when you say that like it was literally when whenever you ask someone what's your most memorable games on PS2 they start spouting off all these third party games like hardly anyone mentions any first party games I I love Jack and Daxter yeah but my my favorites are Virtual Fighter for Evo Maximo um like it's it's a third party machine it always was it's it's just a weird one to me like The Last of Us Part Two right 10 million not even it was like 9 something no no no I'm looking at the list right now last was part two I thought it was like 9 on the nose 10 on the nose but I'm like what was the budget on that 200 200 200 250 mil two something 200 mil or something that was 10 on the nose and they haven't they haven't updated it they they that's one that's not really up to date probably because it just didn't keep going up but this is the thing if if if we're living in an industry where one miss one miss you've just spunked 250 million congrats and it's not even that it's a Miss it's not even that it's a Miss because 10 million is a lot of copies on the surface yeah yeah I'm not saying that is a Miss that's not what I'm saying but if you if you spend 250 million you only sell two you're in trouble yeah and if you do that three or four time you're in real trouble like well they said they needed to sell 7.2 million of Spider-Man at full price to break even insane to break even not to make a lot of money to break even crazy that's nuts like and I I forgot about that uh bisen Triscuit in the chat was like FYI Nick Horizon zero Dawn was given away for free during lockdown I completely forgot about that it was given away for free and I wouldn't be surprised if they count those copies in the sold copies to fluff up those numbers also got a super chat from another biscuit yeah brisket for the biscuit because casuals don't know any better well that that's the whole point of a casual that's what I mean like the the it's hit that point like we've said Microsoft stuffed up the wrong generation and have now allowed PlayStation to become the default console between those two again got to exclude Nintendo cuz Nintendo don't count but they've become PlayStation's become the default console now people just buy it to buy it it's not like they're going oh man I got to have those bangers got to they're all buying Cod and FIFA on it that's all they're buying on it and they're playing fortnite and they're playing rocket league and they're playing they're not buying it for the games they they never have not on PS1 not on PS2 not on PS actually the the funny thing is my favorite PlayStation the PlayStation 3 see how many games it had on the list so the lowest selling PlayStation console which still sold 85 million and look how many games it had on that list had I think more than the PS2 did because the PS3 was when Sony first party was actually at their best and putting out variety and putting out cool stuff and the PS3 has a surprising number of games on that list but as someone else mentioned in the chat PS2 was also a cheap DVD player yeah PS3 PS3 was also a cheap Blu-ray player y that that fluffed up their numbers a little bit as well um interesting to me like even the PS3 games that you're mentioning here like a lot of them are in the two three and four million copies yeah like [ __ ] MotorStorm Pacific Rift only sold one million copies and and Xbox Xbox would be in the same boat Xbox would have a lot of games like that that only sell a couple of Mill a mill here cuz again 1.2 that's it yep I was one of them I bought Infamous I mean I mean there are dates let's be fair here there are dates as of here and some of these haven't been updated since 2007 or yeah but they'd be relevant to games that came out around then yeah I suppose that's true that's let's be honest again on Xbox and Playstation sales are front loaded games on PlayStation and Xbox generally don't have tals like Nintendo's games do nor do they have the revenue tail because Nintendo's keep their value way more than anyone else yes that's Jesse I think that's Jesse's dishes in the background hear the tap going yeah yeah um but yeah it's I mean nothing surprised me in that list I I was happy to see some things like where Shadow Fall was and all that sort of stuff like um but nothing really shocked me like none of it like and anything people might use as a oh well this game did this well you're pointing at an exception it's an exception it's not a rule like very surprised to not see games in the in the 40s and 50s considering the user base of the console no because that's not how it's not how PlayStation's work it's it's never and again it's not a knock it's not a knock on Playstation can't help what people choose to buy their console for it just it is what it is people buying Nintendo consoles to play Nintendo's games and that's because Nintendo consoles never have third party content like all you can get is first party content on Nintendo cons true which is what you see 20 30 million 40 50 Mario Kart 8 just continues to sell it's at like 58 million or something like that like someone put a side by side a PlayStation fan account mind you I I gave them a follow out of respect I I respect I respect people that have a preferred platform but are more than happy to see the flaws and the the reality of that platform and I this account the one that actually posted the list I gave him a follow man cuz he was clearly a PlayStation fan but he was more than happy to be like yeah well PlayStation fans only buy one type of game third person over the shoulder blah blah blah blah I'm like man Kudos yeah gave him a follow um it makes it makes the number like what was it I think it was forizon five like yes I acknowledge it's in Game Pass so these aren't sales but the fact that that ticks over what is it 305 million or something like people that have actually played it and have played enough to tick it into the into the leaderboard I mean that's but even Forza we know it sold close to 10 million or more because the premium addition or something like the player numbers in the first week the player numbers in the first week were like seven or 8 million and you can only have that cuz it was early access which means you have to have bought bought gold or bought the gold upgrade yeah yeah which drove people insane that's the thing like I wish this was a I wish this was a revenue list because that is the actual important thing cuz the number people are just used to numbers being big like oh console sale numbers are big they must be doing well even though they're not or this game sold a ton it must have been their best seller but like the actual how much sold when it was full price and over time would be way more interesting than just these flat numbers though these flat numbers are Illuminating on furthering the points we tried to make about the platform in the past yeah it's it's very interesting let's not wax LC about it's play no but one thing I wanted to mention that that account on Twitter posted a side by side of just switch top sellers just the switch not every other Nintendo platform just the switch and put it side by side with all of PlayStation and the switch just trounced it yeah just absolutely and that didn't include the Wii which sold over 100 million and that had games that sold in the tens 20s 30 Millions even even the GameCube and the wi like the Wii U right the Wii U Nintendo's biggest ever flop in terms of its major home consoles sold as pretty much as low as the Dreamcast yeah the Wii U their biggest failure even on that console Mario Cart 8 sold 8 million on a console in store base of 12 it's snuts I mean that is that that's got to be the best attach rate of just about any game ever in history yeah and that is what I'm saying people buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games yeah and I think more Publishers now and more indie game developers are realizing that uh I think in general Xbox customers buy more games regardless of Game Pass they generally no they always have buy a variety of games and spendy that was one of the points I made last week was while Sony has the Apple Prestige they have the Android payers and Xbox has the Android Prestige but the Apple payers like they just you get more per customer entally but Ubisoft used to always put out that data that show that they made more money per user on Xbox and I think EA at one stage was saying the same thing thing like that's just again that's not a knock on Playstation it's a it's the result of being the default casual console that everyone just buys to buy that that's what happens they buy their PlayStation because that's all they know PlayStation they buy Cod and FIFA and that's it and they don't they don't really give much more money beyond that yeah that again there's nothing wrong with that that's how they continue to sell 100 million consoles every generation it BLS my mind when I meet uh friends friends of family and stuff that perhaps don't know me particularly and and they get chatting about games and something you know Xbox era comes up and then they're always like oh you know I I I have a PlayStation I was that's cool you know and then we get into like some discussion and I'm like did you did you know about Game Pass and they're like what I'm like oh I don't I don't have to buy and then they're like what I was like yeah I just I just I just pay this much I mean a I don't even have to really pay that but I I do this and this is what I get my kid gets and they're like and they're like what like how all these games I'm like yeah last time you told this story you got clipped for it did I I reckon you yeah you're I reckon you're gonna get clipped again in what in what regard did I get clipped for it yeah you did this conversation at Christmas with my partner's son's dad and he's like what fig yeah I again I hope people don't take any of what we've said as an attack it's not an attack on Playstation it's just stating what it is it's just stating the reality it's not a knock on their games it's plenty of great games don't sell it's not a knock on their games it's not a knock on anything it's just you know observing the reality of the the situation it's just it's a byproduct of being the default console yeah people just buy it to buy it and then I've got little cousins who went and bought PS4s and all they ever played on it was fortnite yeah but then I have another cousin who was always Xbox bought a PlayStation 4 just for Spider-Man he's a massive Spider-Man fan in general like has always been obsessed with Spider-Man since he was very little so when a Spider-Man game came he had to get a PS4 to be able to play Spider-Man so you have your exceptions to the rule and Spider-Man was always going to be that yeah um but yeah interesting stuff interesting stuff but yeah on the subject of sales though one of the other uh news titbits that dropped this week was uh steam dropped their Platinum sellers list and would you believe it mixed the worst game ever the worst game ever made SEO Fe bu was in the steam top 12 in fact despite Game Pass existing many Xbox games were on the top 12 steam list uh Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 yep sorry folks it is a Microsoft first party game Starfield now it just oh man it cracks me up Starfield like anyone who watches this show will know that I could not give less of a [ __ ] about Starfield check check my gamertag never touch the game yeah no interest like I I don't understand right why can't you be like me if you hate Starfield just stop talking about it just stop talking about it I don't understand why everyone wants to talk about a game they supposedly don't like and then you got these other people that are like I put 150 hours into this game and I hate it50 is on the L A lot of them are like 800 nearly 900 hours played and then they put the end don't recommend this [Laughter] game oh dear but yeah when I say the list like Starfield and um Starfield and and Modern Warfare 3 are in the Platinum right it's the best best of the 12 and then later on down the list you've got fora Horizon 5 at the silver level um sea of Thieves 2023 Edition in there um another game I I don't play yeah yeah it's yeah 5 don't play bronze you had Spider-Man remastered in their uh Skyrim still in the bronze selling list $6.99 on Steam right now but see see that's the thing I like I saw some of those PlayStation PC sales I understand why most of those PlayStation games don't sell the greatest on PC is because they put them on PC so long after the fact like people just don't care by that time once PlayStation starts to put their games day and date on PC you'll see much better sales which they will yes you'll see much better sales and Sony knows that deep down but they've got their Fanboys to worry about jumping off Bridges when that happens um got super from the man with a million I I want to talk about this cuz I had noticed that and then Rand sent me a DM with a couple of other accounts that were doing it and I want to talk about it when we when we are done with this topic we use the Super Chat seg into that topic yeah yeah yeah um but what else sold on Steam swier game yeah no I think it's not on there what we got what do we got game's not even on there I'm not it's not on there uh cyber Punk was in the Platinum counter stri 2 obviously pubg Destiny 2 PlayStation first party title in the in the plan list Hogwarts Legacy balder's gate uh sons of the forest Apex Legends Dota 2 lost Arc don't I've never even heard of that One Last Arc is I think it's like a Diablo is MMO RPG type thing MMO RPG very big huge game um gold Red Dead Grand Theft Auto Elden ring ah red dead Rainbow Six Siege res animation de there's quite a few there's quite a few Xbox and Game Pass games in like grounded is in there and the foras and it's uh but people still buy games even though I buy games that are on Xbox when they go on sale that's the best way to do it so you get to play it day one on Game Pass and then when it goes on sale for 30 bucks 20 bucks 10 bucks you buy it I bought Crackdown 3 one of the greatest games ever Crackdown three is so good I tried to go back to Crackdown one and two and I couldn't do it I tried going back to them they're not really bad they're not bad I just prefer the movement and feeling in three so much more with three feels nicer yeah way harder to go back to one and two now they have to make a four like get now under new Xbox give Crackdown one last chance under new Xbox under new Xbox with a good Dev not that sumo's not a good Dev but they were handed a [ __ ] show and had to make do with whatever they could of that [ __ ] show so even if Sumo does it again that's fine but just give a Dev the time the budget under new Xbox new leadership and just give us one last crack pdon the pun down a Crackdown a Crackdown a four and oh my God like I just imagine like an Xbox showcase and the screen goes black and all of a sudden you hear [Music] that static oh my God we would I would have to mute you for the rest of that trailer because you'd be screaming so loud oh that be so good be so good okay brilliant so anyway do we go with the Super Chat okay we got super chat from Rand Nick John and Jesse what's up with all these X PlayStation devs that are now Insiders on Twitter that know everything Xbox is doing oh my God so yes examples everyone's doing they know it's incredible this is yes this is a very recent Trend right and let me explain how all this works so out of nowhere right just out of nowhere all of a sudden this was not long after it was more I think I noticed that after PlayStation had their disappointing showcases and state of plays and whatever what all of a sudden all of all of a sudden there's the super secret one that's coming at the end of this show it's hidden in the external power brick yeah it's in the hidden dgpu GPU that was the time those Xbox Fanboys clinging onto the Xbox one it's got secret power onest look so after not long after the disappointing PlayStation shows all of a sudden these accounts started appearing on Twitter from these X and that's the pat that's the key that's the that's the secret if you want to know it's [ __ ] they're all X PlayStation devs and I'll explain it and all of a sudden these ex PlayStation devs are just like revealing all this info that they know about everything about PlayStation about Xbox what's going on at Xbox oh blade is going to be exclusive to PS5 and oh Xbox is folding and oh this is all they these guys know everything blade was the last thing Sony was able to get exclusive somehow they leap frogged the the realistic games that actually existed in redfall and Starfield it somehow went in the future and got played and did here Insomniac gave the rights to Ghost Rider to bend Studio because Insomniac owns the Marvel licenses right so the patn the pattern you've got to look for here so what happens is you've got Twitter Fanboys Gaff receta icon posters and what they do is they're all PlayStation Fanboys cuz all those forums are exactly the same as each other just with different color brand and what they do is they Google names on LinkedIn and stuff of X they do X the reason they go for X PlayStation devs is because there's less chance of repercussions right and what happens is they do X PlayStation devs so when you Google this person and say oh John Brown naughty dog it shows up that there was a John Brown that used to work at naughty dog and you're like oh my God this person must be legit and this is the result of of Elon removing proper verification now you can just do this now so they do X PlayStation devs and then they just start making stuff up and everyone believes them because they're X PlayStation devs so they must know what's happening at Xbox and everything that's going on at Xbox how could they not they're ex PlayStation divs and just all these accounts have started popping up out of nowhere and they''re all like created within the last 6 months they're all like no followers and they all have a similar posting Style with the red alert sign saying breaking news and just oh my God they're just like I said one of them that Rand shown me was posting about how Insomniac gave them rights to Ghost Rider and I'm like does this person not understand that Insomniac doesn't own the rights to Marvel games like it's not theirs to give the rights to someone you have put more thought into it than the person who made this up did yeah they just I I don't understand like I genuinely don't understand the enjoyment and there's two type there's there's a camp of people that are playing at personalities and having a laugh with it like so you see these serious takes and the reality is they're just they're they're playing a part and being stupid right for fun but then there are the the ones that you think no no no you you really believe this you you feel this in your heart of heart do not understand how someone could be that invested in in something like that it's bizarre to me like it's you see it all the time you see it in sports you see it in politics you see it in religion it's people who really yeah they make it their entire thing it's their entire personality clan in the chat this does sound like people having a laugh no mate they're not having a laugh this is legit people it's the same thing you see on reset right and again it's because PlayStation's had a bad year that's why it's all happened this year so these accounts they're all astroturfing viral marketing damage controlling it's like whenever you see bad news yeah it's like whenever you see bad news about PlayStation all of a sudden some rumor pops up on receta or Gaff about something bad happening on Xbox it's all that I I don't think you get like PlayStation Fanboys are full on like they're all full on Xbox Fanboys Nintendo PlayStation Fanboys are like next level about yeah like they it's it's nuts some of the stuff you see is like they it can't just be oh well 2023 was a bad year for PlayStation let's move on maybe 2024 will be better n we've got to there's got to be a secret showcase and and Xbox has to be going third party and and and Blade's actually exclusive to PS5 and because what happens is the reason why everyone outside of PlayStation Fanboys views PlayStation Fanboys as the worst ones is because what I realized is that PlayStation and it's partially fed to them that like the gaming media validates their behavior by awarding all their games 10 out of 10 and calling them the best thing ever so it validates the behavior and what happens is because everyone tells them how amazing PlayStation is and how amazing PlayStation games are there's a fundamental lack of understanding how everyone could not love how could you not love PlayStation how is that possible how could you not love it you must have something wrong with you for you to not love PlayStation and that's where everything they do and everything they say comes from it comes from that fundamental lack of understanding like how could you not PlayStation's amazing like haven't you seen Metacritic yeah haven't you seen the game awards PlayStation is amazing how could you not love PlayStation out sold Xbox 3 to one