 Hey everybody, welcome back to Nintendo Prime. We have a few stories to get to today, plus a larger conversation to have around an idea I talked about with a next gen Nintendo platform. But we'll get to that after we get through all of our little preamble here. For starters, drop a like on this video. If we can get to 1,000 likes on this video, screw it, I'll give away another $99 eShop gift card. Speaking of giveaways, we actually have a great giveaway happening on this upcoming Sunday. At 8.30 p.m. central time, we're reporting on a show, a live show called Prime Giving, where we will be giving away a ton of items, including a special edition Switch Lite, some Zelda game and watches, accessories, games, and yeah, a grand prize bundle that includes a Switch OLED and a satisfied grip. So if you wanna win that grand prize bundle, by the way, not only do you need to be at the livestream live, we actually have an entry form down in the description and or the pinned comment so you can get your entry in right now. But remember, you do have to be there live. If you're not there, we will draw a new winner. That being said, I hope to see all of you guys at that event and let's get into today's news. So our first story is one you've maybe already seen some headlines for, because it's been a bit wild. But traditionally when it comes to Black Friday shopping season here in the United States especially, there's a lot of great deals, but it's been a lot, at least for Switch owners, it's been really disappointing to see a lot of the sales. In fact, up to now the best Black Friday ad was essentially at Walmart where you can get like Monster Hunter Rise for $25, but there wasn't a ton of great deals. And so my original plan to make videos on every retailer, I decided against it because I can't make sales videos when I don't think that they're presenting you any options for deals on Switch games that are worth checking out. But GameStop is always different every year and the biggest reason that many gamers look forward to GameStop's Black Friday ad is because they deal with used games. Used games that they often sell for, you know, maybe five or $10 less than the original sticker price. So they usually heavily discount these games around the holiday season and that is true now. Holy crud, the deals on these used Switch games are insane. So you can actually go on their website and buy these right now. In fact, while I talk about this, I'll scroll through all three pages of Nintendo deals. But let me see, we've got Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Brothers U, Kirby Star Allies, Paper Mario and the Origami King, Fire Emblem Three Houses, Xenobite Chronicles, Definitive Edition and Splatoon 2 are all $26.99. Now these are used copies that are at that price. Astral Chain used is at $24.99. Super Monkey Ball and the Banana Mania along with Sonic Colors Ultimate Edition are both at $19.98. And the list goes on and on from there with some third party games and stuff like that. They do show the Nintendo Switch holiday but it'll sold out right now. Although if you go in person in store, they'll probably have some in stock on Thursday slash Friday, depending on when they're, I think Friday, maybe they're closed on Thanksgiving. I don't know, some retailers are starting to close on Thanksgiving. But look, I honestly think that this is a great deal and a lot of these games are really, really good and well worth that money even used. I'm not always against used game sales. Obviously it'll depend on your local outlet. If you buy online, it's kind of a crapshoot if you're gonna get an original box with it or not. If you buy in store, sometimes you could see if you're gonna get an original box or not with it, so it all depends on if the person who sold the copy to them provided the box. But either way, having the physical copy of the game is usually all people care about especially at prices like this. So yeah, good luck and happy hunting at your local GameStop and or purchasing online before they sell out. I think that these sales are just generally good for gamers and if you're a fan of PlayStation and Xbox and even PC, I really suggest that you check them out. They have huge discounts on really good PC accessories. Obviously big discounts on PS4 and Xbox Series games, PlayStation 5, the Xbox One. They have a lot of really great deals right now you're gonna wanna check out. It doesn't look like any of the newer systems including Switch, besides the Nintendo Switch Bundle, Nintendo's own Switch Bundle. But it doesn't look like the Switch, PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series S or X have any specific deals themselves. Maybe there's a bundle or two they'll throw together that could save you some money because it'll be used games. But yeah, just go ahead and check out GameStop's 2021 ad. I know it's on their website. I think it's just well worth your time if you're trying to get games on the cheap, even cheaper than digital. Next up, we have an update to a story that we've been covering off and on for a little bit and that is the Bobby Kotick situation at Activision Blizzard. We're not gonna recap everything that happened there. Just