 back to the Nintendo Prime podcast. I believe I think that's why I wrote down. I have no idea. Something like that. Hopefully I'm right. I don't know. Sometimes we get wrong with these numbers. Hi guys. Do we just have a four person cast for you guys today? We got a couple of special guests. I know I did advertise that Jake Randall was supposed to be part of the show today, but for those who don't know, he does have cystic fibrosis and he's dealing with some complications related to that. And that's really all I am privy to share with you guys. So he's not going to be able to come on the show. He feels absolutely horrendous about it and will come on whenever he's healthy and able to in the future. So yeah, feel better buddy. Yeah. Feel better. My good, good pal. If you need to call me at 2am, I guess I'll still answer. Don't worry. We all, we all go through life problems. All right. What have we got going on? Well, we have special guest Paul Gale network here. How's it going? Good. Thanks for the last minute fill in. Finish teaching classes to head home and hop on. And there we go. Well, you know, I figured one of the topics is Mario today. So I'm like, you know, we need, we need someone who likes Mario because you know, I hate Mario. I hate Mario. I'm just kidding. Good thing I like Yoshi Yoshi's in the game, right? My cat's name is Mario. My dog's name is Link. See me. My link would eat Mario. No, he likes pets. And then we have Eric back two weeks in a row. A record, a record for like the last two months. How's it going, man? Good, good. Good. Guys. Nice to have you here and I see you playing video games and smiling again. It's awesome. Yeah. No, I didn't. And because it's a darker TV background, it almost looks like it lines up. Almost. Extra super long wide TV, right? And then back for the first time and like, I don't even know what's it been, man, like half a year. Way too long. West Nemo. How's it going? Dude, you were able to pull me from Starfield. So congrats, buddy. I'm here. I showed up finally. I'm sorry. Yeah. He was supposed to be on. Why was it a couple of weeks back? I don't remember. Yeah, dude. Hey, man, I'm not going to come on. I'm like, all right. Well, yeah, fuck me then. I'm here though. Okay. I left my space game for this. All right. Yeah, guys, for those who don't know, we got like Starfield previews and all this stuff dropping tomorrow. By the way, there might be an embargo if you don't Mario Wonder previews as well. So it's going to be, and we have a Mario Direct for sure tomorrow. So like it's going to be a pack. Like if you're a gamer that plays on like everything, you're going, man, I don't know what you do, but I'm a Nintendo channel. So I get to hyper focus on one while secretly like hoping to play the other. It's okay. Actually, I'm going to beat the hell out of Mario one. I think I'm probably going to beat it in a weekend though, unless this game ends up being like 50 hours, then it might take me a bit longer, but I think I'm going to plow through it. Maybe. Hold on. There was rumors that it might be really difficult, like Mario three. And I'm like, Oh, okay. We'll see. I hope so. All right. Now, before we dive into that, though, we got to go around and say, what have we been playing lately? I'm very, very interested in what you guys have been playing. So let's give the guys at the least time to repair Paul. What have you been playing lately? Pikmin four on Nintendo switch, you know, getting close to beating that. And I've been really enjoying the game. It's, I think, safe to say it's my new favorite entry in the series, although I haven't finished it, but it's looking quite likely like that's the case. And Final Fantasy 16, it's been taking me a little too long to beat that one, but I think I'm getting pretty close based off of the achievement and like, okay, there's this much left. So that's probably just a couple of story points left. So I'm close to the end in that game most likely. Yeah. And then not too much else. This is my first week back teaching. So first week is kind of the busiest getting everybody acquainted, but still have some time for gaming. And maybe this Saturday, I'll be playing Super Mario Brothers Wonder. Fingers crossed. Maybe. Wait, what? What's happening on Saturday? Well, I'll be on Nintendo live. And my thought was if Nintendo had a direct on Thursday, they might have increased the chances. Not a guarantee, but increases the chances. So I'm kind of hoping that they surprise us. So I'm looking around my studio. What can I sell to make this trip this week quick? Right? Remember, I have those extra passes, right? I think he's going to have some extra passes. I'm like, what? Oh, what can go? Well, that's awesome. And you have to let me know how Nintendo live goes. I've never been to one of those events. So I have no idea, you know, what's going to happen besides what they've announced, of course. So let's go over to Eric. What have you been playing lately? Not a whole lot. I picked up my Switch again for the first time in a while. Looked back at my Tears of the Kingdom save, and the last one I had was August 8th. So I finally picked it up today to just get some gaming in. But yeah, that's what'll happen when your grandma passes away. So you just kind of focus on other things. And now that everything is kind of, you know, quote behind us, it's, you know, there's some time for things. And yeah, so I'm feeling good. You were getting a little frustrated with the game. What was going on? Freaking trying to unlock the great fairies. And the one was just stupid. I've yet to unlock a single great fairy. Can you beat it? Thank you guys for