 Hey everyone, welcome back to Nintendo Prime. A little bit of a different setup today. I had to do direct recording, so it's only gonna be at 1080p. I lost my memory card. I have no idea what happened to it. It's okay, we'll be doing a full, just deep clean of the studio today, and I'm sure it'll pop up somewhere. That being said, welcome to Nintendo Prime. We have a bunch of stories for you today, including some industry changing events that we are gonna wanna get to Nintendo, also messing around with Nintendo Switch Online. So we have some stuff to talk about there. But before we get into that, I'm gonna remind you to drop a like on this video, baby, and obviously subscribe. But if we can get to 1,000 likes on this video in the first, I don't know, 24 hours, we'll give away a $50 eShop gift card to somebody down in the comments. Now, setting that aside, we have additional giveaways happening on the 28th for an event called Prime Giving. We'll be giving away a Switch OLED and some other stuff. We got some Zelda Game & Watches. We got a Pokemon Special Edition Switch Lite. Just a lot of stuff happening. We're gonna be a whole bunch of winners. Our grand prize includes the Switch OLED with a satisfy grip and a few other things for a little bundle. I'm actually gonna put a link down in the description and the pinned comment to enter specifically for the grand prize. During the stream, we'll have other things happening, but the grand prize, we're gonna let be entered through that so we can also help promote some things like our new podcast channel that I hope you guys check out. That being said, let's get into today's news. So our first story is, well, troubling. We've covered this briefly in the past. We haven't covered it too much because it's not always Nintendo related, but Activision, there's a problem. Activision Blizzard has a problem. Yesterday, Wall Street Journal put on a massive report that essentially boils down to the fact that the CEO of Activision, Bobby Cotk, not only knew about the sexual harassment complaints for many years, but in some cases he even participated in covering them up and hiding the allegations from the board of directors. Now, I want to be clear here. This is in regards to an ongoing investigation and lawsuit from the state of California and the federal government against Activision Blizzard, and which Bobby Cotk initially completely denied even was built on fact and threatened to have the company leave California. It was a really stupid reaction in hindsight to a lawsuit. But moving on, it says other outlets in wake of this story breaking yesterday reached out to their own sources and discovered that Bobby Cotk at one point threatened his assistant 16 years ago to have her killed. Now, you might say that's a pretty serious allegation. The funny thing is, Activision actually backed up that claim and officially responded admitting that it did happen, but that it was hyperbolic and inappropriate and that he did apologize for it 16 years ago. Of course, in my mind, I'm thinking if you're the CEO of a massive company or becoming CEO, you probably should have death threats against a fellow employee. That is yikes, especially when you're someone that flies private jets, you're one of the richest people in the world. It's kind of like, it's pretty believable that you could get somebody killed if you wanted to. So saying something like that would be taken very, very seriously. So the fact that Activision didn't take it that seriously, seriously enough to prevent him from being who he is today says a lot about maybe what's been happening at Activision for decades. Moving on, employees, I'm sorry, the board of directors actually came out yesterday and made a statement in support of Bobby Kotek, essentially saying that we're leaving his leadership for industry leading change in inclusivity and basically a zero tolerance for harassment. Of course, and Bobby Kotek himself has a death threat on his record from 16 years ago and you really trust that person to be. I know we all make mistakes, but a death threat is one of those things that is not really something that you should just so easily move on from. Anyways, employees staged a big walkout yesterday including those working virtually. They're straight up demanding that Bobby Kotek no longer be CEO and that any of the new company harassment policies essentially be reviewed and overseen by an employee assigned independent. Essentially, they want somebody from outside the company to hold Activision accountable. Cannot blame them for that. In wake of this, one of the lead people behind Call of Duty has actually now stepped away from the company because old allegations about his sexual harassment came up that there was a lawsuit for but then it got settled outside of court. Essentially, he paid off that female employee. Probably paid her quite handsomely but still doesn't excuse the behavior. So as I was wrapping this, and that's about all I was gonna mention about this story, breaking news came in from the Washington Post, a group of Activision Blizzard shareholders joins a call for CEO Bobby Kotek's resignation. A day after Activision Blizzard employee stage a walkout and called for the resignation of CEO Bobby Kotek and several executives, a group of Activision Blizzard shareholders with a total of 4.8 million shares is similarly asking for the company's CEO resignation and a letter to the company's board of directors. The walkout and the letter from shareholders follows a Wall Street Journal report that Kotek was aware of sexual misconduct allegations at the firm but did not inform his board. In contrast to past company