know they're under fire, multiple lawsuits, staff walkouts, lots of nasty stuff behind the scenes and a lot of staff, I think up to 1200 plus have signed a petition for Bobby Kotick to step down. Bobby Kotick has been CEO of Activision for 30 years and yeah, he actually responded to some upper management who asked him what was happening and he said he is willing to quit or leave the company if the problems associated from all this stuff cannot be resolved with speed under his leadership. Now, we don't know how quickly he expects to resolve these and obviously the board has supported him in the past. Investors have turned a little bit. It's gonna be interesting because no matter what happens to Bobby Kotick, because he's not really being sued personally, so he's not going to jail for anything. But what's interesting is even if he leaves Activision, there is not a situation that exists when he leaves Activision that he does not get at least a $250 million payday. And the final situation is something like leaving without a probable cause to leave and probable cause would be he personally did something really bad and is supposed to be fired for it. In this case, it's a lot of accusations without any evidence, which means he would mostly just be stepping away due to pressure, not because of probable cause, so then he could actually get up to almost $293 million in payments just when he leaves Activision Blizzard. So no matter what happens to Bobby Kotick, whether he stays and he made $155 plus million last year, if you just look at the combined total assets given to him last year, he's gonna win no matter what. If he stays, he keeps banking $100 plus million a year. If he leaves, he still gets paid out $200 to $300 million. I mean, the guy is a billionaire at this point and one of the richest people in the world, so it's not like he needs the money anyways, but there's not really an ending to this that hurts Bobby. However, for the sake of obviously Activision Blizzard and the future in the game industry and not allowing this behavior to continue to be normalized, obviously a lot of people would like to see him out the door. I'm sure some people would like to see a female CEO takeover. We'll have to see what happens, but I'm very curious, because I think this is Bobby Kotick's first step to admitting he's not going to survive this because somebody has to take the fall and it looks like right now that somebody's gonna have to be him. The number of employees they fired or moved around and it's just not making a difference. The pressure is just mounting more and more. So Bobby Kotick, it's been 30 years. I'm pretty sure you're done. Go ahead and twirl your thumbs while you wait for your supposed solutions to do anything. I don't know what you expect them to fix in the moment when you have lawsuits happening that are gonna be dragged out for years and years and years. Next up, we have a sales update for Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. I know I was a little critical about the games last week, but hey, you know, some people are really, really enjoying their time with it. And we have a sales update from the UK. This comes from Christopher Dring, who follows sales data in the UK. And he said Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. So Brilliant Diamonds is the number one spot sales wise. Remember, these are just physical, not counting digital. Shining Pearl is at number two. Are the two best selling box games in the UK last week, which means Battlefield 2042, which also released last week, actually came in at number three. Combined launch sales, so combining Brilliant Diamond, Shining Pearl together for the Pokemon games are actually down 26% in comparison to Sword and Shield, but they are up 13% over Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee, which isn't too surprising. It's typically remakes like this or re-imagerings are not as successful as brand new generation games. But yeah, Let's Go was obviously not exactly universally praised and well received. So it's selling better than that is what was probably easy to see. So this does nothing to say on what the game's gonna sell overall. I think it was always clear that we're gonna sell over 10 million. The question is, can it hit the fabled 15 plus million marking me on its way to be one of the better selling Pokemon games? That we don't know. I haven't played the games. I don't have a, you know, a, I guess a part in the fight over whether or not Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are worthwhile remakes. This is nothing against the studio that made them. I have no idea. Some people love them. Some people don't. I just don't really care that much. I'm mostly biting my time into legends and then Legends Arceus is probably the first time in a long time. I'll have something legit, legit to say about Pokemon. Now remember, I am not the most educated fan of Pokemon in the world. I might even be the, like, calling me a fan might be pushing. I did play Let's Go, Let's Go, Oh, let's go Eevee and, no, let's go Eevee was a copy about Pikachu and Eevee. But I didn't play Sword and Shield. Probably not playing Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. I