this year yeah 50 million consoles how could it's it's it's objectively the best how could you not love it so when bad news happens that that it's like it's almost like fight or flight just kicks in and it's like quick uh 50 million consoles sold we're the best it doesn't matter that there's no games 50 million consoles sold uh Xbox is going third party haven't you heard 2027 they're they're going like it's just there's something there's something there not quite right like Nintendo Fanboys can get full on too but they just sit there and they're like whatever I'm it doesn't matter that Nintendo's overcharging me I'm going to buy it whatever Xbox Fanboys get really toxic and personal and weird too but I also see Xbox Fanboys tagging Xbox XX on Twitter because they they respond rightly or wrongly they respond so sometimes they'll have a dig too but you won't see those PlayStation Fanboys have a dig there's no PlayStation execs to interact with yeah because they don't interact on social media probably because of all the psychos that are only Shu and even then it's just he posts but I don't think he reacts sh is shu is hilarious shu is hilarious I follow Shu and all his like when he was in Melbourne I saw him tweeting from his hotel and I was like hey I know that SM and I was just like shu is very funny in the way if you watch how he tweets he just tweets like your uncle he tweets like your uncle would tweet it's very very funny the uncle that doesn't quite understand Twitter or or social media yeah yeah yeah he's hilarious um but yeah it's just that's the problem it PlayStation it's not possible for PlayStation to have bad news cuz PlayStation's the best how how can it have bad news it's it's great I think I think it's in part fueled by as well the the the constant framing of the media right like you've got PlayStation's the greatest constant you know like negative news cycle SEO field bait of you know this sucks and oh there's a problem here but then there's never 2023 is a great year for it you know and I'm super curious to see what the conversation is around 2024 because I remember very fondly in fondly in 2022 the conversation was all about how Microsoft is terrible very weak year you know 2023 this is the most important game Starfield blah blah blah blah blah and you know they've had a dead year and well yeah okay look aside from Spider-Man 2 you could you could say you could make an argument perhaps that 2023 has been a very rough year for Sony though but that's okay we see that narrative and framing online no maybe not yet no still got their Cas of Goodwill haven't they and that's what I mean about the gaming media validates their behavior they've earned that trust yeah yeah it doesn't matter that they only put out one game this year or two games it doesn't matter but when Xbox puts out two or three oh man what a year for Xbox only only two or three games they made let's see geez shut up shop just close it all down marmalade in chat like they only had a week first party but third party exclusive hold them up it's like none of them sell that great like what they're doing is maintaining they're not growing because they need like having a final fantasy 16 sell four five million copies is cool but then that's it it's done it's not going to make you more money over time really expansions have dog [ __ ] you know you know um amount of people that do it compared to what bought the game like it's they don't have their own constant Revenue sources to rely upon they have to rely upon third party ones they're not in control of a multiple of which the biggest are owned by their direct competitor now with Minecraft and Call of Duty so but yes we do have a super chat yeah yeah do game it's even better these guys use AI images and fake names I checked mobi games for all of them Body by the same name or the same gameography oh well there you go I didn't realize they were fake I don't know if they're fake or not my assumption was mostly they do the fake now because they kept getting caught for being trying to be real people yeah I I I assume they went after ex PlayStation devs that had no social media presence CU then there's less repercussions like my assumption was that they would look up a person who's recently left see if they've got social media if they don't create an account in that name and start spreading the B [ __ ] but when you see those accounts they're not real it's like a it'll be like a recet poster or a gaff poster or just a Twitter fan booy making an account to try and damage control or two and you see them following each other that they literally follow one person there on their fake account yeah yeah and it's just that it's just essentially born from an inability to accept that there might just be some bad news for PlayStation ever now and again and that's okay it's not the end of the it's not the end of the world it's good when things go up and down cuz then it just means they keep pushing each other like that's what we as consumers should want is for them all to keep pushing each other and not just one completely dominat all the time I mean have a look Xbox had a bad 2022 and here we all are still alive still okay we survived we made it through the trauma it's all right it's okay bro Xbox fans have made it through 2017 to now or 2013 to now like we we you know we're used to look yes it's it's okay like it's fine to just accept that it wasn't a great year and move on and hope for better NE there's plenty of games to play I wish that that was the approach taken for everything including games themselves why can't games be just games why do we have to attach like the entire platform's agenda and reach onto One Singular title and I think I think that Segways us nicely into it does topic because it's happening again Nick is move over Starfield move over Starfield field is done the Simpsons The Simpsons lamb meme The Simpsons lamb meme with a m l tries to come back into the picture that Starfield and then I was like get out of the way you because it's it's hellblade 2's turn now it's hell Blade's two turn to be the most important game it's make a break for the entire platform that's it my Xbox is done if if hellblade 2 I mean look Starfield already underwhelmed with its 83 Metacritic which is a terrible score mixed reviews now Xbox is hanging by a thread now thanks the Starfield Technic hellblade you can say starf was an 86 Metacritic on PC because that's not where it got um review bombed after the initial embargo oh okay but now hellblade 2 mate it needs that game it's all on the line now it's all on the line Xbox is Gwen hanging from the web in The Amazing Spider-Man is Spider-Man Amazing Spider-Man one or two I can't remember not in two in two she's Fallen he tries to stop her and x Xbox is Gwen and hellblade is Spider-Man just on yeah yeah hellblade has to be everything there's who like oh I always I always like we're content creators at the end of the day we're not journalists right okay no certainly throwing that out there right but look the the reason Xbox Z exists is because Yeah we actually play on the platform right so we actually know about the platform we know about the development teams you know we've we' we know we we understand what's going on and when I read stuff that that frames things like this it irritates the [ __ ] out of me but you know there's there's this kind of like unspoken rule I think in in in general is that you know there's no direct criticism of of one another unless you've got like a 100,000 followers on Twitter in which case you can you can go send your mob after them right so I'm not going to I'm not going to post links but there's a couple of like amusing articles that have released recently that have some interesting framing of this topic right you know we're joking about hellblade 2 being lined up about the being the next star field in terms of its importance to Xbox and you know one article was talking about how it's its value can't be understated and you know now the the shoes on the other foot and you know PlayStation fans have to do it and it's imperative that this exclusive becomes as important it's like why does it have to be framed like that yeah why can't I just a game let's just let's just worry about the game being good just wor about the game being good one of the reasons is how what we found out with Spider-Man and Playstation is where they everything they do is a moonshot and if they do miss it's devastating so when it comes to Xbox the shift in style where they don't do enormous budgets they try to have not overly long periods but like ninja is not not still not that big they've built their own stuff they do their own stuff they're not on California spending $40 million on cutcenes they're doing it all in house in LA and their new studio like there's there's price there's cost there's money put into it but as we saw with the the court case there's also really strict budgeting at Xbox and they're not allowed to lose money unless they get the okay which they had to do to lose a billion and a half on selling consoles essentially at a loss doing sales like they they balance their budgets enough and they haven't had their costs jump up as much from what we've seen because they keep you know like that is the thing with PlayStation they should be doing okay they're making a lot of money they're just not keeping most of it Nintendo doesn't make anywhere near as much but keeps way higher of a percentage and Microsoft and like Xbox is in that in between where they're not nearly as bad as Sony but they're trying to get closer to Nintendo and so they do Vari budgets they don't moonshot everything and even like a Clockwork Revolution being a much bigger budget for an exile it's probably not coming anywhere close to what a God war or Spider-Man's going to end up being but the media mostly covers those big tentpole GTA 6s and stuff that are a billion dollar game like you got to realize I highly doubt hellblade 2 has anywhere near that budget so in the end it's just it can't be as important because it doesn't have as much writing on it monetarily and enti yeah but why would an entire platform have to rely on one game anyway especially one that's built on a sub service I know that's that's the ridiculous framing of it right and and and not not withstanding the fact that hellblade one was a a very pretty yes Indie typ two string budget yeah that that was that was was extremely lar you know had had it was I I think serviceable is a good word to use here serviceable satisfying combat but it wasn't complex it didn't have a huge amount of depth to it it won awards it won awards for its tackling of of mental health and the way it depicted it through unique audio and and all of that jazz right but it's it was it was a you know a six hour game really wasn't it something like that I think I did it in six hours seven hours maybe tops right there's nothing here say that hellblade 2 is Waltzing in as some 30 hour with an RPG skill tree do you know what I expect I expect a refined and improved more of the same that's what I expect from hellblade 2 like more set pieces slightly bigger more gorgeous but the same the same general feel and it's going to be a one and done right it is not you know Microsoft's answer to God of War or Microsoft answer to the last of us the only thing it has in common is that it's incredibly pretty and yes it's a third person over theer game over the that's where you know it seems like the media just make this no let's just make this comparison let's just line these up and guess what happens when you do that folks and you run that narrative in over and over and over for six months didn't it didn't live up to the expectations we set for it yeah didn't live up to it I mean I said it with Starfield I said it with Starfield and got clipped and everything for it and what ended up happening what have we been seeing for the last four or five months about Starfield exactly what I said didn't live up it's disappointing it's this hellblade will cop the same thing then Fable will be the one after hellblade will be Fable and then perfect then after Fable it'll be perfect AR then after go after perfect AR it'll be blade because blade is the Marvel exclusive the big Marvel exclusive so blade will be the one after gears there be a Halo and there'll be things know Elder Scroll like the next Halo it's going to be the last one next Halo is going to be the last one if it doesn't hit it's going to be the last one last Halo and then someone just going to clip that and pretend like you're actually saying it yeah inside scoop next Halo is going to be the last you won't be a suspect Source on this one on push square or whatever that was oh no no was I a suspect Source when I leaked the entire state of Play No but you were no but you are a suspect Source about the God of War Trilogy that is what you're known as we have two super chats now two we do we do one one from Jason which is a bit of a segue so maybe we we do Ran's one and then we'll do Jason's and that's why I didn't read Jason's because it was a little bit that could lead to its own topic uh Rand Del Thor another Super Chat wow rand's being very generous today come on Nick this is totally the chalkboard meme thing from back in the day from Gaff you remember right what game would save the PS3 were you every new exclusive was the most important one and would save the system yes that was the chalkboard meme on Gaff so I saw it on reseto the other day as well yeah Killzone 2 will save the PS3 the order will save the PS3 this this this that's the same thing it's that Meme reimagined but it's that Meme but it's left the forums and it's now out it's gone beyond the forums and it's now out in the real world World in gaming media yeah yeah so I saw one out save Xbox refer to Starfield as the most important launch for Xbox since Halo 3 in 2007 yeah but you know it's 20 you know 2023 was good but the urgency to to succeed in 2024 remains because the mixed reception for Starfield I'm like it made a ton of money like if if the important thing for a company is making money made a ton of money and it's also just 83 like what was that mixed I don't understand oh it's because some big names were like three four five and so at that point it becomes mixed because you look at the bigger games and they don't go below seven really it all depends on your platform yeah so the the first I think the first Spider-Man um the first Spider-Man was like an 80 what was it I think it's like an 80 was it 87 I think so and that's like that's that's a banger that's a that's a banger Spider-Man like at at 87 yeah at 87 but then a Halo game at 87 trash MH absolute trash Diablo at 88 is now looked at as absolute trash because it didn't have a great endgame and it had a week first season but the actual thing people reviewed of the 150 to 250 hours you can put into the campaign was incredible and still is it was a great story really well written super fun to play but the narrative just shifted especially once it became apparent Xbox was going to own blizzard um yeah the narrative shifted and an 87 yeah Halo infinite an ' 87 it's a terrible game now ter it's a trash game but Spider-Man at 87 bang death stranding at 81 Game of the Year Nomine system it's this is what I mean why can't they all just be games that are games like why does everything have to have this extra weight attached to it it's either got to save a platform or it's got to be a system seller or it's going to be this or it's got to be that why can't they just be games yeah why can't they just be games Halo infinite we liked it despite its issues all games have issues and that both Spider-Man and Halo infinite sitting at 87 both very good games both very good games and why can't they just both be very good games why inite TR everyone needs to ask themselves a little bit that does that kind of thing online but hey ho um should we should we segue into Jason Super Chat have a little topic on this you know we're going with the flow tonight we're going with the flow yeah okay uh Jason uh one XBox exclusive you're looking forward to in 2024 and one thing you want from the plat form more broadly for me it's an upgrade of the Achievement System yeah everyone wants that I don't I couldn't kill us um yeah I think a game I'm looking forward to in 2024 an XBox exclusive come on Nick come on Nick I believe in you you like Castle Crashers you probably be Tower born to play with for fun south of midnight yeah 2024 but I was told that Indiana Jones is more likely to come out then south of midnight or Clockwork Revolution you might see Indiana Jones this year but I don't think you're going to be playing it no no that trailer was a recruitment trailer yep that was a recruitment trailer for Indie yeah and that when was that 2020 no I thought was 2020 or 2021 one of those but either way yeah not not this year kids yeah no uh south of midnight the Rumblings on south of midnight are that that's way further along than everyone thought it was you might spoil it sh but yes no you're I'm not I'm joking I'm I'm joking with my shush don't take it it's not a serious shush um yeah the the Rumblings on south of midnight are that one could be the surprise 2024 release yeah um and it would be a surprise cuz we only saw that trailer last year and it was just what appeared to be that no we saw that trailer this year for a few more days yes you're right Jesus yeah yes yes sorry sorry it's it's it's literally New Year's Eve today we've got the we've got the game the 2023 wrap-up we're gonna go through and I was going through and looking at like yeah that was this year Jesus Christ okay yeah yeah Jesus Christ um my god with on south of midnight I I think that's ah that trailer man like that's a as I've said many times by the time you got to the end of we happy few I in I was like I want the next thing they make now that they they're bigger and they've got Microsoft's backing and they're not desperately just trying to get this Rog likee procedural thing out it was so good by the second first DLC good second DLC really good and third DLC phenomenal in that game yeah and here's the thing with south of midnight right is again like this is what I like this is a positive for me and it might not be for you listening or watching right now right um but the you don't know what the scale of south of midnight is what if it's a smaller scale I thought that was the rumor I thought the rumor was that's what I mean it's it's a smaller scale game like highi Rush right and hey guess what uh when when did the last happy we happy few DLC release I want to say 2021 I thought it was 2019 might have even been 2019 yeah God that's a long time ago like what's what's to say that that isn't a you know a surprise smaller title that's going to drop at some point this year but but yeah like and again you watch you watch the and this is the thing Microsoft deliberately making these smaller Puna more unique differentiating interesting games in interesting locations with different ideas and art styles is why I like the platform predominantly really like the Super Chat from risk for the biscuit it seg RIS for the biscuit south of midnight needs to sell at least 30 billion to save the platform and make the Xbox series s viable and Game Pass profitable or they in trouble yeah honestly it's it's my most excited game that I'm looking forward to um in in that I think is coming up sooner than than one might so good but I want the game to look like that I want it to look exactly like what that trailer was showing well in my preparation for the uh article that I'll be dropping on New Year's Day UK time so sorry Australia uh which is our 2024 what we think is actually going to happen from an Xbox perspective I did a little bit of research and that trailer wasn't uh you know computer animated to look like what they want the game to look like that was an ingine pre-rendered cut scene so I would say to you Nick that that is indeed what the game is targeting and the game is supposed to be third person as well which is very exciting yeah yep yeah oh man deep south I mean what what a what a what a local to set it in I can't wait I can't wait I hope it's good I hope it's good it's it's my most anticipated game from them coming within the next year or two because again there are so many games that are probably years and years out in terms of stuff that we believe is within the next 12 to 18 months that's what I'm looking forward to the most yeah and it's worth saying as well that you know we mentioned it on last week's show you know Microsoft is at the point where their road map is is beyond a decade here Beyond a decade out right to the point where blade as an example could very well be a next gen release title right from a Target timeline perspective so bear that in mind when you look at all these cool games yes it's cool that we as uh consumers of the platform of fans of games have a general understanding of what their direction is and it's it's lovely to look at on funing for graphics and stuff like that and have little list Wars on Twitter but these games take a long time to make and some of the bigger