saving my save file. That's a little later. Oh, and you're welcome, Eric. Damn it. Where someone would just buy me a free next generation system. You know, I do have a birthday next year, right? And then West Nima, what have you been playing lately? I mean, Starfield. Yeah, that's the given. Yeah, that's one I've been playing the last couple of weeks. Yeah. So I just beat Uncharted 3. I'm playing through all the Uncharted games. So I haven't really experienced them. I was more of a cod kid back in the day and then Nintendo slash cod recently beat a Forza Horizon 5. And I'm slowly getting through Baldur's Gay 3, like slowly, but there's a, you know, space game that I've been playing lately that kind of ruined that. When you get a review copy, things happen. Priorities change. Amen to that. I get it. I get it. Well, hopefully you get your video out tomorrow. Maybe I'll try to make yours the priority watch. Yeah, hopefully. I was giving me a long night. Yes, it is. Because you decided to show up. Yeah, I'm here. I'm so surprised. I'm like, okay, am I going to have to have two last minute replaces because I'm getting a feeling. No, all right. I got you this time. Awesome. As for myself, what have I been playing lately? Well, a number of things. You know, Madden 24 came out this month. So still getting some refreshed on my leagues and all that there. I have a undefeated record in one league and a losing record in all the rest. So yeah, take some, you'll lose some. I don't know. The league that matters, the one that I can win money in is, let's just say I'm setting up for season two. And I'm not even playing for draft picks because I don't have my first overall pick. So that's whatever. That being said, I have been looking at, well, not looking at playing some other games. I played a little bit of Pikmin 4 this week. I still have quite a ways to go in that game. I think I'm not really sure what made me stop playing because I was playing it pretty hard core for a bit. But I just think that, you know, as life got more hectic, there were other things I just desired to play in the moment to deal with some of that hecticness because, well, Pikmin's a little bit of a calm game in some aspects. Once you start going in like caves and doing things, like it gets a little too hectic and just watching all my Pikmin die over and over again. You know, I need to go to a game where at least when I die, it's funny. So tears of the kingdom has been getting some gameplay lately, especially over the weekend because I was pretty sure I was going to have to delete my save file. So I was enjoying my last moments probably ever playing the game at the time, but thankfully the save file was saved. And then gosh, there was something else I played that I'm literally drawing a blank on right now. I was playing it on PlayStation. Oh, anyways, that's good enough, I suppose, right? I actually got a decent amount of gaming in over the last week. So that's awesome. And this week, who knows? I mean, Mario plus rabbit sparks, I hope DLC part three dropped. And I'll try to beat that over the weekend. It's probably only a five or six hour experience, I think. So that might be a thing I do too. Might plow through that. But that's about it. I saw see a stars. I haven't decided if I'm minding it though. I haven't hopped on yet either. But that's what it looks incredible. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I love those pixelated style games and like RPGs. And I mean, I still haven't been an autopilot traveler too. And I feel bad about that one because I fell in love with the first game. And there's nothing I don't like about the second. It's just life, man. Guys, you know, I got three kids. I got this YouTube thing going on. I got a fiance. I got my I love it. Just put it. Say my time to game is like this. But what I want to play is like this. So I really have to be picky and choose to make it. That's why like if I had to leave my tears and couldn't say, well, that probably wouldn't have been it for that game, which by the way, would have been a benefit to other games, I suppose. Well, I like games that I can beat in a weekend. So I'm not here's the thing. I really want to play Starfield coming out. I've seen all the leaks. This game looks incredible. But my Lord, that's not a weekend game. Oh, come on. I think that is a lifetime game. I don't know that it ends. I'm not convinced there's an end to this game. So like, or at least one that you can achieve in a lifetime. It feels like I'm just diving into World of Warcraft again. And you know what? I couldn't do that anymore either. Maybe in my younger days, maybe I need to hit retirement age and my kids are all out and I can tell the grandkids to go away. And then I go, all right, all I got all day is time to game. And then you'd be moving at four frames a second. Basically, I'm going to play it for a weekend. And then I don't know if I'm going to get any further than that. But lots to look forward to. That's why I ran two as well. I will look forward to that one. But I think I'll be able to get through that because anything that's around like a 50 to 60 hour experience, I would typically get through it. It's just when a lot of games come out at once and I'm already behind, that's what happened with Autopilot Traveler 2 is I was still playing Fire Emblem, Engage and others. So cheers to the kingdom was around the corner. Anyways, let's get into our topic. We only have a couple of topics today. Maybe a bonus little third topic that Wes wants to bring up because it is the talk of the day, technically, just not at my channel, but it's actually sort of relevant for all of