statements, CEO Bobby Kotek was aware of many incidents of sexual harassment, sexual assault and gender discrimination at Activision Blizzard but failed either to ensure that the executives managers responsible were terminated or to recognize and address the systemic nature of the company's hostile workplace culture. The shareholders, led by the Strategic Organization Center Investment Group wrote in a joint letter addressing the company's board of directors and shared with the Washington Post. In addition to asking Kotek to resign the group of shareholders is calling for the board's two longest serving directors, Brian Kelly and Robert Morgato to retire by December 31st. Kelly is the chairman of the Activision Blizzard Board of Directors and Morgato serves as the lead independent director the Activision Blizzard Board of Directors responded to the Journal's article Tuesday saying it remained confident in Bobby Kotek's leadership. And it sounds like those two were probably leading the charge and are in Bobby Kotek's pockets and or they're just really good pals. That's what it at least seems like on the surface because those are the only people they're asking to be removed from the board. Shareholders said in the letter that Kotek, Kelly and Morgato don't step down like if they don't, they would not vote for the reelection of the current directors on the board at the next annual shareholder meeting in June and would urge other shareholders to follow. The SOC chose to call for Kelly and Morgato's resignations as they are the two longest standing members of the board. It told the Post with Kelly serving since 1995 and Morgato since 1997. So essentially what they're saying is look, if you won't do this voluntarily, we're gonna force you to the next time the vote comes up. Whether or not they have enough votes is a mental story. After the new revelations, it's clear that the current leadership repeatedly failed to uphold a safe workplace, a basic function of their job. No shit. SOC Executive Director Dieter Weisnerger said in an interview, Activision Blizzard needs a new CEO, Board Chair and Lead Independent Director with the expertise, skillset and conviction to truly change the company's culture. We need to really have a reset button on the board. Activision Blizzard did not immediately respond or request the comment. The letter was also signed by Australian Retail Fund, Future Super, Canada Groups and EI Investments and Shareholder Association for Research and Education and Australian Fund for Women. Verve Super, Share and Verve Super did not return inquiries about how many Activision Blizzard shares they own. The Washington DC-based SOC Investment Group communicated with companies on behalf of the Union Pension Funds. In this case, those funds own about 3.8 million shares and Activision Blizzard, a small fraction of the firm's total shares, which is roughly $779 million. These shareholders are dwarfed by the company's top investors. Investment Management Group, Vanguard holds over 64 million shares and BlackRock holds 58 million. So NEI Investments said it had decreased the number of shares it manages after the company was sued in July, alleging sexual harassment, gender harassment and pay inequality in the workplace. We have materially reduced our exposure to Activision since the story broke. We now have a remnant position and two funds for a collective position that is less than 100,000 shares. So essentially what's happening here is there's a push by some people who want cotton gone. So it sounds like anywhere from 3.8 to 4.8 million shares are at risk here, but again, there's so much to consider with the amount of 779 million, they really need to get some of the big dogs on board with this. And I'm not so sure if the big dogs are gonna get on board. I hope so though. I think it's very clear that it's in the best interest of Activision as a company. If they hope to save, face and rebuild, they need to actually save, face and rebuild. Until they do that, not sure anything's really gonna change. All right, our next story is about the game awards. They announced all their award nominees yesterday and we're not gonna go over all of them or any people that are upset that things like Returnal aren't up for game of the year. I don't think Returnal deserves to be up for game of the year, sorry. But whatever, some people are gonna say, you're a Nintendo guy, you're not gonna care about that. So I'm just gonna go over the awards that Nintendo games are up for. So first up, we have the sequel, The Breath of the Wild. Wow, that's up for an award? Yeah, most anticipated game. Be curious to see if they could pull that one off. Mario Party Superstars, new Pokemon Snap, WarioWare get it together and Bowser's Fury are actually up for best family game and you might go, man, Nintendo owns that entire category. Not quite. It takes two is also in there as well. I question it takes two to be in a family game a bit. It's more like a couple game, but I don't know. Maybe that's just my take on that. Monster Hunter Rise is up for best multiplayer game. Shin Megami Tensei 5 and Monster Hunter Rise are up for best RPG. Interestingly enough, I think Cyberpunk's also up for best RPG, which really, that's gonna make the list. The game that was removed off PlayStation Store. Okay, well, I don't think it's gonna win over Monster Hunter Rise and Shin Megami Tensei 5, but Metroid Dread is actually up for best action adventure game. Pokemon Unite is up for the best mobile game and Metroid Dread is actually up for game of the year, baby. However, I wanna note, I'm not going over all the nominees, but Deathloop is actually the game