ones you know you're looking at five years probably some of the smaller ones maybe a three-year development cycle but I think 2024 other things that you probably want to consider Contraband Avalanche Studios Rage 2 was the last game they released 2019 we saw a trailer for it at the 2021 showcase maybe 2020 yeah 2020 or 2021 think was amazing 2021 it was 2021 2021 that trailer man it was great trailer Steely Dan it was such a good choice of song for that vibe that they were going for the trailer showed nothing don't get me wrong the trailer showed absolutely nothing I mean it told you what it was 1970s uh setting a fictional place it was a tone piece it was a tone piece trailer but it was ah just it was such a good one I hope that game's not Vapor Weare I that game VAP they're they are in a position now where if something's announced they it it can take time they have so much coming where I do think it might make them less likely to work with you but if it takes you a while to get something out they're just they'll let you take the time essentially yeah that's a good thing that's a good thing and other ones to call out like we know we there are things we know right we know our history Untold we know Tower born we know AOW we know flight in 2024 we know hellblade 2 we know Call of Duty yep guess what folks Xbox own that now that's that's a hell of a first party slate and that's just the stuff we 100% kind of set in stone know about right two really big things that have been announced as well are Diablo Lord of hatred which is going to be a huge expansion and the World of Warcraft expansion I forget the name of it but it's like being pumped up as one of their biggest like in a within or something like that and uh Starfield shatter space is going to come that's another big expansion for Starfield 20124 um but other things to consider ladies and gents ever wild now John what the [ __ ] you talking about revealed EXO 2019 rebooted internally I think the last report from our friends at G VGC uh back in 2021 some leadership changes some new people put in I think Greg Moes is is in there now um and the developers according to that report two years ago were targeting a 2024 release date is that going to land I would I don't know I I would love to hear the story of what has gone on with ever wild like you know I I first heard years and years and years ago from one of a source I trust a source that's given me plenty of stuff that's been accurate that there was a chance ever wild would sneak into launch day for series X that is the first thing I ever heard about ever wild wow from a source that I trust they were like this may sneak into launch which makes me wonder the stuff that's gone on with and I said this I think I said it on our podcast back then that it may sneak into launch it may be a launch title I said it I think from because that's what I'd heard from some of the rumor and the Scuttle but was that uh you know there's there's apparently a desire for the game to not have what would be traditionally labeled as combat which is if you look at games in general combat is primarily we point at something and we destroy it it's primarily the way we interact with games as a medium um uh and there was a desire to kind of focus more on other ways of interacting with the world and I think it was just rare figuring out okay we've got this Cool vibe we've got this cool art style we've got this music like what are we actually making um and we heard all sort of rumors right we heard God game elements we heard Pokemon but grownups version of it and we don't know Frank Frankly what the end result will be but I I you know rare make incredibly unique games I think they've learned a lot from from the co-op shared World style of sea of Thieves and I'm intrigued to see what ever wild ends up being but yeah who knows if that's going to land that might land you we don't know so we can put it on the list just I just I keep hearing so many different things about it yeah all sound cool all of them sound cool enough there's one thing in particular that I hope is true that I've heard about it but again just there's so much different stuff out there that it's hard to know you know yeah what's what's legit and what's not and one last one i' throw out there and then we've got a Super Chat to to tackle I think we'll close this topic up off uh and this was pointed out to me today by one of my team as I'm putting together this article I'm like hey any other call outs for for games and uh proven on our team he was like uh what about Forza Horizon 6 and I'm like wait has it been has it been three years yep it will be by the time November 2024 rolls around now traditionally give it a Breza Horizon have had a 2-year Dev time fora Horizon 5 was the first threeyear one thanks I think or four maybe maybe longer because of covid but if if fa fable fable playground have been back on the case they've got two teams one's working on Fable one's continuing with fora Horizon who's to say that we won't get summer comes along here's Forza Horizon 6 it's launching in three months have a nice time I mean give it I mean just look at like if you add all those May's in as a first party slate for a year it's [ __ ] insane I do like how Nik saying give it a rest to their most successful game give it a rest I I agree I agree in terms of like it feels personally to me like I've I've progressively I've played less of each fora Horizon as they've come out for Horizon 2 I was like [ __ ] god what is this I don't normally like RAC games I never played two that I was on all night with friends we were just having a laugh it was it was really solid for 3 loved it loved the setting played three for Horizon 4 again oh UK cool and then five I was kind of like looks gorgeous and then kind of just played less and less of each of them so there's a bit of me that's got like you know but I think from a from a Sal's perspective we were talking about it earlier in the show 35 million players a crossgen game for of horizon 5 it released on Xbox One well okay you you want to come play for of horizon 6 you got series only series only consoles and PC sorry come on make the jump across players what will six what will six look like if it's if it's series consoles only if it's nextg only what will look like just look at Fable the thing that people say well I got to see in game I got to see what the game play is like and then they come out and they're like this was gameplay on series X by the way it's only little Snippets of it but this is what it looks like it's like yeah it's going to look insane I don't know I it's a possibility there's a fors of horizon this year so fine I mean they I they've been better and better for me every time for me I love map games you guys don't um but with the six finally be set in Japan that's what a lot of fans have been clamoring for until they like if you actually look at Japan and how Japan's set up it' have to be very it's a fictional World FAL Japan you can you can just like you like remember Australia is a massive country and what did they do they compressed it and did it in segments there's no reason you couldn't do the same with Japan so you have a an Open Road mountainer driving part like the amount Fuji and whatever and then you can have your inner city street racing with heaps of neon everywhere and oh would look amazing it would look amazing and that's what I mean like if you treat fora Horizon as a system seller which I'm sure when Microsoft are looking at the numbers they're like yeah this is like one of our key IPS for actual retention of people that play games yeah like I seriously consider y let's make them make the jump see if we can sell some consoles snuck up on us it snuck up on us but Forza Horizon is like a major major major gaming IP like huge to the point to the point where it got mentioned in the Turtles movie mutant Mayhem it did yeah remember I was like what it's a main and because again because I don't see it that way that took me by surprise we saw the we saw the growth like we saw one people loved it but it was a smaller thing two people liked it quite a bit still pretty small but then three took off four went crazy and five is even bigger and I do think they will be in position I don't think they're going to feel tied to the release Cadence like they used to think they are yeah because of just how different first party is now first party is so goddamn big it is going to come down to well we've got like 30 other Studios who else is working on a a game that might kind of be like a a casual friendly racer we'll probably want to spread them out if very close genres I think they'll work on spreading out very big budgets they'll work on spread out but outside of that they're going to have a ton of overlap on release dates which I think people are going be like well why don't they just do it then I like well CU wasn't ready then you said a date you go for that date and it just tends up to coincide when you got 50 teams working on games like it's it's gonna be Rous super intrigued super intrigued to see what it is but there you go there's some ideas in answer to that Super Chat was was head of the tangent but for the full list and everything that we think uh keep an eye out on on the channel here uh.com well that's the next one that ready I've got that ready to close this out uh Cipher type one with a super chat also a member I think that Xbox is holding true to not revealing games that are years away from release so Fable Clockwork and midnight may be sooner than thought yeah yes I don't think well I don't think I think that the June showcase was things closer their moonshots are the game awards where Disney's like hey it's the blade anniversary we want to announce blade way too early and they're like okay fine because they wouldn't do it on their own it's also recruiting call as well for but they did the same for Indie they announced Indie super early it seems to be a Disney thing where they want to put those recruiting trailers out and turns out even Wolverine was really early think it was that's right look at Wolverine Wolverine's trailer was 202 was it I think it was 2021 the same time there Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine or something oh yes that's right so that was 20 and that game's not coming till 2026 so it it seems to be a Disney mandated thing where Disney wants those games announced nice and early to get the word out there and help recruit the best possible people to make the best possible game that that's how it comes across to me I think you're right I mean they did it with pretty that they had their games thing that um blessing yeah the usoft Star Wars mhm both of them they were like yep we we're signing a deal for the two and it was just a piece of paper on a freaking tweet yeah yeah yeah but this is the thing like so yes in some ways I think this is the beauty of of the the gargantuan Behemoth that Microsoft's first party teams are now is there are going to be instances where they completely come out the blue high-fire Rush style and be like surprise is a game it's out in two weeks or it's out today or something crazy right men if they did that with south of the the January direct like oh my God I would I would probably call in sick the next day be like get that review out Jesse got to get that review out first to make sure we set the tone can't have people [ __ ] on it for having the stop motion animation graphical style oh no got you know got to make sure we get that n 9.5 or 10 out of 10 out there yeah but like I can say I can I can say pretty confidently Like Fable is a 2025 release Target it's not this year like no [ __ ] way you're re 2025 I re further out than that no I think I think 2025 is a reasonable Target for when it was in the show in June I don't think it's beyond 2025 I think end of 2025 is probably what that show was aiming for it's probably their full game in 2025 that's the goal I think Clockwork I think is is 2026 um but midnight is one where I think yeah that was a very competent trailer no it wasn't dated um Art Star's locked in I think it's a Matt booty talked about Clockwork Revolution that they had that trailer ready for the last year's show wow I don't think Clockwork is as far out either because what they were doing was Wasteland 3 which was essentially done but then Microsoft they were like can we have more money in time and Micosoft here you go like the the double find thing of if you ask for more money yeah boom he'll just say sure um so they they just added to Wasteland which was already done and they got bought because of the pitch of clockwork Revolution which makes me feel like they were really they were ready to go all in on it pretty quickly so it might not be that far off it's interesting I I just love I love the era that we're in now where instead of wondering you know what of Microsoft going to release this year it's always like what aren't they going to release like [ __ ] or when is all this stuff going to release like as how are they going to space it all out another Super Chat keep keep an eye on xbox.com come New Year's Day because we're gonna have a little little something relevant to this topic of discussion just dropping for you to have a little browse through but yes anyway another Super Chat please yeah another Jordan white playground please make your own successor to burnout with amazing takedowns but make it a battle royale like f99 or like Forza has now yeah that's just more The Eliminator isn't it but yeah like having the T downs and the slowmo and the destruction yeah I'd love that don't know if they'd be allowed to do blowing up they it would have to be if it's in Forza it's going to have to be fake cars because you're not allowed to blow up real ones very often yeah they get away with more damage like Gran tesmo doesn't really do damage at all but Forza does beat up cars and I think they they've kind of slowly talked manufacturers into letting them I find it so weird how car manufacturers put that rule in place what's with that what what's like I'm it's suppos well it's advertising to show your car in the best light essentially for them okay so do they just think that everyone crashes their cars in these games it's just what if they did and then our car looks like [ __ ] and people are putting a picture out there and you know who knows it's Executives who don't understand video games and Stu so um but yeah there you go that's that topic nicely rounded off um so now's a good time for little housekeeping okay can I hold on can I say something I just saw something in the chat Brett Bingham I don't know anything mate Brett bingham's like Nick knows it is before I saw that no it is much sooner than you think look from Nick I don't know it's before these are all the these are the rumors that are out there this has nothing to do with me these are rumors that are out there that Clockwork or sure thing rumor man back south of midnight is supposed to be like sooner than we all think yeah like that's it's not it's got nothing to do with me and I was just speculating about the I said how cool would it be if because John mentioned the high five Rush thing so I'm like how cool if south of midnight did that yeah it'd be cool yeah I'd love that I really want that game that's all I also really want that game if it's ready just you know [ __ ] [ __ ] the Preamble let them take that gamble again just drop that [ __ ] drop it drop it straight on The Game Pass lovely there's no point I feel like again because with Xbox I feel like there's no point having all these long traditional marketing Hypes Cycles cuz then it just gives Outlets a chance to [ __ ] on your oh it's got to be so important oh it doesn't look very good don't don't give him that chance yeah don't give that really fought against that and won and won that F easily destroyed it yeah destroyed it it their their thing they're going to focus on is just they need to get game pass into the collective consciousness of people out there yeah you know like if you if you if you saw a Call trailer for South at midnight but hey it's out today and it's oh it's a digital release on Game Pass oh could you could you imagine if that's what they had done with south of Bight so they never showed that trailer earlier this year and they did the same thing they did with HiFi rush so they just let's just say that they they do a January Direct in 2024 and that's the first time you're seeing the south of midnight trailer and everyone's like o look at this how cool does this look and then it's like out now you'd be like like come on that would just be the coolest thing ever if that's how they first introduced it how cool would that be oh Super Chat when those breaking make sure you got to have the red siren emojis breaking Nick says south of midnight releases in December 2023 coming out tomorrow good night coming now yeah oh uh Cipher type one high-fi Rush was Shadow dropped and won a game award Shadow Dro everything yeah blood don't don't give them a chance to hate the game don't give them a chance yeah just drop it even fors and Motorsport one to got a couple of them yeah yeah it did one more than Spider-Man did yep wow um yeah anyway uh yeah please hit that like button people come on there's like 250 plus people watching there's only 91 likes like help me out help a brother out and the last thing about the last thing about what's coming in 2024 is there are so many studios we don't know what they're making what's it making what is the zenmax online next game uh there there'll be another Elder Scrolls expansion for Elder Scrolls Online like there are so many freaking teams that they have that we don't actually know exactly what it's going to be and it's crazy yeah godamn it Nick uh anyway in other news my friends other news I notic I fire monkeys in the chat I do I wonder why he's here wonder why he's here uh in other news put your hands together and celebrate not just because it's the end of the year because today at least in the UK and in the US it was Bobby cotic last day as CEO of Activision Blizzard King 15 million he's out of there golden parachute the new thing is to complain that Microsoft should have held off the money that he was contractually owed I'm like yeah how they can't because it had because it had everything to do with Microsoft it's Microsoft giving him that money it's actually it's coming out of saa's own personal bank account he handed it to him in a giant thank you note yeah and a kiss on the cheek um but yeah so see you later Bobby uh he's out and after all of that uh blizzard and Netties uh reached a new agreement um which I because I remember reading this was it last year or earlier this year like they were tearing down a Warcraft Smash down huge SMU on stream yeah because essentially it seems to have been Bobby kodc had a Mis transation on something and then said [ __ ] him and and or allegedly said that and and it destroyed the whole relationship and they were very they were very upset over it and they smashed down some big wow statue they had and the moment he out B would never talk like that about people would he he would never tell someone to kill an employee like was alleged on Twitter no Bob Bobby would never call someone an F slur over the phone yeah surely like like perhaps like one of the leads of Xbox back in the day Bobby would never do on this very show said it oh I really do want to get Sheamus Blackley back on man was a man was a boot yeah it was very funny he tortured you it was great I'm so I'm very glad that I got he was about to crack and finally just say I'm kidding and then we went right into the air and H worked beautifully he kept he brought it back he was like yeah I'm gonna be a [ __ ] again for a few he held on it was so good um um um um and then yeah okay before we get into kind of like just revisiting some stuff across the year we've got a couple left uh just focusing back on Playstation um saw a lot of upro about this on Twitter but I think PlayStation have done this every year their own blog hands out their own Awards and Playstation gave themselves game of the year for Spiderman PlayStation gave the year Spider-Man 2 congratulations they do these they do PlayStation blog awards every year and I think a lot of people just probably didn't know that so if if you didn't know that the PlayStation block gives awards every year then you could I could understand how someone would think that oh okay so Spider-Man didn't win any award so PlayStation's going to give Spider-Man Awards I can understand how someone may think that if you didn't already know that they do these blog awards every year well the thing I linked was actually their what's coming in 2024 blog well yeah and I did want to I did want to talk about this because yeah they had their rewards blog but then they had their what's coming in 2024 and I saw Lots of desperate like oh but also this and probably this and maybe some surprises I'm like it's surprisingly Meek it's very meager in terms of what's coming in 2024 according to that blog list they've got a third party game and uh different looks for their accessory colors ways as