gaming when we think about it. Before we do that, we do need to get into the Mario Bros. Wonder Direct. Would have been cool if it happened today. We'd have a lot to talk about. And stop and get to speculate about what the heck is going to be in this thing. What are we going to see? What are our hopes and dreams? Because tomorrow the veil is like going to... We're going to have a lot of questions answered. There's been a ton of questions. What's up with the transformations? Is there more than Elephant Mario? Or like do other characters become elephants? And then there's some people say, well, there's sort of confirmation out there. Maybe it's just Mario. Okay. Well, then it's just Mario. Then we'll do the other ones have transformations. And if so, what do they transform into? No idea. What sort of power ups are we going to get? Are we going to get a deeper dive explanation of how the levels and the Wonder Flower work? Is there a voice acting for the actual main characters in the game? Or is it just going to be sound effects? Like we typically get a little one-liners. Because remember, the flowers themselves literally open up directly speaking. It's like, wait a second. Voice... Is this a fully voice acted side-scrolling Mario game? What? Don't know. Guess we'll find out. Yeah. So there's a lot of stuff we can see. And of course we might have a leak today from Billa Bill Cunn over on... I can't remember the website. Deal or something. He's pretty reliable when it comes to these sort of leaks. And basically put out there that we're going to get announced a new Switch OLED tomorrow for the game, which isn't shocking. Nintendo does this for like most of their major releases these days. It's just, it sounds disappointing. It's just red joy guns with a red dock. And that's it. No other Mario branding. They couldn't at least put an elephant on it. Yeah, just put an elephant on it. Like, come on! Slap it on the dock and call it a day. I mean, we already have like the Mario red and blue edition Switch back in the day. And that one that seemed to have more done to it. At least the shell on the Switch was all red. And you had some blue accent stuff. But like this is... Yeah, just put the power up on it. I mean, this to me is just, it's the end of the generation. And we're just crapping this out. Maybe they're sitting on piles and piles of red joy cons. They're like, you know what? We got to do something. Get rid of these somehow. We got to get rid of these things. You get your dock and it's actually just spray painted red. Well, you know what I was worried about? I was like, man, if my theory in my brain is that they're sitting on a pile of these red joy cons because they thought they were going to sell more of those Mario red and blue things. What if they swap out the dock and give us the OG Switch dock? Because it was an OG Switch. Because they have so many of those red OG Switch docks laying around at their warehouse. Because nobody bought them. And I'm like, I swear, if they swap it out and put the old dock in. Yes, this peak Nintendo, peak Nintendo. Don't get your ethernet port, folks. No ethernet port for you. But no, they probably won't do that. It's all that. There's an expectation that it'll be the old lead dock. So I don't know. So what are you guys feeling right now? Like what's the temperature in the room? This is technically the first new Mario game since 2017. And the first new side-scrolling Mario game since 2012. So it's been over a decade since it launched. New Super Mario Bros. U launched the Wii U. So what are we feeling? What's the temperature? Mario is one of my favorite franchises in all of gaming. And that doesn't really change whether it's a new 2D entry or 3D entry. I think every 3D entry has been different enough, maybe with exception of like Mario Galaxy and Galaxy 2, but no complaints. It was just like perfected the formula. The 2D ones kind of were like that for a while until the new series came out. And then you've got a few titles in there. Maybe an overstated welcome, maybe not, but they still performed well. But I'm really excited for this. This is quite up there for me. Looking forward to the adventure that awaits. What are the power-ups going to be? What are these boss battles going to be like? How long is the game? Is it challenging? Is there a secret online component? I know that's a deal-breaker for some, but for me personally, my wife, my son, my daughter, and I, we're going to play four-player together on the couch. So I'm personally not disappointed. Would it still objectively be better? Yeah, with more opportunities, you can't deny it's better, as long as it's handled well and there's a smooth experience. But I'm pretty stoked. And I also, I think we talked about this before on the last podcast, but Amiibo, I wonder if they'll drop some Super Mario Bros. Wonder Amiibo tomorrow, like show it off, because that's kind of like an instant catch get. I swear, they just reprint old Amiibo. Like, come on! They've got to have like Elephant Mario. Yeah, dude, if there's no Elephant Mario Amiibo, I am disappointed. Right. And it's easy functionality too. It's, you know, if you're running low on power-ups or your Mario shrinks down, you could scan it maybe three or five times per day and then it'll give you that instant power-up. Maybe that's how they incorporate it and just kind of an easy mode get. And like, that's kind of cool. And, you know, for everyone else, it's kind of on your little shelf, but I'm really looking forward to it. And also, you know, the voice, which is a bittersweet thing, kind of, because, you know, if you listen to the voice, which you all have, it