of the year nominee as well. Deathloop actually has the most nominations. That's usually a good indication of what's going to win. However, there have been a couple occasions where the game with the most nominations did not win game of the year. So it's not guaranteed. Essentially what I'm saying is go vote. That's right. The game of the year takes fan votes and the fan votes count for 10% of votes and it's probably good. It doesn't count for more than 10% because then it just becomes a popularity contest rather than trying to, you know, basically you'll see all right, what in general are fans feeling and then 90% of the vote comes from media members and all that. So yeah, I think Metroid Dread obviously deserves a game of the year. That's where I vote it's gonna be going. Where's your vote gonna be going? Oh, and by the way, tonight on the Nintendo Prime Podcast, we're actually gonna have a much more in-depth conversation about the game awards. In fact, I think we might have the return of the betting special between Eric and I for that. So it's gonna be quite the podcast. I really can't wait for that. We have more than just the game awards to talk about on the show, but it is gonna be probably half of our podcast and it's gonna be talking about the game awards. So next up, Nintendo did something really strange. I'm trying to figure out why they did it. I do have a potential reason. I'm not so sure that that reason is valid because I'm just pulling it out of thin air. But Nintendo has reset the Nintendo Switch seven day free trial for everyone and they announced this on Twitter. What this means is if you have previously used a free seven day trial of Nintendo Switch online, you can now do another free seven day trial of Nintendo Switch online. Now, at first I kept thinking, well, this must be because the expansion pack is out. So they think, oh, if we include the expansion pack in that and that, well then it might convince people to keep it after seven days. Except the expansion pack is not part of it. This is just for the base Nintendo Switch online service. So why did they reset it? The only logic I have is we recently got Mario Party Superstars, and Mario Party Superstars is running Nintendo's new servers. And maybe Nintendo's thinking if we can get people to try out Mario Party Superstars online with a free seven day trial, maybe they'd be more willing to keep it realizing that the game actually runs basically flawlessly. But we just played it last night on live stream. There are a few matches. And yeah, it actually ran pretty much perfectly well. The only mistake was my own mistake. So yeah, I gotta say I'm not sure why Nintendo's doing it. I also think it should be a 30 day trial, not a seven day trial, because the lowest amount you can purchase is 30 days. So it would have made sense to have a month long trial. The seven day trial to me is a bit of a cop out, but it's reset. So I guess enjoy your free seven days for those of you that aren't Switch Online subscribers. I honestly don't know what the point of resetting it was. I don't know. Maybe you guys can give me ideas. I'm sitting here like my wheels are turning and the cogs just stop. I don't know. You guys let me know why you think that they have reset the seven day trial. Last up our last story is actually about Pokemon Diamond, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. The reviews are now out and essentially it's reviewing around the same way that most Pokemon games review. I mean, some review better than others and get up into the mid 80s. This is basically looks like it's gonna be like a mid to high 70s game. Nintendo Life actually is one of the places that gave it the lowest score and you would figure a Nintendo website would probably review it pretty high, but not in this case. Nintendo Life's big criticisms as they have summarized at the end of the article are claiming that the visuals are actually worse than the original game. That's quite the claim and also extremely subjective, but they definitely were not fans of the visuals. Over-leveling is really easy to do apparently, especially compared to the original. There's no overworld spawns in Sinnoh and it's lacking platinum features. So the platinum game features, which is typical of most of these remake remasters. So yeah, I mean, that's what they think. Other outlets have obviously given it sevens and eights and I think it was at the time of recording anyway, sitting at a 79 on Metacritic. Pokemon Sword is an example of an 80 on Metacritic, so it's right in that range. Also, this was something I didn't know because I haven't checked it in a long time. New Pokemon Snap is sitting at a 79 on Metacritic. I find that to be a bit criminal. That game to me should be at least mid-80s. I know that Who Cares 79 is still solid, but I think a lot of people reviewing New Pokemon Snap are probably all, we don't really understand the appeal of this game, so yeah, I guess to be expected. To me, New Pokemon Snap is basically perfect for the kind of game it is. But that's why we all have our own opinions, right? That being said, I wanna hear your opinions on today's show, your opinions on this Pokemon news, your opinions on everything we talked about today because I'm still like trying to wrap my, this Activision stuff is just cannot leave my brain. We're gonna have to probably talk about this tonight on the podcast. Also, by the way, we gotta talk about Streamlabs and why we're probably ditching them. Yeah, that'll be a conversation on the podcast tonight. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I am Nathaniel Rumpel Jants and I will catch you guys in the next video.