haven't been a huge fan of Pokemon since like the first couple of generations. So I'm definitely extremely uneducated. But from the perspective I have entering Legends Arceus, I think there's going to be a lot of people interested in what I have to say there. Cause I think a lot of people are like me where they fell out of Pokemon like 20 years ago and they want to know, can Legends Arceus be that game that gets us back? So I will be giving opinions on that. Now I did ask a very interesting question for our final, we call this isn't really a story, it's not necessarily news. But I think it's a good conversation to have. I asked a question over the weekend in our community section. I put up polls there all the time, if you guys don't check that out. And it was a red pill, blue pill choice, representing the matrix. And the votes are right now, there's 4,200 votes and it's split right down the middle. There's 50% for the red pill and 50% for the blue pill. Let me explain what the parameters were for this and why I want to talk about it. Because the red pill gives you the current switch as it is today, tech wise for the next five years. But it now has full backwards compatibility with every single previous Nintendo system thanks to the release of a new dock. That is a hell of a lot of backwards compatibility and a lot of ports and cartridge entry spots and it's gonna be a pretty beefy dock. If you take the blue pill, Nintendo does nothing to improve backwards compatibility which is exactly what they do now. But we'll release a next gen switch next year for $400 that's even more powerful than the Steam Deck and we'll get every single multi-platform game for the next five years. So I presented two scenarios that I see most complained about. One, Nintendo doesn't care about their retro library, they don't care about game preservation, they don't care about this, they don't care about that. So I'll pill that addresses that. Then another, oh, Nintendo doesn't play with the top tier tech, Nintendo doesn't care about multi-platform support and in this case, Nintendo could still keep their switch concept but it would be a platform capable of getting all those next gen games for the next five years. Or really current gen at this point. So it's interesting that I saw this split and I wanna focus more so on the second one, the blue pill rather than the red pill because the red pill is obviously like a pipe dream for them to release a dock that's got like every which way to play cartridge. It would be like a monstrosity but it's cool, it would be nice if they did that. What I will say for the blue pill and this is one thing I wanna talk about with Nintendo's next gen platform. One, none of us know when it's coming. So setting the pill stuff aside, none of us have any idea when Nintendo's releasing new switch stuff. Could there still be a pro in the works that many people hope for? That's still the same generation but more powerful maybe. Are they just gonna wait till next gen? Now let's switch OLEDs out. I don't know, maybe. We see in Nintendo's history, there's a lot of maybes with this question because Nintendo with the 2DS and 3DS obviously had a crap load of different models and some of them being more powerful. We see and some of them released really quickly like a year apart. Sometimes we see where Nintendo doesn't really do much where it's like the Wii and then we have the Wii mini which was like a Switch Lite. Wii mini was weird. I don't know why they didn't have Wi-Fi. What a weird omission. Oh yeah, if you're on the cabin, no Wi-Fi. Most cabins these days have some form of internet connection so you can connect with the outside world because hello, if something happens, you need to be, I mean, I know there's like radios but anyways. All the most cabins I've been do have that. So I don't know why you would just not... Dude, the internet's not always good at these cabins by the way but it felt weird. So I look at this as a situation where Nintendo is in a very interesting position. They are the market leader. I know some people might point out they're not. The Switch is a last gen system. It doesn't matter what generation you think Switch is. Switch is still Nintendo's latest system. It is likely already, if not soon, to cross 100 million in sales. If you wanna say, well, it's not until it passes PlayStation 4, fine. At some point next year when it passes PlayStation 4, it will then be the market leader even though the PlayStation 4 is essentially barely manufactured anymore and now a last generation device for Sony. But when you look at the way the market is going for Nintendo, the Switch is killing it. They have a killer lineup of games next year. 2022 is looking absolutely insane. And you might go, what's Nintendo going to do? Because all these other decisions with hardware were made under different regimes. Everything I talked about with the 2DS, 3DS and Wii was made under Satura, Iwata. And if Iwata was still in control, who knows? Maybe we even already have a Switch pro-like device at this point. But Iwata obviously sadly passed away at a very young age and that sucks and rest in peace, man. I miss ya, you know. At least when I say