doesn't sound too much different that it could have been replicated. Charles Martin, they could have certainly done a little bit different of a pitch. So it's not going in too drastic of a direction that they wanted something vastly different. If they wanted them to do a little bit different, they could have asked him. So how everything wraps together with the movie too. This is like all-time Mario fever with the film doing so well, the theme park doing so well. I think it's going to be a big seller this holiday season. I'm excited. And, yeah. Eric, how are you feeling? You know, I haven't actually looked a whole bunch into this. Just the first few trailers that have dropped. I mean, that's it. That's all I've really looked into it. So if more one. No, there's only one. There's only one. Till tomorrow. Yeah, right. So, you know, it, to me, looks amazing. So I, you know, it's definitely on the get list, for sure, and one that I will be playing. Not excited. It's a new spin on it. So it's hopefully going to be great. That's kind of where I'm at for it. Dude. And look, you guys might not care, but couch co-op matters to me, man. I got kids. I got my fiance. Dude, it's going to be a blast. Also, I'm going to get mad. I get frustrated when I play with my kids. I'm like, guys, I'm trying to beat the level. I'm trying to get this hidden item. What are you doing? No, don't throw your brother off the cliff. Okay, great. I'll steal my life. Stop it. I almost don't like playing it a bunch of. But I do love playing it with my fiance. And I am happy that, you know, obviously my children will just get to play it on their own anyways. So it'll be all good. We'll get the physical copy, which is dangerous. They tend to lose my games. So kids, I'm so excited for this game. And I, the biggest thing I want to, like, say it's really Mario is I feel like they really melt the new Mario series a lot. There was like four of them trying to remember. Yeah, I think there was like four, maybe even five. I think there was two on DS. Either way, there was a lot of them. And they got to the point that they really felt it's kind of samey, obviously all the same art style, which is fine. But then just the level designs, and even when they added like their new items and their new gimmicks, it just kind of felt like it was just building on what was already done. And it didn't really feel original anymore. And it's not that I didn't enjoy any of them. It just kind of felt like you're just playing the same Mario over and over again. And my biggest gripe about them is that they're easy. They're very easy. And that's okay. Because I think that came from the era that it came out, right? They originated in the Wii and DS era. And that was sort of what they were doing. There was this giant blue ocean strategy. And they really wanted to make games that literally everyone can play and beat. And so it worked well for the time period. And it sold really well up until the one on Wii U. And even then, if you combine sales with Switch, it's pretty solid. It just, besides really Mario games to me, used to be a middle ground on difficulty. Like it's not Celeste, but it's also not, I guess, the new Super Mario Bros. series. Like it's not super easy. It was always a really healthy middle ground of challenge and fun. And everyone can get through the first world, but not everyone can beat the last couple of worlds. That's sort of a really nice, it's like a build up. Every new world you get to gets harder and harder. And we went for over a decade plus of these new Super Mario Bros. science-fueling games where it didn't really get harder the deeper you got in. It just sort of stayed the same and you would just get new fun items to play with. And I'm really looking forward to hopefully that may be going back. I know it's just a rumor on that it might be more difficult, but I would like to see it go back to that. And this isn't, by the way, something that we could even get confirmed tomorrow because how hard something is, is something you have to play for yourself. Like they could say, we were inspired by the Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World. And that's fine, but until we actually get in their hands, it's hard to really know if they brought that challenge back. So that's my only concern, is that they made the game really, really easy again. But also I have hope because Switch is just a different generation for Nintendo. And this feels like a different Nintendo where they're not afraid to throw challenge at a player. And I think it just comes from the fact they recognize majority of the Switch audience from Nintendo's own numbers. It's like 85% are over the age of 18 and like 70% of them are 25 plus. So like most of their audience, I think they know are older and enjoy a bit more challenge in their games and don't always want their hands held. So, and they have plenty of games that do that, but I think they're, you know, they looked at Mario Odyssey, which wasn't the easiest Mario game. And they go, you know what, throwing a bit of challenge in, I think people are going to like it. So I'm hoping that's what they do. We'll see. Besides that tomorrow, just give me, it's hard with side-scrolling Mario games to know what to do because what's a spoiler for a side-scrolling Mario game? Because usually when people talk spoilers, it's all about story, right? Well, okay, and look, they'll probably tell us how the story begins and that is the story. Bowser does something and now we must stop him. That's the story. It's been the story of Mario forever. It was the story in the Mario movie. It's the story of Mario. This is just what it