the first two things plates but for the old model console if you look at the blog for 2022 as it headed into 2023 they had a very similar thing and there was nothing extra that was not on that list so if you take that as gospel as as as yeah this is the standard running practice while 2024 is also looking rather SP like what have they got coming out this year from their first party it's it's a mostly third party stuff so like they are publishing rise of ronin they are publishing H they've got Final Fantasy 7 rebirth exclusive um Stellar blade was finally announced that it was delayed everyone could tell third party they're publishing that one after it was losing its publisher and they saved it um y fair enough the destiny 2 will be coming from them the final shape they'll have MLB the Show yep that they've got some ex some different color plates they've got a new headset coming um it's another quiet year yeah pretty pretty quiet they quieter than 2023 arguably TW quieter than 2023 yeah they they really front loaded be painful out in those Wars why is an MLB on that list because I guess it hasn't been they don't have a cover athlete to show off yet they haven't probably figured that out yeah okay but we can Microsoft to have another Year's uh Game Pass launch wasn't up there which everyone seemed to think was going to be 2024 the REM I will say that PlayStation Plus for January is pretty good evil West is super fun it's a very 360 game but it's fun it's not it's a little long but not too long and it it's it's a fun fun d game never played play it's a pretty good month and nobody Saves the World which I freaking loved that game rules I haven't played it very good I haven't played it um another uh Super Chat from gold shell so excited for Blizzard's future on the field yeah a lot of people are especially J they especially blizzard they seem very happy to not be Activision Blizzard they are just blizzard under Microsoft yeah yeah so it's Activision Blizzard King they are their own things yep yep yep um lot of EX blizzard people coming out um really going after Bobby codic from ex Debs and hor there some horrible stories coming out now Bobby now that he's gone and they're not worried about repercussions like like stories are coming out oh dear uh over the next 12 months I reckon you can probably expect a lot of horrible stories that come out on Twitter yeah about about so Nick I I I'll I'll set this up for you but we've talked a lot about road maps and video game release dates and trailer announces and all that sort of jazz um but there's one topic that you wanted to tackle this week right there around these elements yeah I I actually want to do this a bit more because we our our structure is that we very strictly stick to the news we do of the week like quite rigidly M like for better or worse but i' I'd like to start doing that whole thing just discuss no not a next corner it's not about me it it's about discussing sort of hot button topics that just spring up out of nowhere that don't necessarily make the news but they do cause a discussion on social media and then sometimes content creators make videos out of it and I noticed there was a viral tweet that someone used the Lisa Simpson meme talking so it it was born from our podcast this this and that's the irony of this discussion this discussion was actually born from our podcast last week so you know I had said to Jeff grub and I'll be up front here I like to have a rumor mill every grubs so sometimes I will hold on to stuff like the God of War Trilogy thing and I said to Jeff if you can even if you've got something small just something small for grubs hold on to it for grubs turns out what he was holding on to turned out to be probably arguably a lot bigger than small when he said that blade blade is not probably coming toward 2027 yeah how does it feel being on Euro gamer the special so a whole bunch of sites got a hold of that and then someone took a tweet from a major Twitter account and did the lease a Simpson meme thing saying if your game is that far out don't announce it and so a lot of developers took that Viral tweet and were like you know sometimes these trailers are recruiting trailers sometimes there's contractual agreement sometimes my take was what's the big [ __ ] deal like how does it affect your life how does it affect your life on a personal level that a random video game was announced 5 years before it's due to come out how does it impact your life does it it doesn't at all I don't know why people get so irrationally upset I I I don't understand it it it's a weird one because we we live in an industry as we've seen this year and we'll get into it when we when we talk about this year where leaks are fervently sought you know I want to know the secrets I want to know the the things that they're not telling us I want to peek under the curtain we live in that that world where you know those kind of things get all of these clicks and and hype and rumor Mills and all of that jazz right exclusive Scoops you know here's this Project's whatever name and you know we understand it's the wuang clan doing it whatever all of that jazz and people really want that but then when a video game company does the opposite and doesn't let the rumor just sit in swirling around in in un acknowledgement they just go yeah hey we're making a Blake game his AAL trailer we'll see you in 2027 even though they don't say that you know people that actually follow the industry understand these things take [ __ ] years to make yeah like why you could Best of Both Worlds isn't it you don't have to there's no secret now we know what they're working on great cool put the logo on the road map now we know no worries But like everyone went all in on blade no one said anything about Iron Man no one said anything about Black Panther no one so why was Blade no one said anything about Wolverine why was Blade the target of all that animosity maybe maybe maybe because it's on a certain platform but like and not on other platforms I was just so excited to see that there was an Iron Man game in existence okay if it's 5 years out it's 5 years out I can wait I've got rocket League to keep me busy until then like there are here we are complaining that we've all got these massive backlogs and oh my God so many games what am I going to do yet we get upset that a game we're excited for gets announced oh but it's years away I want to play it now like we're children like just wait you play that music why don't you actually show the picture I'm showing something the pop the Pope's coming the pop the pope okay he's giving you leave I was actually setting that up for the last few minutes okay I'm just Kidd it up like I don't it don't get me wrong it's great when a game gets Shadow dropped it's great when a game is like like bethesda's tradition someone just mentioned in the chat negative Z game gets announced comes out 6 months later that's awesome if if a game can do that fantastic no one is saying that shouldn't happen no one is even saying that's not the preferred Avenue what I'm saying is it's not the end of the world and it's not going to affect your life in any single way shape or form that blade is add in 2027 it's not going to hurt you it's not going to harm you if anything they're helping you you now have 4 years to save for blade stop putting away 10 cents a day well you got to save up they've got to save up for their super powerful uh PC that they already supposedly had they won't get an X it's it's really not that big a deal where people get that irrationally upset about it okay be mildly annoyed ah damn I wish that was coming sooner okay cool and just move on with your life but it's it comes like in the movie industry you can announce a movie and I guess there there are less cancellations overall which is why some people are like well we don't announce things because you would be shocked at how many games get canceled and I get that but in these situations when it's this type of thing that you're not going to cancel you're signing a deal with freaking Disney if it cancels it's a goddamn nightmare like it's lets you recruit and you can just say what you're working so easier it's like yeah people aren't used to it but if they keep doing it more and then hopefully people will finally get used to it though most of it is just console war F yeah so indry practice is to is to force perspective employees to sign an NDA as they're in the interview process before you can even talk about what you're working on like this is a way to avoid all of that rigma roll in certain degrees so I get it you know and I agree with you I think people need to chill the F out when it comes to portal player in the chat they do it too often that's why what what do you mean like what do you mean they do it too often again we're we're still back at square one so what I I don't understand like if if we were if we were in a scenario if this was 94 where hardly any games come out and there's nothing to play then I could maybe understand but we are in a world world where there are literally too many great video games for any human being to have enough time to play so I don't understand what the big deal is and that and that doesn't include the fact that most of us have at least one or two games as a service games that we just live off and stick to endlessly like I've got my fortnite and my rocket League John's got his Halo and used to have sea of Thieves Jesse's got Diablo and a couple of others so on top of our games as a service games that we basically treaters jobs we also have this ridiculous number of good I mean we've also got the [ __ ] but we've actually got a ridiculous number of great games as well more than we can handle so again what's the big deal yeah I think I think there is like like I can see portal player in the chat like I think there's a difference between an intention to announce and release a game within a reasonable time frame I hey here's Crackdown three you know using using that example and oh you know oh oh damn the company that we were using the cloudtech just got bought oh [ __ ] what do we do this this clout Tech's falling over oh the company's gone like yeah okay look we're not privy to that and we don't get that oh [ __ ] there's a [ __ ] pandemic and it's delayed everything by [ __ ] months and months and months that kind of stuff no one seems to to Really Bank it like and I think there's a there's a difference but with stuff like blade stuff like Indiana Jones you can just separate the reality from from your desires right like yeah I'd love to play blade this summer but it's not that's not what the point of that trailer was it was a cool moment it was a hey we've got a Marvel game too it was a recruitment drive for that studio the end and there's movies all the time with Marvel right you see a Marvel road map for [ __ ] 10 years which has completely changed yeah of course and they change it on a whim but like dark wi duck happens like dark wi duck happens stuff like stuff like what happened with Crackdown 3 that's not that's an exception that's not the rule like deep down most we're still waiting for that it's been what 9 years we' never heard about it but it's you know that that is the exception that's not the rule for that's right what what happened yes what happened with deep down what happened with cracked out what happened with I don't know whatever that that's beyond good and evil too Last Guardian there Last Guardian they're the exceptions they're not the rule most of these games just come out we but it's but we talk about the exceptions and we hear about the exceptions more like Juke Nukem Forever and everything that game went through um great recent example Skull and Bones right Skull and Bones yeah skull and bones is a game that was that was uh meant to come out what two [ __ ] years ago remember it was announced it was announced just after C theves released ah here's the C thieves killer 2018 it's been delayed because oh they haven't found the fun but they have a contractual obligation to release it this year it's coming out in February now and you looking forward to reviewing it yeah I'll play Phantom Dust oh yeah Phantom Dust was another one yep sometimes things don't work out Fable legends that game it surprises to me Microsoft didn't release it because game was done that was done it was done it was a very weird Microsoft back then that was a the most bizarre decision like I I had a I have a cousin that that works in the games industry is working on a big AAA game that's coming out this year funly enough it's been announced we've seen plenty of it next year sorry 2024 um but he was working at lion head and you know I was in the friends and family ba for Legends and I just said to him I was like why are you making this game like who is this for because it's not for the Fable fan it's not for me no like I don't want to play this like I love the world and I love the graphics and I love but I don't 4v1 multiplayer like what are you [ __ ] doing Microsoft M they were ahead of the curve again because 4v1 did become extremely popular it just had to be something that you could stick IP into and how do you stick IP into Fable it has to be a dead by daylight which is just this madeup thing they can throw anyone and everyone in there and it takes off like insane amounts yeah it's crazy it's like you know half life half life on Dreamcast was finished it was finished it was done it was basically in warehouses ready to ship and it got cancelled why I still don't know I'd love to hear the story it's prob the story is probably out there and I just haven't read it but like the first halflife came out on Dreamcast and it just got cancelled mental last possible second which I found bizarre very easy to get a hold of it but yes that was the problem with everything Dreamcast pretty easy to just didn't even need a mod chip didn't need a mod chip didn't need a boot dis didn't need to burn a GD ROM you could just burn a CD ROM cuz people would just ch out you didn't need and yeah it was uh crazy for someone very poor without Scruples it was great I still bought what I could I bought the accessories I hooked it up to a nice Monitor and had it run in HD it looked incredible had the freaking bought Sean with that stupid mic and talking to Leonard nemoy so did I got the fishing rod I've got keyboard and mouse I've got typing of the so good I had the MERS for a while I had the S Amiga maras for a little bit I wish we weren't broke and I had been able to keep stuff I never kept anything cuz we had to flip it to pay for the next thing but like some of that stuff is just worth so much but like I we had snatcher on Sega CD and that goes for like two grand now it's insane yeah I'm annoyed you know I I may still have to go back and find it so I saw um what was that Wii uu game from uh oh my God what is that Wii U game that action game that from that legendary Japanese developer uh 101 no no no no it's an action shooter thing it's an action shootery thing and I see it at JB highi secondhand for like $5 and I kept not grabbing it and I was like ah and now I've checked eBay like people Devil's third so I see Devil's thir I see Devil's third all I used to see it at JB all the time that had this tiny little section of Wii U games it's like five bucks two bucks and I was like should I just grab it for my Wii U just for the [ __ ] of it and I never did and now I see it on eBay and people are trying to sell it for $2 and $300 us and I'm like man I wish IID bought a couple of copies of Devil's thir whoops why would anyone want to buy that game yes so I can flip it just mean why do people want to buy it from you like I don't know I I can't understand the collector's Market some of them I understand stand like the 64 games and don't worry I'm planning on selling my 64 collection soon and that's going to oh my God what is the weird going from third person to first person yeah I mean devil St was like famously horri horrible wasn't it oh that's so horrible to play God oh dear um but yes in the end have some patience people like it's it's really not that big a deal okay if a game is announced years out I again I just I don't I never understood how people get so upset about it it it doesn't affect you at all at at all it's the fomo thing along with like well I see this and I I I want to have it now and I and I'm not patient and it's also a great thing that I can argue with people about it's a childish thing that's what I'm saying grow up that's why I said grow up in my tweet just grow up and be an adult and have some patience like tking a lot out of most people yeah I get excited about games too but you know just wait like I've got to wait for Prince of Persia not got to wait not I'm looking forward to it you got to wait but you probably don't have to pay so you're you're luckier than most oh man I've got he's very excited hopefully can you give him a PC Cod just to really wind him up God same way same way I've got to wait for John to get me Sonic Superstars got to wait long I've just got to be patient long time I've just got to be I've just got to wait and be patient hopefully in the meantime um ha chani can come to the rescue stop asking people to buy you [ __ ] you [ __ ] scab right okay people thank you Nick for that wonderful topic um as again fredly reminder hit that like button it really does help us out and you know if you're listening to us on Spotify or any other podcast service of choice why not leave us one of those glowing five star reviews that we probably think we deserve um that would be nice now it is the end of 2023 um we've gone through all the news of the week we've talked about all sorts of different things but we'd like to just take a moment in this last show of the year to kind of just take a look back take a look back at some of the biggest things that have happened this year and I think a good place a positive place to start is just to talk about what an incredible year of video games it has been like we remember the conversations we've had about gaming years 2007 uh [Music] 2018 does 2023 deserve to be in that conversation now without a doubt right and and let me let me get like objectively I'm going to say yes personally it's not been the best game year of gaming ever for me like just for me not me either there's not a lot of genres here that that speak to me personally but I can look at the bigger picture and be like objectively this is a [ __ ] banging and just just just a taste of the games that released this year that are huge right um these are all games that have scored over 90 just this year tears of the Kingdom B's Gate 3 match Prime asgard's wrath 2 Against The Storm Resident Evil 4 xblade Chronicles 3 slay the princess street fight six Super Mario Brothers Wonder uh cyber Punk 2077 Phantom Liberty Dave the diver Ghost Trick uh Moss Book 2 video verse Persona for Golden Quake 2 enhance the making of kekka Quake two Quake two got over 90 yeah this year from night time I don't think it had like that many so it's it's easier when you don't have that many reviews um Spider-Man 2 uh like Starfield that one didn't over 90 no Starfield didn't over just looking because the list is so long likees two Definitive Edition console um Christ alive there's so many games here it's ABS nuts space remake uh the the classic wanted Dead golden eye Bo golden eye Dead Space remake res evil remake I love a SE on Xbox sefue on Xbox Tokyo on Xbox I mean it's been a crazy year like like I have to when you read out the list when you read out the list like that it makes me think that maybe 2023 is a top three year for me yeah just for me personally like there's just so many things you forget because there has been so much across every platform yeah I'm just looking through the list at the moment and it's like I'm only in April June and there's still they're still so and it picked up from them like from the middle of August until early November it didn't startop I I think I revie Assassin's Creed Mirage and Assassin's Creed Nexus the VR game which is excellent yeah Dead Island 2 was surprisingly good Hogwarts came out Hogwarts Hogwarts bigger selling game pretty much yeah no one talks about that can't talk about that the Wizard game we can mention we can mention that it exists yeah you can talk about it that that context H principal 2 I played and is incredible like there's so much there's so much stuff Dave the diver um on PC and switch um but then there's the Lesser stuff like thunder Ray last case of Benedict Fox um cocoon last Faith um it's plenty like so much stuff if we were to go through every like good to Great release it would be like 100 150 things that's what I meaners goes back to my point about big deal if a game gets announced years out planet of Lana oh my God there's one of other gone back to like one of the next things I put in there is just the year in Game Pass like if you're just going to start going down everything that was in Game Pass in 2023 it is [ __ ] crazy yeah could remastered Hot Wheels unleash Game of the Year Edition HBY returned to Dreamland Deluxe Minecraft Legends [ __ ] Minecraft red ravenlock red