I miss Reggie Fizer-May, he's still alive, he's still well. I can still see some of his speeches he gives. But when it comes to Iwata, that's it. And under Satura Furukawa, who's a businessman, we have no idea what he is thinking. Because while he's leaving a lot of the creative decisions about games and all that up to other people below him or next to him like Miyamoto, what we don't know is how he's going to handle the transition to next gen or the transition to a more powerful Switch. Some even feel if it wasn't for chip shortages, Switch OLED would have been a Switch pro-like. Due to chip shortages, they didn't quite do that. So it's going to be really interesting to see how Satura Furukawa handles a transition because again, we have not seen a transition that wasn't running under the guise of Iwata besides like a year after Iwata passed when the Switch came out. But even then, it was probably mostly Iwata's plan. I don't know if he would have stopped making WiiUs before it was even announced. That was a little weird, right? We're done manufacturing WiiUs, but you didn't even announce your next system yet. You told us you're going to in October, but really, you're done making this platform before you announce the next one. That, I mean, that's weird. So maybe Iwata wouldn't have made that decision, but the fact that that decision was made and now I would say Shintaro Furukawa was in charge makes me think Nintendo might be a bit more shrewd in how they handle this. People might be worried, well, Nintendo doesn't want to smear the people who just bought Switch or just bought Switch OLED and release something next year. That might be true, but how do we know Nintendo cares? Sony's done this strategy many times. Oh, the PlayStation 4 is selling 20 million. And you might go, yeah, the PlayStation 4 didn't have a new model come out within a year. And I get that, but I don't know that Nintendo considers OLED a new model. I know they're marketing it that way, but isn't the Switch OLED just an improved normal base Switch? Won't we in the past call this a PlayStation 4 Slim where it's just a better design, better put together system? I know it's technically bigger, so you wouldn't use the word Slim here for Switch OLED, but it's essentially the normal Switch with quality of life improvements. It is just, there's no point to buy the $300 Switch versus the 350 if you can get your hands on the $350 Switch because it's just better. It's better put together. It's better built. The Joy-Con rails are better. Everything about it's just better from a quality perspective, but it's not new. It's not a new system. And we've seen in the past a 2DS, a 3DS that if it's just a quality of life improvement, like a 3DS XL, they will be willing to release a more powerful one a year later. So I don't know what to expect. I just know that while I don't think this blue pill mentality is possible, I don't think the red pill mentality is possible. I think there's two impossible situations. I do think we need to be ready for Nintendo to launch some sort of new hardware or next-gen hardware in the next 12 to 24 months. And I know that sounds crazy, but I want people to prepare for that eventuality so they're not taken aback when they just bought an OLED and then two months later, Nintendo announces something else. They are a tech company, whether Nintendo likes to admit it or not. And when you're a tech company, you need to take into consideration the way technology is moving and how to maintain relevancy. I hope that Shintura Furakawa learns from the history of Nintendo and doesn't wait for Switch to become an irrelevant platform before they announce something new. They did it with Wii. They did it technically with DS. Sort of did it with 3DS, but they didn't announce anything. They did it with GameCube. They've done it with all of their platforms. They wait until nobody's buying it before they announce a new one. And that's never been a good strategy. So is next year the right year? Maybe not, maybe 2023 is. But I think we'd need to start to be realistic. I know Nintendo keeps saying mid-gen, mid-gen, mid-gen. Why would Nintendo say anything different? They don't want people to stop buying Switches. Or are we supposed to pretend that Nintendo never tells white lies to help their bottom line? You know, Nintendo, the company where everyone from Shigeru Miyamoto to Sakura Iwata to Reggie Fisame, to Shintura Furakawa who said we weren't getting any new hardware this year and then look, we ended up getting the Switch OLED. All of these people have told white lies in order to help the bottom line of Nintendo. So why are we suddenly assuming they're not telling white lies now? There's a long history that whatever Nintendo says, I can't really trust it. Including when they say the Breath of the Wild 2 will come out next year. Although I really wanna trust it. Technically, we don't know for sure because Nintendo always delays all the main lines of all the games. So, anyways folks, I'm gonna end it all with just from Nintendo Prime, making so much for tuning in. Hopefully you enjoyed this video and that little conversation. It was a lot of fun and I will catch you in the next video.