is. It's simple. I'm not worried about it. There's nothing they can really tell me that's going to spoil it. I mean, maybe you don't want to spoil it what the final fight is like and what forms Bowser takes, and that's fine, but they're not going to do that in any ways, I don't think. So then it's like, well, then what would be a spoiler? Some people have told me, you know, things like, oh, if they show us all of the world, if they show us half of the levels, and I'm like, well, my hope is there's so much content in here they couldn't do that even if they wanted to. So I think I just want to see more originality, more really unique and fun power ups. I wouldn't mind seeing some discussion about from the developers, maybe like a little developer interview section, maybe that just talks about how they were approaching the game, like what their ideas were behind it, why they went in the direction they did. Because I kind of want to know, hey, this is what's like, okay, we're putting the new series behind us. This is the future. So what we'll be thinking for science rolling Mario, and I just want to get their ideology behind it. I don't know they're going to deep dive in a 15 minute segment to do that. That might come out later in interviews or something. But I don't know. I don't think they're going to address the voice stuff. And then they're going to leave it alone. We're going to hear the voice. We're going to hear more of it. And then they're going to leave it alone. They don't like having negativity addressed. I think like some people, I know said they think that the sugar Miyamoto and Charles Martinet combo video saying goodbye was going to be in this. I don't think so. I don't think they want to have like a bittersweet thing like that. Because I don't think most people that play Mario even know who Charles Martinet is. I hate to say that. But my children don't know who he is. Most people that play I don't think, it's the hardcore Nintendo fans that know and we already know. We already know what's going on. We pay attention. So I think that they're going to, and besides I also think that moment, just as just me on a personal level, I don't think that moment should be overshadowed by video game news. I think they should let that just be something we put out on a random Tuesday. And we just sort of let that be our day of our day of stuff, our celebration of what Mario has been as we look into the future. So I'm very curious to see the approach. And I don't know if they're going to make it a sad video or a happy video. Or I have no idea. Maybe they're about to announce Charles Martinet isn't voicing Mario anymore. Because now he's voicing all these other games we're doing that. I don't know. I'm going to leave it at that. Wes, how you feeling? I know you're so knee deep into our field. It's probably even hard to think about Mario right now. Yeah, actually, I've been doing something about it. Yeah, I'm pretty curious to see how it performs stacking up against Spider-Man 2. But also we're going to post Super Mario Maker World. So it's like, if people want their 2D Mario, they've already got Super Mario Maker 2. And there's tons of customizable experiences. How's that going to translate to the fans? Yeah. And are we going to see a Super Mario Wonder update for Mario Maker 2, the live service game that I don't know if they've updated recently, but it's a game that lasts forever. Yeah, man. I don't know. And any thoughts on the supposed new switch being announced? I'm just so disappointed. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if there was. I just mean. It's so Nintendo. This is what they do. They do Mario dirty this whole gen. You just get a special edition one that's just literally Mario red joy cons. That's it. Otherwise, everything's normal. Then you get your Mario red and blue, which again had zero symbols for Mario on anything. It was just red and blue. And I'm like, you know what? You throw a little white on, and now it's an American flag. What are we doing here, Nintendo? We need to give Mario some real love. Like the box shouldn't be the most exciting thing about your product when you buy it. It's the easiest part to do. It's going to be a red Mario switch packed in with Mario Kart. There you go. Oh, my God. The other thing is give you a Mario Kart for free. I'm like, are we at Christmas? Give me a Super Mario Bros movie. Custom Nintendo switch have like peaches show up at the end of Super Mario Wonder and call it a day. People that are normies that don't have Mario, they'll go on by it. Dude, they kind of made this so cool. Like you could have had like on the back of the switch, like a Wonder Flower with some of the waves coming off and having some like there's so many cool designs just in this game. And it's like, now we're just supposedly, I mean, again, we'll see the actual what it actually looks like tomorrow if it gets announced. But like it just it just it sounds. I think most people just believe this because it sounds like something Nintendo would do because it's exactly what they've been doing with Mario this whole generation is. Oh, we have something Mario coming back right now. We better drop a special edition Mario and like, why is Animal Crossing getting more love? Why is Splatoon 3? Mario is your mascot. What are we? Yeah, I think I think Nintendo knows that they're going to do well this holiday season. So they really don't have to ham it up too much in terms of their marketing with like co-branded like or their, you know, branded consoles. So I think that they're targeting the new users with, you know, like, hey, this is a new Mario game and here's a console