uh ravenlock was neat yeah love jant it's it's been so much like is this what it's gonna be like now like or was this just like the big spurt after covid where just the Stars I think there's a little bit of I think there's a little bit of that tooo I think it's a bit of both col May column B there was a lot of delayed games that ended up in 2023 but all Al I just think we are at that point where there are just so many developers out there and so many Publishers out there and so so there's just so many games and it's so much easier to make a game now than it's ever been so there's just so many more games coming out uh hey Tom Henderson 2023 year in review highlights is Insider gaming doing 100 plus exclusives exus that's a lot that's a lot reviewed over two 203 I think was our number you did like I I did 83 video games and like 20 or something physical I think total total on the site we were like 235 240 reviews something like that maybe more but yeah as if he just leaves we don't guess unlike this unlike ni uh party animals Gotham kns payday Port player I get Scoops portal play I just if I get told not to reveal them then I don't where Tom will just reveal them no matter what if I get told not to then I don't Tom and I have differing um me principles on on just going ahead with stuff that we get thank you very much I can see portal player he used a guide to complete cocon like I understand but I'll do that no honestly don't like I I I breathed I didn't Breeze through there was like one point I was like hm head scratching but my my M who does not play games she's she's finished it you know and she got through it with with only two occasions I had to really be like think about it you've got all the tools you need the game is is helping you it's teaching you BL one button yeah it's one button I mean it's Exquisite game design um again friendly reminder there's a great interview I had with uh jeppy Carlson uh the lead gameplay designer from inside and limbo who did uh cocoon and their art director about cocoon so go check it out on the site fine I'll put joh there you go thanks bro thanks you know get some more eyes on that um but yeah you know it's Game Pass equally has really done a lot of heavy lifting for me this year there's been a lot of things I've discovered and enjoyed thanks to Game Pass as always um very curious and I think you know if you're wondering chat we've already got our everything coming in 2024 to Game Pass that we know about and that's that's going to grow and evolve over time um that already exists you can go find it on the site maybe Jesse will put a helpful link and you can add it to your bookmarks and keep an eye on what's coming to the system over the next year um as your subscription continues on Xbox game pass but yeah it's just it's been Bonkers um but I think that also Segways us into how it's not been great for the people that actually make games I think that's a fair it has not fair thing to say the tech industry as a whole has been a like death it it's been brutal like uh and you know tech industry is a broad term right so this is the Facebooks and the Googles and the microsofts like I did see one I can't remember what channel it was I think it was somewhat tenuously linked to uh lonus Tech tips um but they were doing a video about layoffs and they were like and then Microsoft laid off 10,000 I'm like they weren't relating all to gaming like Microsoft laid off 10,000 and yes we know for example 343 Studios suffered quite harshly at that but those 10,000 were across Microsoft um so you know bear that in mind but yeah we've seen a lot of studos closed this year we've seen uh teams been shut down we've seen people just been laid on off on a whim while a lot of these CEOs are banking million doll bonuses and you know quite happily carrying on with their lives for the good of the company you know um they made the tough decisions that put everyone at risk yeah yeah just before Christmas for example you imagine that like the week before Christmas you're already stressing about like the bills next month and oh sorry you're unemployed I feel particularly sorry for for our friends in America cuz like the whole at will employment with no protection to you there's no process to go through there's no severance packages unless you're working for a big company you're just gone by Hard Times well we can't be mean to uh corporations because they are also people here oh well I wouldn't say corporations a person right ridiculous notion yeah but I mean that's what our government said oh yeah it was it was uh settled in law they they are people those corporations mental any notable notable ones that that you guys were embracing I know shocked at or set at personally Embrace is probably the biggest they're the they're the ones that have been the they're the ones that are going to have the longest lasting Legacy of just [ __ ] up the game industry yeah just free radical getting closed before they got a chance to reveal time Splitters yeah properly see some of the concept art as well was oh and I don't know if it was this year or last year vicarious visions that was this year was that was vicarious Visions this year or last year I think it was this year I don't know that was another one that annoyed me it's been rough it's been rough uh um and then you know it's also been the year of ridiculous leaks like groundbreaking industry breaking leaks you know we've had all of the drama from from from this year for the Activision Blizzard King acquisition the courtroom listening like I remember Jesse doing like three or four eight plus hour streams of four or five yeah it was uh streaming the the or or or at least um you weren't streaming the audio so what I was doing I had a um I got into the court case every day because it had a thousand seats and I was persistent enough to get in every day and then I would I set up a way to have it automatically transcribe the court proceedings which were dog [ __ ] quality and then I'd have to give a running commentary what being said to try and clarify it because it was such terrible uh audio quality yeah F that's mental uh the people that were salivating that and we got a lot from that right we got we got a glimpse at Microsoft's road map with the the series X refresh there was a cylindrical console does away with a disc drive and the digital series X that I leaked you mean yeah yeah that one um and Microsoft confirmed well yes but then they said you know the plans are old and they have changed and yada yada yada um well I guess it remains to be seen what what's happening with that you know he's there a series X pro Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came to fortnite leak that one two years ago massive leak that one nearly two years ago mental y massive and then obviously we've had the recent Insomniac leak as well um I think when was when was Capcom hacked was that last year 2020 that was a few years ago was a long time ago few years I wonder if this trend's going to continue and again this is all based around that fervency for wanting to know where you get these techsavvy folks that are either you know via social media what it is people just want to know like we we like people like to know what's coming with regard again outside of the winges that oh it's useful way most people just like to know that something is coming like we've had now this rumor now Nate the hate has said that um a banjo game coming so been getting tagged people going to me oh banjo banjo now someone reached out to me via DM after Nate leaked that and said do you know who the dev is I'm like I didn't even know there was a banjo game coming I was like I I didn't I didn't know there was a banjo game coming um and they're like oh I'm trying to find out the dev trying to find out the dev ask around I'm like okay I'll ask around so I'm now in the process of trying to find out who's developing this allegedly banjo game which I hadn't heard anything about um I had heard something else about banjo but I had not heard about a new banjo game um but yeah and that's you know one we just want to know we just want to know if it's real we just want to know speaking a leaks to be better at teasing we should say there is a planned Rumor Mill for later in the show yes speaking of leaks there's also a rumor lator another one another definitely you know huge huge ruber Mill absolutely massive you have to see for yourself I got I got the funny thing is I got the DM for this rumor mill as our show went offline last week they messaged me they were like are you still going I'm like no they're like ah I've got this for you I'm like a next week last episode of the Year why not yeah but yeah that's that's a lot you know and then if we look at box in general like I think I think they've had a really good year overall no chance Tom Tom the where everyone quit um but yeah like Xbox has had a really good year I think I think I don't think any of us here would disagree with that I'm not sure chat let us know if you feel differently see the thing I was told year redfall was such a disaster in Starfield was so disappointing that it's actually been a very poor year overall for that is the prevailing wisdom I'm seeing from people in the industry and highi Rush car so doesn't count high five Rush is too far it was too long ago it didn't do that well sales wise as we were tolds cartoon graphics and you ignore that Starfield did do great sales please yeah we will get to it Tom just after the segments everyone always leaves there yeah yeah we got to make people stick around for the got force people to hang around you got you have to appreciate our wanting to keep the audience and not let them all just go away yeah nice lengthy show um oh portal players got it right here right latest thing he said hasn't been a good year for Xbox console so he hangs out a lot in my coffee with cabesa streams and it's I've tried to push through the fact that they sell pretty much everything they put out they're just not going to keep losing a ton of money on console sales they have a different philosophy then PlayStation's doing their very best to Keep Their audience their neck and neck kind of keeping Pace where they were at the PlayStation 4 hardware-wise they're actually below where they were at the change over of the generation mult uh monthly active users wise which is the big metric they're like 107 last quarter Xbox was at 120 believe it or not they actually have more people on the Xbox platform because the Xbox platform is in more places and Xbox's first party monthly activ users very heavily carried by Minecraft is 150 million it's really big they got a lot of people that play their games every month and King's gonna add 240 million by itself that doesn't even count Activision or blizzard who are also going to add in a hell of a lot with their games so on the whole they're doing fine but you can tell I've had this conversation with him before where people are very used to the old metrics that were all that mattered and that still very much do matter for Nintendo and Sony but even there it's in different ways Sony needs to get people there for their third party bangers Nintendo needs people there for their first party bangers Microsoft is just everywhere all at once like a multi-headed Hydra just I will take your money anywhere thank you very much like it's it's a very different philosophy it just blows my mind to see people still to this day going yeah but they didn't sell as much does that bother you like genuinely does it does it upset you or cause you to enjoy your Xbox less because it's it's not in as many homes as the other console like I don't get it the only thing that would matter for you as a customer is are they making enough money to keep investing I would argue that the answer would be yes due to the recent 70 billion acquisition I explain this to you it's the Sega Dreamcast trauma ah it's always there in the background that Sega Dreamcast trauma the p TSD it's always there in the background ever presentes ever presentes a lot of people won't admit it but that's what it is fair um yeah so as we look into 2024 are we are we presuming that they're going to repeat some of the things they down well we know they'll have a summer showcase we'll know they'll attend Tokyo game show they'll do Gamescom are we all expecting a January development I am expecting one I'm expecting it very early in the year yes I reckon there will be one I'm very confident there'll be one I am the I am the defender I am the king of Defending underwhelming Xbox games I don't know how they're underwhelming but okay yeah personal opinion subjective um and as we look to 2024 like I'm just going to add Li this like Xbox Ser is going to go through some things um there's going to be some cool announcements in the in the first month or so that I'm personally super excited about we'll get into him more when when when they happen um we've got some cool stuff coming on New Year's Day um but you know it it would be remiss of me not to thank the community that supports the day out like even even yesterday I saw like two or three new patrons join uh the squad of awesome individuals that help us keep the lights on monthin month out there was even a lady a lady I know I know all the all the boys are like um but it's it's it's humbling it's humbling in a way because I look across the industry we're seeing all of these long-standing uh experienced journalists breaking out on their own after you know their s's folded or they want to go it and and make it their own thing and you know we''re seeing them get supported and patreon in really big ways and look we get it you know we've been we're coming into our fifth year of Xbox ER as a as a thing 20124 5 years we been doing this come this summer or next summer and to see the support year on year grow the site grow everything for us in terms of people that visit the people that are on the forums the number of you in the chat the people on our patreon it's just constantly going upwards um and that means a lot to us because you know we we exist because we don't think predominantly across the industry there's many places that actually play on this console by default um and we exist to give you our verdict on those things so we appreciate you we love you lots if you're not a patreon subscriber of course head to patreon.com Xbox era feel free to pledge your support because genuinely it really helps um and we love you for it um I'm going to answer the Super Chat from Good Old Collingwood good old Collingwood before the quiz John Nick when is your 4K Blu-ray abys disc coming now there's an interesting thing to this now I don't expect Nick to order the 4K Blu-ray disc right um he wasn't he wasn't as in love with the film as I always am they have cancelled the physical 4K Blu-ray release in the UK because of the Rat scene in the film now if you're not familiar with the abyss as a film it's awesome it's in my top five films of all time but there's a scene where they put a rat in breathing liquid so it's liquid uh that's that's super oxygenated and humans and animal can actually breath it it was a real thing they did it wasn't a stunt it wasn't a prosthetic it wasn't a fake animal it was a real they actually did that to the rat it was supervised by the scientists that's developed the liquid it's been tested on rats plenty of times it was also done way back in 1988 and it's always been a part of the film because it sets up the key sequence for later on when he that R's family is very upset as descendants it's been banned and I think that is [ __ ] insane uh but there you go is that is that a Peter thing uh I have no idea I have no idea who else would be driving it animal cruelty a LW of some kind has been broken it's mental it's oxygen it's not water they didn't drown the rat yeah the rat was unharmed by the experience the rat lived like I don't understand they didn't harm the rat exactly um and I want to make sure did we miss Jack 82 I don't remember reading this one out we may have sorry sorry been quite a few which is very nice thank you everyone yeah uh oh yeah and I was meant to say this one while we discussing the topic Jack 82 this year has been great for game releases 2023 has been the best we has been the best we also had unfortunate layoffs hope they get back on their feet 2024 will be fire that would yeah it would have been a great segue into this whole section yes um I am very excited the suicide game I admit it you know me you know my love of open world loter shooter co-op games as everyone threatened me over red fall on I'm I'm excited for that one I do suspect that we'll obviously get more layoffs in 2024 yeah I mean embracer is not done just that's just inevitable unfortunately isn't January February like the time of year for what for that sort of stuff to get for layoffs and stuff to get an like didn't Microsoft announce the 10,000 January this year they did yeah I think I don't think it's I don't think it's on the cards for 2024 I think you know UK economy wise we're slowly climbing back out now so America is too except for our cost of living never went back down it's skyrocketed and so even though like oh the economy is better people are making money it's like yeah but I can bar I can get half of what I used to with that money Co he lives bro Co he lives in it it sucks [ __ ] welcome to living in Australia you saw it nowhere else more than eggs which were like $8 a dozen and now they're down like freaking a buck why just because they they got caught that they were just upping their prices oh there's really bad bird flu and then people looked into it's like no there isn't you [ __ ] liars and then allegedly and then uh that was it prices went back down allegedly um but there you go irregardless that's it it's now that time of of the show for us to you know annoy with uh silly game shows and having a laughe but uh you know unfortunately maybe you want to stick around because there's a rumor what if it's something terrible like just another fortnite room can you imagine just waiting around for that but you won't know until we get there let's have some fun and what am I doing [ __ ] I hit the [Music] button we back we are now back lovely I'm joining the game okay uh I need to do that whilst I'm doing that uh I will uh cue up what name of game is if you have never watched this show before this is a silly game we play that Nick stole from radio station in Australia um it's where we play against each other working out synonyms of various games uh we have to figure out what the titles actually are uh we play for our patrons so if you're a patreon remember the chances are you'll be selected uh for nicar to act as your champion and you'll win a game code from our plethora of game codes that we have sitting in a secret file somewhere on Jesse's machine um Nick who are you playing for this week uh where's my thing I am playing for tiest flunky and sick is playing for Julia that's that's all got Julia Julia that's what I was thinking as soon as I saw that name I'm like Julia gulia The Wedding Singer oh my God that's such that's one of those movies where I watch it multiple times a year The Wedding Singer it's a classic be nice chat I'll start giving people timeouts grow up what's happening now there's people arguing people arguing us the a spirit of Good Will and it's just video games all right everyone's in the theme this week oh I guess I could oh yeah I haven't changed it down here I even know where this is in OBS Xbox games kind of oh I made a category thing I didn't even remember that the category this week are as suggested by my wife games with New York as a setting at some point they either have a they take place in New York or they got a level in New York because of I don't I had to think of something there's there's not enough New Year's games because I tried there's like freaking I there's like 10 things that take place around New Years Parasite Eve being one of them again that also takes place in freaking New York at one point as like a level games set in New York all right games with New York as a setting at some point they either take place there fully okay you know all right yeah yeah or they got a a DLC or something like that all right okay question number one hey before we start assassin entertainment name a game is literally the only game show I can feel and have a good laugh about it never stop doing them jents here's to 2024 it is it is fun I don't understand it is fun scw it's also it's also a really well timestamped show so just [ __ ] Click by it if you don't like it it's okay if you don't like that's what I mean like I do like I go to pretty crazy levels with time stamps like if you don't just don't click click off it just click on the parts you want to see I don't anyway wrap it up okay anyway oh I love it all right number one is very long okay this game is three words this is a much longer thing I'll put it in chat number one we're on desktop people will hear the uh the buzzers now is Killer's vow mutant who sucks up your life force who sucks up your life force one word [ __ ] uh [ __ ] hell I doubt you guys played this