at the store shelves. I think they're targeting that more than they're targeting like collectors like us who buy like every other new Nintendo switch. So that's my thoughts. Yeah. And I see one of our commenters doggie being like, I enjoy my Mario Red Joy-Cons. Don't be so ungrateful. Hey, I'm really glad you enjoy your Mario Red Joy-Cons. I have more power to you. What I will say is you can just go on Etsy for like a dollar and just shell swap your Joy-Cons. Okay. It's not like in terms of ungratefulness, it's not that I'm ungrateful. It's that I'm unexcited. Like when special edition products get released, the whole point of the special edition product is to excite people to buy it. And if it doesn't incite people to buy it, then the product itself sort of failed at what its job was. Because again, you don't have to buy those products. You can just buy a normal switch, right? Or go buy a switch light. To buy the special edition product has to have some sort of appeal. And unless you're just someone who collects every single switch like beat them up or whatever, then you don't necessarily have always that excitement for it. Now, I'm not saying that you could have been personally excited to buy your Mario Red Joy-Cons switch. And I'm really glad that you were and that worked for you. For me, it was the tears of the kingdom switch, right? Like I didn't buy every special edition, but that was the one that stood out to me that I wanted. But I just, when the general reaction to people that are your customers are kind of like, again, same thing, just like the Mario Kart 8 bundle every holiday. Really? Same thing. It's sort of, hey, Nintendo can have some criticism. This has been a very good generation for them. Very good generation. It might be the best generation of gaming in totality for them ever. Because through this, they expanded the theme parks and got the movies out. They're selling more video games than ever. Like, they're doing insanely well right now. Well, that doesn't mean that every decision they make is great. I'm glad you enjoy your Joy-Cons. I think we also have to consider the offering for, you know, Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Like, isn't the target price, isn't that like 60 bucks? So it's not like they're premium tier, tears of the kingdom type game, you know, so. Are you saying Nintendo's line? I mean, I think that are they calling Super Mario Bros. Wonder a premium tier game? Like they are treating it like it's getting a dedicated direct. Well, I think it's, I would say that they're probably going to do that regardless, because like what else do they have coming out this holiday season? Like Mario RPG. That's fair. That's their holiday title, technically. The WarioWare. Yeah, WarioWare. Can't forget that. I don't see that getting the direct here. You know, that's fair. I mean, pardon. No, you're good. Oh, no, a small thing. I'm very curious how Wario is going to sound too, just on that voice side, because, you know, we have that confirmation that Charles won't be voicing Wario. And Wario typically talks quite a bit more. You know, he has sentences in those Wario Wario games. So anyway, not to derail, but just, it's okay. Oh, Charles. Well, Charles. Yeah, I'm curious to see how they do. I mean, Nintendo is always going to do well in terms of retail. Like you see a switch out there. It's the good offering. You know, they're not super expensive, like a PlayStation 5 or a Series X or, you know, I mean, Series S is like console you probably find the most in stores, just because, you know, it's an easy console to develop. It's cheap for people. God game pass as well. So I think that Nintendo is just like, I think they've just phoned it in for the rest of the year. I think that a big announcement we get this year, if we get something, is going to be a reveal of the Switch 2. If that ends up happening, we've been talking about Switch 2 for like three years, four years, it feels like. And it's like, come on, Nintendo. What are you guys doing? You run out of time. Let's go. The Steam Deck is coming out. The Rogue Ally. We got the Lenovo. They're releasing something. I mean, that's a good transition too, because our second topic is about the Switch 2. What a shocker. It comes up like almost every week. Because there's just a lot of stuff going on around the Switch 2, behind the scenes. That's the thing. It's a lot of behind the scenes stuff that isn't necessarily public information at this point. Mostly because Gamescom happened. We have Tokyo Game Show coming up as well. Might be behind the scenes at PAX West. Maybe. I'm not so sure if they're going to do it behind the scenes there or at Nintendo Live or at all behind the scenes. Because behind the scenes basically just means they're showing it and discussing it with developers that are interested, giving them information, getting NDA signed, getting them dev units. And through people who know a bunch of these developers, and I've heard a few things, but nothing that I can really say anything on right now. It's not like I know what specs it is or anything like that. I just know enough to know that developers have the dev kits and that is awesome. So there's been some stuff floating out there. One rumor that sort of got out today is that there might be a camera on the system, the system itself, not like the Joy-Con controllers or anything. So we can talk about that for a moment. Also that every major developer that wanted one, who has shown interest, has gotten one. Nintendo isn't holding back. If you want one, you can get one. Why Nintendo's doing all these meetings behind the scenes? They want to make sure