killer killer vow it was pretty good that sucks up your life force I believe it was a cross gen game or it might have been 360 at first and then xbx one mm the Killer's vow thing is what mut sucks up your life force and has a one word name yeah yeah yeah the the killer vow thing is I reckon you've done this game before not this game a game in this many times yes yes series yes yes conservatively yeah I'm going to I think I know what this is I reviewed this series twice this year sick go ahead is this Assassin's Creed Rogue hey ah Rogue yes Rogue mutant who sucks up your life force anyone she touches it took me while because I was not thinking X-Men but then I was like wait mutant why weren't you thinking X-Men yeah I I I was thinking of like is there a name for a mutant like is like a real thing not a comic book thing and that threw me for a minute but yeah yeah it's also that thing it's not a super long name but if I make it a nice long thing is that in New York said in New York I don't know that it's all said in there there are levels in it it's it's like um it's got sections it had a lot of ship stuff so yeah you go places all right okay number two and I'll be putting them in our private chat every time number two is ultimate hurting to the drop of ultimate [Laughter] hurt what you both know and have most likely played this [ __ ] out of this game on your original Xbox or PC ultimate hurting ultimate hurting yes yes yes yes yes yes yes max pain to the fall of Max pain oh nice great well points there you go yeah that's a great game I made a lot of these un I don't know I don't know that I can fit this next one on OBS hold on can I oh just barely I got to change it make it smaller all right all right everything's cleared we're ready to go the next one is penis jerk hyphen kids colon Regent Vietnamese hyphen Army the recognized contest of the film I'm going to go get a [Laughter] drink uh penis jerk kids jerk kids Regent Vietnamese Army the recognized no no no I I know I know the first part but I don't know the rest the first part penis jerk kids I know penis jerk kids I just don't know it's one of those games where if I if I say to you what the first part is you'll get the of it I don't know the rest of it do you know penis Jer I'm I'm now I'm now trying to figure out Regent Vietnamese Army um the recognized contest of the film penis jerk kids I I penis jerk kids what the [ __ ] I never thought I'd say the words penis jerk kids 100,000 times it's been fun listening you guys try and get this nobody's gotten this I think I know I think I know penis jerk kids I just how does he know penis jerk kids well hold on I'll actually I'll tell you now is this an old game Jesse huh is this a really old game this is an original Xbox game if memory serves I got a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup I didn't really have any drinks game I think it is yeah yeah if it's the game I think it is then it's an old game so this one isn't um this was 2002 3 let me see Regent Vietnamese Army it's got a word in there that there's no other way to really say when the hell did this come out there was another game in this franchise that came out this year what a 3 game I thought it this was a 360 game I might be off no no this is a different one oh I think it was cross I think it came out for both original Xbox and then a 360 version oh then it's not the game I thought it was sorry 200 I was going to say came I was going to say dick triy was there a dick triy video so it's not even just knowing the name of the game it's the whole name of this game is so stupid I thought it was Dick Tracy the chat has Dick Tracy then almost gotten it but they actually haven't gotten the name it's so dumb but if you want to take a guess otherwise I'm going to start the timer can I have a year 2005 November 14th 2005 I I know what this is and I've played this 17th and I've talked about it a lot because I don't like being things it's the whole name though is really weird I think I can do the whole name because I remember laughing at it mhm Peter Jackson King Kong the official game of the movie wow you got it your dumbest jerk kids why penis jerk kids Peter penis yeah jerk kid Jackson Regent what's Peter and penis what's Peter and penis jack off son penis jerk kids I mean why is Peter penis I guess it is in America but not other places it's like a nickname for it yeah it's it's not over here I I only got that because I know that you played the [ __ ] god awful Kong game when I saw penis jerk kid and I said is it an old game you go yes I immediately Dick Tracy cuz isn't there a Dick Tracy video game I know how you get Tracy at a jerk kid but hey he's a jerk kid there is there's ack there's an old video game and it's and it's set in New York I think so that's why I was like oh yeah Dick Tracy all right as bad as that one the next one for saying that over and over penis Jer [Music] kid all right the next one's Dumber if you want to believe that and I don't think you're going to get it cuz I had heard of this but I highly doubt either of you have the next one is oh boy [ __ ] colon [ __ ] gifted robotically hyphen enhanced enhanced assault group oh my God [ __ ] [ __ ] anyone gets this in chat you get a you cheer for me [ __ ] gifted robotically enhanced assault group and I guess it should be s.h. I.T to match the game let me do that ah okay s. h.i.t. colon gifted robotically hyphen enhanced assault group now you just you've just given the game away for me I'm just trying to remember the full name was this an NES game I actually don't remember I feel like this was an NES game and I remember laughing at this when I was a kid at a M's house because the acronym was I don't know if I can get the full thing I'm going to give it if this was Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991 was scat and I remember laughing my head off oh really yeah never heard of this you got enough you've got enough team I can't remember what the the full thing was do it special what is robotically enhanced for C oh oh cybernetic and then uh a uh assault attack and then t for group team boom you got it special cybernetic attack team scat holy [ __ ] and John wins on the Dum [ __ ] game that's what I was saying this was just that I couldn't believe this name one to put in there not this something you'd know and he got it man that's really unusual as well that is purely because it was called poop that's the only reason I remember it is from seeing it back then but yes well oh man congratulations John you've won one that it matters we we'll do the rest for funsies because it was very funny all right these are some good ones this year I love it next one is treat Warriors of serendipity Warrior of serendipity uh Soldier of Fortune correct yeah damn yeah also Serendipity is a rather lovely John cusac ROM jusek that'll be the next thing we can do in Sandra Bullock as well no it's not it's not Sandra Bullock it's um who was it with him oh I can't remember her name can't remember her name couldn't tell you off the top of your head um it is oh uh is that K it's K Beck cell that's the one k Beck God she's beautiful God Kate Beck and Sally's beautiful next one what crazy beautiful like just you calling her crazy that's not very nice next one is adolescent monstrous assassin terapin adolescent Nick he beat me on the bus got differences between buzzing there as soon as you said terapin i' clicked so I was like te now I got the Adolescent monst straight away B okay I had to do we do New York you kind of have to do that one he just trying to find a new way to do it all right next one is calico Chief hyen wiggums the partitioning Calico Chief wigs mhm what every time I bring up the word uh cat around here what does it end up being used for and what's Chief wiggum's first name ah oh yeah Tom Clans is the division correct nice again names are tough they have to be bad and dumb I don't know of a way to not make them be stupid but being stupid is fun all right here's another one I get them all I get them all after it's finished the you're pulling the you're pulling the all right the next one is the shadiness the shadiness sick the darkness correct I God I buzzed like almost away I [ __ ] loved uh the darkness on 36 I hav play [ __ ] what man it's a legit it was back in the day feels like [ __ ] at it holds up a tiny little bit it's very try- Hardy and doesn't look the best but you can still see comp yeah one and two yeah you you can see the skill even though you know it wasn't like a huge budget thing all right let me clear the buzzers the next one is going to be conclusive impermanent Bloodshed 3 has a level set in New York one level conclusive yeah Darkness has a lot of rats um um ooh Cisco roke got it immediately God damn impressive um this was an arcade game first though this version might not have been arcade first cuz this was a revision of the original Nick conclusive impermanent blood sh go on uh Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 correct nice nice got that on Saturn it was a fantastic game fix a lot of arguably the best Mortal Kombat arguably built off of one of the worst the original Mortal Kombat 3 rough and missing a lot of stuff and they brought it back like scorpion I never played I never played the Mortal Kombat 3 I only ever played ultimate yeah you're lucky all right the final one is one word that word being mockup Mark hyphen up an Xbox IP now oh sick I feel like I should know this I feel like I should know this you do you do because it's prototype correct oh yeah wow a clean sweep 10 to nothing for John according to the scoreboard way to go holy [ __ ] thanks everyone never seen that that so impressive I think that undoes Nick winning for the year and now he owes you a game love that I'd love that to be actually true yeah at least I'd buy at least I'd actually buy the game [ __ ] hell at least you don't have a $10,000 $155,000 debt to pay off right now yeah your back well I already got I only got got well you paid some but still you had it yeah I Still Still Still finish I I'll have it paid off within this week coming so [Music] um I don't think now look I can see as much as the chat is definitely hankering for the rumor mill I also suspect they just want more game show Shenanigans right because what they may not know is that there's a certain end of the Year tradition I completely completely forgot about it but Jesse didn't my wife didn't she is one of her favorite things I got to text her right now I can't believe I forgot I just I actually I'm appointed in myself that I completely forgot the friends quiz so I shouldn't have left buzzing I shouldn't have left buzzing oh yeah I I left it too I'll make a new one come come come back we all left buzzing I didn't even think about buzzing for this because we're just gonna be like just yell it out um no no no you need buzzing you need if you're great if you're an Xbox her fan you'll happen to know that uh a long time ago and I'll tell the story I'll set this up a long time ago when we were when we were young and and you know idealistic we I'm So Young look at me our our fledgling podcast the fledgling Xbox her podcast and as Nick and I were getting to know each other because you know fun fact we've never met in real life right that's going to change this year because Nick's gonna do everything he can to get to Germany and'll be at Gamescom for our first ever in-person show with Jesse as well but we found out through conversation and went off on this massive tangent because we found out we were both big fans having grown up on every day E4 for me in the UK the sitcom Friends and ever since it's been an end of the Year tradition to have a kind of a bit of a friends knowledge face off um how many have we done I think we've done three two or three have we yeah I don't know if feel like I've won all of them I feel like I've won all of I feel like and I was I was going to add I feel like you're the bigger friends see fan um so when Nick's into something he's really into something he's really into it you know so um well I'll do my best let's see how we that music colums I don't want Yeah final it would be remiss of us not to mention Matthew Perry um may he rest in peace haunting music colums colums has haunting music so good like that's that's more that's darker than what that sort of game should have and it was so hard that like extra creepy yeah columns was great though columns is such a good game I love that [ __ ] on my Game Gear so good all right I guess I'll go I'll I'll play the Friends music yes go with the friends really quietly cuz it gets really irritating after a while cuz the actual songs no not turning it up save me cuz that's actually technically not a good song but anyway yeah no in anyway your performance not all right what are we going to do best of 100 okay I'm kidding chat I'm kidding chat we'll do best of 10 because they're quick you know I won't be long with them first to what is it six whatever all right and I will try you know I'm just going to do this like name a game okay okay means I got we have to buzz in yeah it's not just quick buz buzzing buzzing all right Buzz question number one who was the first to find out Monica andant were dating sick I just saw Nick had renamed himself on buzzing to chandela Bong uh it was Joey correct all right one nothing sick yet again will he get to six first question number two is which one of Joey's sisters did Chandler hook up with oh [ __ ] CH Chandler bong Maria I don't know if that's correct or not it is Mary Angela were they known as Maria oh [ __ ] Mary Angela I wouldn't give him that I wouldn't give him yeah I was gonna say it's a marieangela no yeah yeah it says one nothing Nick John sorry I said John yeah yeah I got that wrong I got that wrong all right don't worry Chad I'm flying through these the next one is when Ross falls asleep on the train where does he end up tler bong uh heing he doesn't even [ __ ] know he's just getting in his memory no he ends up in Canada he ends up in Canada where in Canada 5 4 3 [ __ ] two Montreal got it Montreal nice okay I was going to I wasn't he going to pipy wasn't he trying never watched a terrible show yes he was trying to got pip he trying to got a pipy Yeah Yeah question number three we are killing Tom Henderson he's probably jumped out of window number three is who was Ross's first wife sick uh oh no chanandler Bon got it it it what definitely pressed that first no it is roll back net code from Australia Nick clicked it first by probably a second and it fixed itself can incorrect no correct correct I'm kidding whatz I forgot roll back net code's cool that's why buzzing buzzing. live if you ever want to use this free scoreboard or buzzer thing okay keep thescore.com is the scoreboard thing I use and it's also out of line you can see a line behind it it's driving me crazy I got to fix it real quick need to go up just a little tiny bit there we go so what's the score the score now is what is it 3 to one Nick or two to one Nick Jesus Christ two two two to one pretty sure it's three I don't remember pressing up three to one Nick I'm pretty sure it's three yeah you got the Montreal right before time don't worry Nick I'm not letting you steal one this year just because I'm not paying attention yeah slick moves [ __ ] I saw you next one where did Monica and Chandler first get together wait wait the buzz the buzzer the buzzer the buzzer [Music] London that's what in London should have got rid of that question get it doesn't count he was trying to oh of course it doesn't you also got it wrong it was Ross's wedding in London you didn't say the full thing I wouldn't have given it to you the you would have got it anyways all right the next one is everything's cleared yes yeah well who did Phoebe name her brother's daughter after Chandler bong Chandler correct chandless a girl chandless a girl where have I heard that chandless a girl CH Nikki is definitely the super fan of friends like there's no way I can compete what does Joey name his Barka lounger [ __ ] aneurism Jesus Christ man I like like that's that information is not in my brain starting the timer this is a quick game show timer's going a [ __ ] 7 6 5 4 it's going to destroy me it's going to destroy me Rosita roita [ __ ] r o s i t a [ __ ] oh boy this one's long okay hold on let me get this to fit in no one's Buzz next question is when Monica gets her credit card stolen what does she tell the thief her name is yeah man there's no way I'm not a friend super starting the timer oh yeah what she tell her sick Rachel Green incorrect I just a stab gu oh what does she tell her no I I can't remember I was actually going to say Phoebe but it's not fa no the name is monana m o n a yeah monana I didn't think it was one of the friends I thought it was just some other name yeah yeah yeah right clear and buzzers the next question is what name was on Chandler's mail sick uh Miz chanan laong correct yeah I had to do that one when I would you would you have docked points if i' have just said chandel laong yes I wouldn't have given it to you okay I'm glad I remembered them as my name Chan La all right the next one is which sprous twin played Ben Ross's son reset the buzzer God damn it trying to do it too quick which p r o u i can't remember those actor's names I can't remember those kids names yeah have no idea okay it was Cole spros you're not a super fan terrible no clearly not everyone's pissing hold on didn't they both play because of the whole Laura against kids working certain hours they were twins it was both of them playing D Today Show's freaking friend squiz if you want I don't give a [ __ ] next question is which character said the iconic line pivot in the show sick no Russ no and I like the fact that the buzz players the buzz players is right there so can't can't fake it roll back neck code baby all right it is four to three first to six wins cuz these are we're going quick I've messed up the buzzer a few times but the buzzer is good the next question is what was Ross's monkey's name sick oh what oh my God I can't remember it starting the timer marel you got it tide at four [ __ ] yeah come on these time Nick's more awake now this is a it's an up he wants this he wants this don't forget if I win you have to buy me a G yeah right right all right next question is what is Chandler's middle name sick [ __ ] come on Muriel incorrect correct [ __ ] off I know I'm right five to four a commanding comeback will he choke it away like he always does come on I'm just going right down the list here okay everything's set for a potential win or a potential tie the next question is why would it be a potential win he has five now who who was Chandler's college roommate sick Rosella correct oh no I am the friend Super Fan all right now we're going to do the remaining what there's like 85 more let's go through them all everyone I mean or not that was our game show SE okay wow what a comeback I am impressed good man who normally chokes away every game play we or every game we play actually came through Miracles can happen now thing every like I'd really like the Sonic game um next so if you want Sonic Mania too you owe me Sonic Superstars okay right you owe him the piece of [ __ ] that is Sonic Superstars but now it is time to hit the rumor mill button button it's the R button look at [Music] that the rill things change we can't for sure it's the rill you know they may not come [Music] [Laughter] true the Xbox era podcast is not responsible for websites presenting these rumors as facts all right we're back with the rumor mill okay we don't have Rumor Mill music do we no we don't but I'm so glad we kept everyone watching through the game shows because this is the rumor mill to end the year on like I can't hype this up up this is so [ __ ] huge like I you're going to see it all over the Internet you're going to see it on Euro gamer on IG and they're going to be calling neck up like they're all coming back from their year end Vacations so everyone's coming back into work this I wouldn't be surprised right and I'm not joking do you remember when um I can't remember when the Smash Brothers character reveals and Twitter went down you remember in that kind of this is that kind of level it up anymore because I don't want to get like overhyped before we get to it we've got a super chat from Don Johnston Happy New Year's guys in time demo out 2024 I think that's the game he's working on he bought some advertising all right is he really working on a game I don't know cuz he's a bit of Joker so I know cuz last week he his dad was dead and he was like joking so now I don't know what to take Ser all right Rumor Mill just jokes Rumor Mill so last week right as the show ended I got a DM and the Dam's like you still going I'm like no and they're like man I got this for you I'm like damn so now I need a preface this last week I got this DM and I immediately jumped into a DM with if fire monkey who was in our chat the famous fortnite um leer SL uh what do they call it there is when you get into the backend files and [ __ ] and you what do you what do they call it data scraping I can't remember the name there's