every developer, they want as many developers on board from day one as possible. So that's also really exciting that Nintendo is trying to get all the third-party developers on board. So I don't know if that's going to transit anything. Like EA having a dev kit doesn't mean we're suddenly going to get a bunch of EA games. So having one doesn't guarantee anything. Yeah, I feel like the switch whenever our first launch, we were all hyped whenever the third-party like Ubisoft was working with Switch. Like, holy crap, this Mario Rabbids play is coming to Switch. So I think the fact that the Switch has got a big ecosystem now, they're going to carry that ecosystem over. So I think developers in third-party having it this early is a really good sign. And I hope that just bodes well for the launch as well as future support. I would love to see most AAA games on the Switch, especially if it's possible with this new SOC, whatever it ends up being. See, that's where things get interesting. Because Nate the hate, well-loan insider with Nintendo stuff, and so is Necro for the Bay, a reporter over at Nintendo Universo. I believe, is it a Brazil? I can't remember exactly where his publication is for. I just know it's not America. But they've been sort of teasing information on the system in an interesting way. And maybe this applies for third-party development directly. We don't know because they're not revealing the information yet because they think it's too soon. Their friends told them not to. They're developer friends, so they're going to honor that. And it's obvious all the information would have come from Gamescom, so it could make it easier for Nintendo to track down who is saying what. So they're just waiting until their information is so widespread that it's just impossible to track anymore. That being said, the teasers they have given have included words like delightful and impressive. That's good to hear, especially for Nintendo. Now, do you think Nvidia is working on the SoC? Like who do you think is manufacturing the chip for this next console? It'll be Nvidia. Surely, right? They signed a 20-year contract when they formed up in 2015 to begin the Nintendo Switch. If I'm not mistaken. So we should expect Nvidia and Nintendo, if I'm not wrong, until 2035 to be working together in some capacity for future Nintendo hardware. So maybe three generations at least. Yeah, I mean, that bodes well for backwards compatibility, right? Yeah, I like that. Well, that makes a lot of sense. Like, Nvidia would want to keep that. Like, because they've got a vested interest. Yeah, I remember the report being 10 years, maybe it was 20. I have no idea. But even if it was only 10, well, I would imagine they would be renewing because the way I look at it as, Nvidia has to be stupidly happy. They had all these Tegra X1 chips because of their failed platform sitting around. Nintendo swoops in, sells a ton of them, more than a ton of them, way more than anyone probably ever experienced. Got to manufacture them again. And Nvidia doesn't have any hardware in dedicated gaming platforms anywhere. All those handheld PC systems are going with Ryzen. You know, what is PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series Ryzen? They're all AMD because AMD offers obviously really, really good components. And that's fine. That's good competition. But where's the competition for them in the dedicated gaming space outside of, you know, just straight up gaming laptops and PCs? Oh, well, it's Nvidia with Nintendo. And Nintendo has such a unique device. I think Nvidia wants to flex their muscles a little bit here. Yeah. When I heard the word impressive, I'm just like, is this going to be something where there'll be a cross-gen game from PlayStation 5 and people will put it on their TV on Switch and not even realize they're playing a Nintendo system? That's the future. That would be impressive. Like to go toe to toe, yet obviously not be as powerful just because the Nvidia tech is just that good. Yeah, I think the AI core is alone. Like think of like DLSS versus AMD's FSR. Like the AI cores in Nvidia. Like DLSS is just freaking so much better than anything that, you know, we haven't seen FSR 3 yet, but FSR 2 is nothing compared to DLSS. So I think that, yeah, no, I think that it's really all exciting. I don't know if we'll hit that 4K bench for a lot of games, but I think some of them will definitely see that. Yeah, my curiosity is if the DLSS that I'm sure will be there and be present will be used to push the 4K or if they're going to push it just to 1440p and then that just looks good enough on a 4K TV. That's the one thing I'm not really sure about. But honestly, I'm pretty confident in what's coming up here for Nvidia and Nintendo's partnership. I know people you talk about the price point and try to figure all that out. But man, when I'm hearing the words like delightful and impressive, it's like, well, these are words come, you know, that are based on what third party developers are saying about the damn dev kits. And if these third party major third party developers are just like saying that this is a delightful, you know, system and this is impressive, well, then if they're getting impressed, that means that it is way better than they expected. Yeah, you think there's gonna be any like gimmicks? You think there's gonna be like any gimmicks like the Wii U? I think it's gonna be relatively gimmick free. That's good. There'll be something, of course. That's why I mentioned the camera. Okay. Yeah, they added a camera. Okay. Or like the 3DS, you know, the 3D. Yeah, I hope they just make like a system that's just like the