a name for it and when you can get into the everyone immediately leaves because fortnite was brought up oh it's a forite so I got in I I got I got a DM I sent to II monkey last week I'm like man I I just got a DM about someone coming to fortnite and then I told him who it was and he's like oh he goes some people have been speculating that that character is coming based on a on a loading screen in this season's fortnite so I don't want people thinking that this is me jumping on some bandwagon I got this DM and I sent it to if fire monkey last week so he could verify that so last week I was told that Devil May Cry is coming to fortnite and I was like holy is already down it's I was like Devil May Cry is so good so I there was also a second one that I'm a bit hesitant to say and maybe Ricky can um clarify how that second character I told him about would work but Devil May Cry and then I asked oh cuz Devil May Cry is quite a few characters who now they believe it's Dante Dante is one of the Dante should be obvious and the other guy oh my the [ __ ] does that mean there's like Nero there's Virgil there's so many options for Devil by cry I think Dante is like the safe bet um but man I got a perfect fit for fortnite now the other one hold on stop the other one that I got told and this is the one I'm funny on can you turn it down all right fine turn it down cuz I can hardly hear myself oh you were you're actually upset okay here [Music] down all right all right fine fine the the other one that I got told about is a weird one and I'm not sure how this would work because how the hit boxes are on fortnite the other one I got told about that I was a bit odd on was um Jake Sully from Avatar is Jake Su is it Jake Sully that's Avatar o what you got Jake suly yeah the J Su yeah um let me just triple check that but yeah I'm pretty I buy whatever you're holding there John what is that um yeah is Avatar they're like yeah and that's and that's why I was odd that's why I found Jake Sully odd cuz my guess is they're not just going to have the dude Jake Sully he's just it's just [ __ ] what's his name that also he'd be in a wheelchair he can walk so he'd be rolling around everywhere that's what I mean and the Avatar av the na'vi the na'vi are like super super tall they're like 14 tall 14t tall or something so I don't know how that would work in fortnite like the tallest character at the moment in fortnite I think is the banana I think Keely ban what this that sentence is just so stupid I think peely is the tallest character in fortnite at the moment so I don't know how the na'vi would work like a a na'vi character would work so I was a bit funny on that one um when are we starting the fortnite era podcast so we can have all these rumors oh yeah I know bad man Devil May Cry is such a perfect fit though now now there's a loading screen in fortnite this season and people were speculating Devil May Cry may come because on this loading screen which is the agent Jones one if you look at his gun there's a reflection in his gun of a character that appears to be Dante from Devil May Cry it appears to be so there's been speculation that uh Dante will come to fortnite so I I got the DM last Sunday my time so this time last week that Dante is coming to fortnite and immediately D him Ricky uh SL II monkey about it riveting that that is why that is why he's in the chat hi if IFI monkey thanks for hanging out um microtransaction error coming next year yeah um your latest news on where you can waste money oh dear yes sorry everyone wasn't that but hey it's not about the the you know the Finish it's about that that Ninja Turtles won he goes I think we need a fortnite quiz next year yeah I mean that would literally just be me asking questions and only Nick having any chance of answering them yeah that's right I'll be like what it's a good one and then to give me a fortnite skin he has to get me vbucks as a prize my son has started playing fortnite a lot like he he sped his gift card on on v-bucks so my kid stole money see him working together with with his friends so I don't mind it's the best it is the best fortnite is so good yeah so good but yeah yes so hey that Turtles one mate that Turtles when I did the turtles leak that was huge that was a big one and here they are the turtles are here two years later that's the problem we have no idea when Dante will come is he going to come in a month 6 months a year two years that I don't know how epic do it I have no idea how epic do it cuz they sign those deals well in advance yeah it takes a while to create the assets there might be another Devil May Cry game coming that's being aligned to the the release but they don't always align it they don't always align it so I got told about the Paramount Turtles deal two years ago this time two years ago and then um and then there was the movie this year and they didn't release them with the movie they released them 4 months after the movie why didn't they do it with the movie weird like it's just weird like I don't know how they I just don't know um oh did I just get another did I just get another DM right now that they're like go with this on the rubber Mill too and it's Xbox related it's Xbox related it's Xbox related want to make it up to everyone hold on uh let me hold on let's add lib if you enjoy Xbox here enjoy watching me and Nick uh play Silly game shows for some of the time feel free to support us on patreon by heading to patreon.com he's check I'm saying are you sure cuz this is is this sizable is this a sizable Rumor Mill I I think so okay I think so took too long everyone's left we we've lost like 60 people someone said what's up with the audio what's up what is up with the audio you tell me what's up with the Audio I don't know should be fine the audio stream streamyard shows normal sounds for you and me yes it sounds fine I don't know no one else has complained sounds okay to me yep all right what is it Nick you gonna say it come on Nick just go I don't know I don't know he said yes one of yeah I know but it's one of it's one of those things that's sort of a big deal is kind of and it like if it doesn't happen in a month everyone's going to be like so I'm just like so I'm just like not can can you run it can you run it in the private chat to to me and Jesse so we can give our opinion on whether it's a good idea to to talk about this not okay um bear with us folks bear with us be really funny if he accidentally types it in YouTube chat intube public just totally shits the bed oh dear uh where where you putting it Discord to private chat in I think it's private chat [ __ ] yeah it is private is private chat I think that's I think I think that's fine especially just emphasize Rumor Mill not leak this is definitely I know but that's not how everyone that's not how everyone treats it they don't treat it like a r fine fine come on go for it okay all right so now um impromptu part two Rumor Mill impromptu part two Rumor Mill uh um what I'm hearing just got me I just got a DM about it what I'm hearing is that uh we are Xbox Xbox are nearly done with their achievement overhaul with changes to achievements and we should be seeing it next year so I guess when they say next year I assume they're aware of the fact that it's new Years Eve so I'm I'm guessing they mean 2024 there but we should be at the very least being shown it because you know how sometimes they put stuff in beer and then it goes through different rings so it might be one of those things that makes its way through I don't know they're not saying that I'm saying that always a speculation that it's now I can't help it I'm because I'm trying to clarify but hey like Jason did a Super Chat earlier on in the show where he asked like for me one of the things I'm really looking for I know Jason asked that he wants to see the achievement overhaul and then I'm like I just got a DM about it now that they should be showing at least showing maybe not releasing but at least showing the achievement overhaul whatever that looks like next year that people have been isn't it funny we were talking about it with meca yeah was saying and I said that I had heard I got a DM like how long ago was it Jessy like a year ago or so about CH changes to achievements I'm just got this right now while we were we were on a they're like I'm watching your show you want this like all right I'm like all right take it all right I wasn't going to cuz I was a bit funny about it but it's a potential it's a rumor I mean now it's it's it's fact and it's just another guess you got wrong it's a rumor it's all rumors for me I'm not Tom Henderson I'm not Jeff grub I'm I'm just a dude I keep saying it I'm a pleb that just people give stuff to and I trust most of these people with your life rightly or wrongly so yeah that's it awesome there you go saved it with an Xbox one right at the end saved it well played you all got upset you all got upset you all got upset at fortnite watching watching the the Betrayal hit home in the chat at the time was glorious they all got upset about fortnite leak fortnite skid and then saved it right at the end with well and on that note ladies and gentlemen as we as we wind down the final podcast of 2023 uh it's time as always for us to show that extra little bit of love to our patreon supporters via their exclusive perk of being able to Annoy Us every week with Community questions um too don't we yeah we've got that too we we that's why I was being fast with the friends quiz cuz we've been on a long time yeah my bladder's pretty full here you know like I I finished this point of juice we to we are too professional where like most other shows they go live they haven't even set up their cameras or their audio and they just do it while they're live you can just go take a piss it's fine go I know I know I let's let's let's see how we get you know I've got a bladder of Steel so I'll be fine hold on I'm just updating my one note okay I'll do the first one while you're doing that uh first he likes I like to read my questions out every week it's my job all right first question Jessie Jesse brother Jessie brother happy hollay Source fellas I like that it sounds like a little old Greek lady happy Holidays happy happy happy hollay That's how little old Greek ladies talk English happy Holland to fellas and hey we spoke too soon about Game of the Year it wasn't Boulders Gate 3 Alan Wake 2 or any other deserving choices it was apparently Spider-Man 2 Sony just needed to make their own awards show and give it to themselves my question is for Nick seeing how so many Australian actors can do such good American accents can you if so could you lay it on us and I promise I'm not secretly hoping it's bad so I can laugh at you I mean it can't be any worse than the ab Abomination that jez does but there's so many American accents so many variants anyone that you do okay there's Boston there's the Boston accent see no that's actually more New York New York isk so baston's more like you know everything's in ah and because that's where I was Bast yeah Baston p pacan havat is actually more main but people always associate with Boston but yeah [ __ ] off dude that's Boston lot of [ __ ] yeah yeah New York you [ __ ] relax you [ __ ] relax you know where you draw out all the sounds and you make yourself sound like that guy you know that's that's the for me what about what to Southern American what what is Mr Burns's accent what's his ex that's like like a Dre there's also there's a mix of like the the flyover the Midwest as accent as but obvious it's an accent oldo my least favorite is uh iol it's the one where everything ends like slightly going up so I'm constantly talking like it's always the end of the question like you know what I mean like I have someone that I work with like that who just constantly goes on oh yeah valley girl valley girl totally yeah I used to be able to do everybody coming together like a family and you know yeah me if I had if if I had to star in movies and learn an American accent it would take me a little while I I I Australians do British accents remarkably brilliantly well well yes that's it's very close though already well I was about to say there's obvious there's an obvious reason for that yeah um obvious reason for that old boy there's an obvious reason you like thugs you like thugs like thugs PN blue boss the pwin blue you need to get all the accents nailed from like a guy Richie film like the gentleman oh [ __ ] this snatch is so [Laughter] [ __ ] next question pwin blue the pwin blue boss uh okay uh a78 Nick's accent is unique I've never heard an Aussie accent like that it's because there's a tinge of Greek to it so if you if you don't live in an area that's got a lot of Greeks or Italians or anything like that that's probably why there a touch of Greek to it ethnics ethnic Aussies it's a little bit different uh okay okay uh happy early New Year to you you all and I hope next year we have a positive future of gaming and such and if you Jens reach TR hundredth episode well yeah I'd like to think we're not going anywhere in the next couple of months um of this podcast it be so dope if you jents invite Phil Spencer or Sarah bond to your show we definitely wouldn't that that be that would be really we would definitely invite them but you know yes invite them they w very happy with me last time there's an open invitation to to Phil Sarah and anyone from the Xbox team if wanted to join the show but you know they weren't come on go I was just gonna say they weren't overly happy with me they didn't love they didn't love you your style my persistence my persistence but let me put it this way for the community um I think I think you know episode 100 for us was a big deal right you know it was we achieved a lot but also it was a really massive celebration we had tons of people from across the Xbox community on but more than anything you guys [ __ ] rocked that episode it was insane do you remember how insane it was it was just nuts and we were freaking out how crazy it got so uh can you and and we also launch stuff we launched day one um you know that was a really cool thing to be able to do uh hey did you know that did you know that podcast listeners if you go to day one. xbox.com you can get like an upto-date constant live list of everything in Game Pass and if you have a for account you can like Mark games has played you can add your reviews you can go find videos you can go find Forum chats it's pretty cool but we launched we we we timed it so that that launched on episode 100 right are we planning things to be available as as an enhancement to Xbox ear ever expanding Empire for episode 200 yes there you go there you go next next question okay yeah yeah yeah uh it looks like I fire monkey had something ready fired on Twitter yeah yeah cuz I told him about it last week um ccul if Diablo 4 is not in game pass by February at the latest that's weird right no I mean you can't tell me nobody from The Game Pass team has had a single conversation since closing the deal about getting the game on their ASAP above all else what do you think battle net integration it's battle net integration they will get those games into Game Pass when they can get PC and Xbox at the same time and that's battle net integration which shouldn't be too hard because they've already done it with Ubisoft they've already done it with EA they've already done it with Riot so now they just got to have the time it's it was the holidays they weren't going to have people working around the clock yeah they've got to have it so you can tie your Xbox account into your battle net and then it just and battle Net's a part of the Windows store like the other ones become and I'll just I think they own battl net now yep they own battl net now yeah and people are G to say they should just use battle net no battl net can barely support the very small amount of games that are on it it's a very specific thing okay so what do they eventually just get rid of battl net no what we know what they're doing everything goes into the Windows store and like everything's just a part of the Windows store because that they like you can get epic game store like everything goes into Windows store it's all there and you tie your Microsoft account into it okay okay I mean I'm I'm with Cy legs a little bit but I understand that it might not be that quick and that simple because they' about it for a while like yeah they've known about the deal for a while now it's not like it just sprung up on them work couldn't go on until they knew for sure to actually talk to the engineers on battl net to get it all set but I think once the holidays are done everyone's back from the holidays that becomes a very high price priority yeah okay uh next question shut up John you're talking too much hi everyone I've always struggled with the idea that after 100 plus hours a game no longer suffices and is thus bad we sort of talked about this before we made the jokes before diao 4 Starfield Halo infinite Destiny do people log hundreds of hours into games they hate or does the semif finality cause hate yours truly I've only played 25 games over 100 hours and like them all PS discussing film just shared you that appeared in front of my eyes as I was reading what discussing discussing film who who what who what I don't know might have been about the Devil May Cry and adti thing I don't know okay I don't know who discussing film is quick the Twitter Twitter account it's a Twitter account oh okay um big is that big Avatar and Devil May Cry cabs are rumored to be coming to fortnite Via Xbox era yeah see you guys always get upset at fortnite rumors mate fortnite rumors are big big deal I will never tell my sources to not give me fortnite rumors cuz I also adore fortnite so I'm not going to [ __ ] say no when I got told about TMNT I [ __ ] [ __ ] a chicken I was like are you [ __ ] serious it's like I got so excited about TMNT and look how amazing those [ __ ] Turtles are they're so good me and my son we just went and spent like nearly hundred Australian dollars on buying the [ __ ] Turtles okay um yes we we were talking about this before about the whole look I can understand for a games as a service game where someone has put like me 3,000 hours into rocket league and then they make changes that ruin the game for you and you wind up hating it because of changes made if it's a single play a game like a Starfield like a horizon forbidden West like a whatever I don't understand how you can hate it after putting in 100 plus hours about 800 put 100 hours yeah like that I find odd that's that it feels like it's just more of the Zeitgeist that is becoming the discussion around the game and it just people like being a part of well everyone else is [ __ ] on this if I do it I'm going to get a bunch of uploades here on Reddit or if I do put up a [ __ ] task steam review I'm going to get a bunch of people that found this useful like there's there's always that side to it yeah oh my God my Twitter notifications are going mental yeah yeah oh my God and people see the clips and they just me and John looking all sad and saying fullly to sleep reading a magazine oh wow look who's back morenus is back morvus returns I haven't seen morvus for a while and I will long time uh long time no pick one or both question list for the patreon lounge oh my God that that sentence just broke my brain a little bit um hopefully the holidays treated you all well and if you celebrate a gift giving holiday your folks and all you got plenty of joyous wonders I did lots of nice socks that I bought myself but without further Ado pick one or both to answer hey a is like a thesis and then B is like super fast with with us getting some news on active blizz games coming to Game Pass next year what perks do you think will be added obviously I can see uh hearstone hearstone Heartstone card pack or something being added but I think perks towards crash team rumble or Heroes of the Storm could really help uh games get players Hots especially as it was put into maintenance mode due to lack of profitability I think having hero unlocks with Game Pass could greatly increase player count and probably get a good chunk of people to buy skins if they enjoy the game um plus a theoretical Xbox Port could help spbo development in the game or B what is your favorite Halo enemy uh on the on the first one like I haven't thought about the perks that an Activision Blizzard overwat know they do that what I was gonna say was what twitch Prime gets you just give that to game of Duty that's a lot Call of Duty OverWatch Diablo um there's Candy Crush and soda Crush bundles of like consumables like there is a [ __ ] ton of ABK stuff just move those into Game Pass ultimate or copy him over like either or I wonder if stop giving totch they probably have a deal with him for a while I wonder if uh the deal about Call of Duty though prevents them from giving exclusive skins or anything of that nonsense like I would have to be the everyone with Amazon Prime it redeems to your account with battl net so if it's the same thing it this redeems to your battle net account through Game Pass yeah yeah there you get it boom cross progression and favorite Halo enemy the warden Eternal so easy you get behind him with a splinter grenade and a shot saying that to be he's saying that to be a contrarian wanker because he knows everyone hates the water and turn cuz they didn't not how to fight him you could kill him in two seconds on legendary you're all you could uh my my personal favorite Halo enemy has got to be the the I mean the Halo one Hunters where they were kind of imposing and threatening but you could just go behind him pop when I was playing that on Christmas I was getting mad at how easy they were it's like they look so Co sound so and he just one shot them it's so stupid yeah the reality is the the elite always like the elite but it's the reach Elite where they were like [ __ ] mental really hard terrifying what what mine's the grunts the grunts are funny and I like how sometimes they just sleeping and just you just sneak up on them while they're sleeping and you just whack them you just dunk them on the head I like the GRS okay Shady Pine Steve your favorite ha happy New Year to you all oh I'm back in the everyone thanks bro okay happy New Year Steve we know this name John Lee lafield do you why what's special about this thing he's the one who won the book I thought he is he I think he won yeah he won the he won the special edition signed by Mr Phil Spencer himself oh nice hope you all had a great holiday and thank you for the time you've put in all year to keep us entertained especially Jesse with reviews GE yeah i s g especially G I'm going to call you G from now on because that's a great name the one time someone doesn't spell my name with an i and then they they miss an s and n e g that's like shap shck pull you were also shees shees pull shees pull Nick and shap Nick jeez my question is this what successful game or franchise does nothing for you oh God where do I be man just one word answers for me it's the last of us the game play is weak story mid and at the end when Ellie and at the end when Ellie is on the table I wanted the doctor to finish the job I even stood waiting for a few minutes come on come on with it I ain't going to shoot you lastly it's like this is worse than a cut scene I'm just waiting for the doctor to killer last lastly I listened to you while in the gym tell me to get a move on or something inspirational yes I drink control oh and golden eye is Game of the Year no contest even Eye of the Tiger type music okay Lee I know you're on that seventh uh rep I know you're on that seventh rep of those dumbbell chest presses keep pushing mate just keep pushing to that eighth rep come on you just push push push it's all you it's all you that's I'm not even touching it I'm not even touching it that's all you doing it it's no one [Laughter] else oh br br you Bally you like that yeah if I was spotting him I'm not even touching it I'm not even touching it it's all you buddy it's all you it's all you that's that's what my mate used to say when I'm doing the chest press I'm like he's like I'm not even touching it look look look I'm not touching it oh as far as it'd be more like what games don't you not care about between you yeah oh yeah we have to answer the question we did the fun question my question what successful game does nothing for you my God most of them for both of you effect effect Jesus heaps of them heaps of them you Jesus sea of sea of Thieves sea of Thieves Spiderman Starfield Spider-Man Mario Zelda Donkey Kong Zelda yeah Pikmin Pikmin from Nintendo does nothing for me Pikmin puncho um whatever Sonic so many yeah Mortal Kombat I'm not really into it anymore whatever Tekken fortnite whatever God you name it so much like Ser just wax lyrical like there's new God of War compared to Old God of War yeah Horizon I did like ghost of tsushima I really like gravity russan course Gone Forever it's I love is good yeah ghost of sushima is a mass a Mappy ass map game it might not be for you it's not super long though but oh I'm not interested in it at all yeah the um the the cut the feeds to Black were very annoying but I'd say that pretty good Gravity Rush too was great MH uh three to go three to go okay Soul Blazers yo so Vala the free DLC to God of Ragnarok is out and it was fantastic Nick I'm not sure if you've played it yet I have not but you absolutely should in my opinion it retroactively elevates the story of the original trilogy as well as these latest two games but my question to the panel Sony seems to be embracing this trend of Rog likee modes as updates for their games it's smart as it uses existing assets assets and RPG light abilities would you guys want to see Xbox Studios do something similar and if so which games modes would you want to see thanks for the show as always well with Xbox we used to get hord modes yeah and everything and I prefer hord modes I I yeah very similar like like firefight has recently landed in Halo infinite but I think that's a prime example of something that the team could take for the next game and make a genuine like new mode like a rogue like mode that sand you've got the runs in the things but it's the The Meta leveling outside of that is what makes a good Rogue like and that's kind of one of the issues I had with returnal it was very slow yeah yeah it's funny I got told that apparently about a month or so ago on the podcast I had mentioned what I had heard about what I think snitch snitch had mentioned God of War was getting DLC and then I think I had mentioned what I had heard about and I heard it might actually be like a standalone expand alone thing now it's turned out it wasn't but I feel like this is a good example of how my sources work in terms of what they see in here like people are talking about how fullon Valhalla is and if you look at Valhalla on the store it has its own store listing yeah so even though it's called an update to Ragnarok if if you were to look at a picture it looks like just a separate game so I just wonder if my source saw that image and went hey this God of War DLC that's being rumored it's an expand alone it's its own thing cuz have a look it has its own app in the store that you can purchase quote unquote and attach to your account so I just wonder if there was some confusion that they saw there it makes perfect sense I love Brits comment in the chat can we can we highlight this this is a brilliant idea Gears of War Rog light has to be called car mines and each run is just a different car mine family and they just die brilliant that's actually pretty clever Xbox Studios have had some Rog lights like um high-fi Rush did their arcade mode which was a rogue light add-on and the the really good um prey add-on that I can't freaking remember that was its own own shadow crash Moon crash Moon CR yes Moon crash could not think the freaking name like they've definitely had some and I can see where it fits from the gameplay angle definitely it's a but now Sony did it though so it's extra special okay I can't wait I Sony did it okay it's extra special now um only neck so it's sort of it's sort of like when Apple adds like a feature that everyone has done before but when Apple does it it's magical and it's like reinvent it but when you know when everyone else does it years beforehand it's meaningless but apples look so special this is the same thing anyway um executive producer top oh I'm I'm coming back for him hello Nick John and G for Christmas I and many of my family got my brother PlayStation gift cards oh God here we go listen to this now only to find that child accounts cannot add gift cards to their account it I keep complaining about these PlayStation child accounts man they're the [ __ ] worst thing on earth it pisses me off to no end for some reason you have to add it to the parents account and set a spending limit yeah so I've got to put the PlayStation credit uh the gift card on my account and my son has to extract that money from my account it is the dumbest [ __ ] I've ever seen in my life this then comes with another issue what if we forget to change the spending limit back to zero will purchases just be charged to the card on the parents account anyways as parents what would you like to see improved in terms of parent controls across Xbox other platforms nothing on Xbox Xbox has it perfect Xbox nailed you're muted John Xbox nailed the parental control [ __ ] I can just go into the Family app add some money to my son's account if wants to spend go if if he wants to look at a game on the store or buy a game that's out of his age range it says Hey probably need to ask your parents permission for this and I can just either log in on his Xbox or approve it on the app if he sends a request the way Xbox does it is Flawless the way Sony does it is [ __ ] stupid and it pisses me off to no end like if I had known that child accounts on Playstation was such a write off I would have just lied about his date of birth and set him up as an adult yeah if I had known because it's ridiculous like some games it lets my son ask for permission but then others it does look my son cannot play Roblox on Playstation Roblox a child he can't play Roblox on Playstation it won't let him it is like the accounts and things afterwards you can't upgrade them can't do it can't do anything his accounts just his s are screwed now like it's just got to wait till he's God knows how old I don't know it's uh place the PlayStation child account system is [ __ ] atrocious it's actually disgusting Nintendos is fine I don't think Nintendo is just like whatever yeah I think the CH I think the child account thing on Nintendo is just like a label and nothing more really um the way Nintendo does it is whatever um at least if I want to my son to buy something he can but my God the way PlayStation does it like if I had known top was setting up child accounts I would have told him not to and said don't do it just set them up as adults because the child account system is just busted on Playstation it's terrible um hopefully they fix that Xbox doesn't have to fix anything mate Xbox does it perfect it's great um okay last question oh no assassin entertainment added one yeah yeah yeah skidadle you know skidadle has been there pretty much since the start he is OG like pretty much since episode one I think possibly like right the start OG skle New Year's resolutions do you guys have any for 2024 now here's the fun part I'm going to set each of you a gaming related challenge which you will have uh which you will have the entirety of 202 for to accomplish John your challenge is to earn the achievement Ripley signing off which requires you to complete alien isolation on any difficulty setting I will leave it with Jesse to decide if it should be increased to completing the game on the hardest difficulty setting or completing the game without dying I've got I've got the platinum on alien isolation I don't know how you can play it scar of crap out ah it's such a good game this is this is this is a very this is cruel like such a good game and and this shows how much of an OG member of the Xbox here Community is because that's a that was like an early story about like I got that far into alien isolation where the alien appeared I was just like nope and just I've never touched it again since and now he's saying I've got to download it install it and play through it to completion such a fantastic I'm pretty sure they gave away an epic if you ever I own it I own it I it if you own it on PC you can cheat and then just get through it real easy and you know yeah but it's not an achievement I've got to give the achievement on Xbox yeah damn okay uh Nick your challenge is to finally earn all achievements in Golden eye7 this includes beating each level on a specific difficulty under a parttime and completing the golden eye story on o agent difficulty I leave it with Jesse to decide if there should be anything more added to this challenge maybe for each month that passes without 100% completion then he has to play 1 hour in SE of Thieves Jesse you play and beat everything so I will need the help of chat to come up with a fun challenge for you JN and Nick any ideas uh it has to do three full playthroughs on Boulders Gate 3 on Xbox with a controller so you want me to spend 400 hours next year not working on the site and doing some dumb challenges absolute dick move um a challenge for J I'll get that golden eye one I was actually supposed to get that by the end of this year and I went back to Golden Eye about a week or two ago to try and get some more of them and I went to do the multiplayer ones cuz it's it's local multiplayer and no no one here is going to play Golden ey with me and I you need to have a second controller hooked up you can't you can't fake it with one controller unfortunately so I'm going to have to let he sync up another controller and get all the multiplayer achievements like self boost them I like how he says that like the hard thing like most of us have multiple controllers synced up but he barely uses Xbox I don't I've only got one I've only got one barely ever used controller yeah no my PlayStation and my Xbox I've only got the One controller my switch has two controllers here but my look there they are there see I have more controllers in my background I got the one they bribed me with for redfall M I got my redfall bribe I've got my Elite my scuff a switch with a Pro Controller no PlayStation controllers are all upstairs yeah that's what I was thinking assassin entertainment something to do with with fortnite playing fortnite you can give me the you want I guess that's I guess that's the challenge then you're going to have to start playing fortnite oh here we go assassin entertainment o got a good one assassin entertainment by the end of 2024 Jesse has to buy and complete a fortnite battle pass oh yeah baby that's a great one yes no no chance I'm too busy working on the like 10s it's like 10 bucks if you know the site will pay for it but if I'm going to accept playing a horror game through to completion like that's yeah you've got to buy a battle pass and complete it this season's too far in now I'm going to need someone with me to like so wait wait for us prep yourself start practicing a little little bit and then when the next season starts or pick pick a season you think has good characters that you would like in fortnite none and then buy the battle pass and complete complete getting anything in fortnite is completely useless to me because they would never be touched again no doesn't matter that's your challenge is challeng I want you don't you don't have to you don't have to necessarily stream yourself doing that but you got to do it the only time I would ever do anything I want to do is if it was for streaming for the site for Content I'm stream it maybe yes you can play fortnite they asked us to set you a challenge don't be a [ __ ] [ __ ] if he was an executive producer I'd think about it I I I I can't think of another one for Jesse that would that's perfect that is perfect that is absolute perfection oh it's a map game it's a map game with lots of icons it's a map game it's a big open world map with icons on it that's the challenge don't rise to it Jesse don't rise to it yeah Brit got a good point with my internet I really can't stream any online games because it just ends up running like [ __ ] oh that's that's that's fair it's an online multiplayer and difficult well then don't well then don't stream it just do it and then provide the proof no the whole point of this stuff is interacting with the community community can go to hell [ __ ] the community I just got a DM from a friend if you got a time stamp for the fortnite Avatar news I'm like man I'm still [Laughter] live I'm like I'm still live dude I love cuz he's likeing Avatar he's like an avatar freak he loves Avatar he's like man have we got a time stamp those from scadaddle those are kind of like what can I do to actually get you know maybe Nick to do something on the site maybe get a little more John on the site I do I do enough I'm good that's funny you get two out of three done community's happy God yeah how could I forget that Kade loves Avatar I should have told him about it how I forget that the final question um okay final question assassin entertainment hello John Jesse and Nick thank you Nick for unlocking Community questions last minute love John and Jesse but you're a real one brav I am I really am a real one a good-look real one so ironically I asked last week about banjo and Nate the hate decided to clutch in with that new banjo leak if it's real I just want to know who the developer is yeah I've been getting that question too who do you guys think it is also happy New Years to all the Xbox era family 2024 is our year thank you yeah it's an interesting one if it's real I I I trust Nate the hate has good sources Nate the hate have often and I have often shared info so if he says he's heard of a new banjo game I believe that's what he's heard because you know how people are all about you just made it up if that's what he's saying he it throw [ __ ] at the wall and some of it yeah yeah um who the developers well certainly not rare that's for sure um I'm just trying to think I I don't believe it's Toys for Bob based on what I got told about Toys for Bob and their blur way too early for ABK to be cross-pollinating and doing stuffff like they they've got their road map for the next couple years that they'll be focused on before they if I and this is just a guess so don't do the whole oh I think he knows because I I had not heard anything about a banjo game let alone knowing who the developer is this is purely a guess and my guess would be platonic that's just my guess it would be like a platonic or maybe Sumo sumo's from the UK aren't they yeah they have they have offices in a number of places but placed here my my guess would be of them two cuz platonic is made up of a lot of X rare devs So platonic would make sense I think F or Sumo because Sumo knows how to make a good platformer guess guess we'll have to wait and see yeah not a successful one when it comes to Sack Boy but yeah game was still okay wasn't a bad success but Sack Boy is still a very good game oh I know I was just that's a really good game um XBox needs more stuff like that yeah I'd love to see more platforms and things that's the end of the show show guys it's the end of the show show it is feels good end of 2023 no more podcasts now until 2024 right no more podcast till next year till a single one till next year will be a stream that's it yeah there will be stream tomorrow night though um but yeah like Xbox here Community you guys [ __ ] awesome yeah what bet what what more can we say where as forever humbled a and yeah I think that's the best way to put it thank you thank you so much look forward to you doing even better next year thanks for your support thanks for backing me up when everyone tells me I make stuff up and you know [ __ ] whatever thanks kid thanks for um thanks for tuning in live to the shows every week yeah makes us feel amazing might have a new look response as we go live next week might change it up a little oh yeah a little bit of a new look New Look new Lo new intros new ad all sorts we might maybe um thanks for buying control at my recommendation control is amazing I finished one of the few times he's been correct I finished my control you should get some control is great and thank you to our YouTube members as well because they're just as cool y to our YouTube members and to Muhammad shz for giving us all those super chats after we finish our show super thanks they call them super thanks and to and to everyone who gives us super chats during the show everyone except Rand um um thanks I love you thans um who else who else I don't know that's that's pretty much everyone I I I think thanks to Jeff grub for being there in in the old days and helping this fledgling team get themselves up off the ground and mvg yeah and mvg who's also a regular guest on the show um Phil Spencer for being a member of yep thanks to Phil Spencer for supporting us like he's got our book on his shelf I just hit my TV just then on his shelf and he's in our Discord and he's on our Forum follows us on Twitter mate that's support that's support that's support up at the top tippity top support tippity top the tippity top you know like executive producer top he hey grateful for bit Sala little bit Sal we had this year Sala Sala the sodium and the Sala It's Been a Good Year it has been a bang Sala 2024 is going to be [ __ ] crazy and you'll all see why very very soon um it's going to be exciting I'm excited we're excited everyone's excited we're excited um but for now a very Happy New Year to everybody watching right now if you're listening have a safe and happy New Year and uh we'll see you next time see you next year Che for now goodbye goodbye [Music] hi everyone I'm live they wanted hot mics they can't you can't hear them but you can hear me everybody see you they can't hear you see you tomorrow night we're uh bringing in the new gears happy new gears tomorrow night 9 a.m. p.m. not not 9:00 a.m. just I die 900 p.m. bye [Music] [Music] oh