switch upgraded graphics. It doesn't burn your hands like the steam deck whenever you use it for more than 30 minutes and holds a battery charge on the games that I want to play. I think that's that comes down to it and have a better picture whenever it's on my 4K TV. Like it doesn't have to be 4K, but like, you know, smoothen out the frame rates and increasing draw distances and stuff. That's all I could ask for. Yeah, I mean, like I love the switch as it is. So just having more power in my hands and really the exciting thing for me is like, yeah, getting those big third party games in is awesome. Like I've been saying this for a while. I get just it's just a gut feeling and I might be off. But part of me feels like Elden Ring is going to be their day one. And that's neat. That's good. That's a good get. But I also think that it's not just going to be that. There's going to be modern current versions of all sports games. There's going to be, which switch is already sort of getting, they're finally getting with the new, well, it's not FIFA anymore, FC24 or whatever. Finally getting the full version of FIFA, which just sort of showed they should have had the full version this whole time, but you know, EA doing EA things. And then NBA 2K finally this year cut back the switch version and actually got rid of a core component feature of this year's version, which sort of tells you that 2K is like, yeah, we need some more power. It's time, Nintendo. We need some. Do you think next year and switch supports like different streaming providers, like cloud streaming, like Xbox cloud? You know, they've already got some cloud services on their platform. Can you imagine what would happen if this next system has a partnership between Microsoft and Nintendo? If you will have. For xCloud. Yeah, that'd be crazy. Like, hey guys, you get all the Xboxes. You're playing Starfield on your switch. Even Nvidia now, like they've already got a partnership with Nvidia, you know? Yeah. Hey, we know we're getting Call of Duty. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's a first. I've got that. That's on lock. Call of Duty is coming. Yeah. Feature parody Call of Duty. Okay. It was announced before a Mario game for the system, you know? 3D Mario dude. I mean, I think maybe that's what I'm more excited about. Yeah, I want to know what this stuff is, but also I want to know what Nintendo is going to do with that kind of power. And because what they do with Switch is incredible. What the hell is 3D Mario doing on this thing, man? I just... You think we're going to get upgrades? How do I make all those Unreal Engine 5 remakes by fans? Look like crap. Come out and show them what's up, man. Show them what real professionals can put together. No offense to all the fans out there that do that stuff. It's just you see that and you're just like, okay, well, Nintendo does pretty good with what they got, but now they have the power. We're like, because people think that this is probably going to be a round of, you know, a PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Pro, but also have significantly more modern features, which is going to make it actually technically more powerful than what those systems were. And I sat there and I'm like, okay, well, I remember sitting on my PS4 or my PS4 Pro and seeing some pretty damn good-looking games that still look good today. Yep. So what is Nintendo going to do? That's some power right there, dude. Dude. Let's think about the last of us, you know, on, after it's been remastered on the PS4, like... Ghost of Tsushima, another... Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, gosh. That incredible game. I mean, that this year is gorgeous. Nintendo is going to go in that direction, but, you know, Nate and I talk about this one all the time, that beautiful Zelda demo on Wii U back at E3 2011. You basically take that visual effect on a modern-day Nintendo platform that maybe has spec-wise comparable power to PS4, but modern sophistication that brings it closer to Xbox Series S in terms of performance thanks to the CPU and GPU being more modern and some DLSS tricks. And then like, you know, you have a Zelda game that looks probably better than Ghost of Tsushima. And I mean, if you go in that direction just as an example, that kind of stuff will be possible. And that sounds, you know, mind-blowingly cool. And I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I can. I just won't say any particular developer, but it really bodes well to hear some early positivity from third parties that they are enjoying this hardware because it was at E3 2017. Yeah, when Nintendo Switch was only out for three months, you know, and I was talking to developers in the back and I'm like, this game would be great on Nintendo Switch. The system was only out for three months, but it did have a good vibe around it. It was selling really well, but everything, even Wii U sold well in the first, you know, seven weeks. And I'm like, you know, why isn't this on it? They got burned. They didn't have faith in the system. Last game tanked on the previous console. They didn't know if it was going to work. So after an E3 or two, it's like we really wish that we caught on early, that we had early development kits, that we didn't wait. So now we're bringing our games later and we're porting them. And then later on by like 2019 or, you know, past 2019, just differently talking to developers, no longer at E3 anymore, like even up till like 2022, the conversation was now, yeah, releasing it later on purpose because you can double dip and you can have people buy that title once and then buy it again on Nintendo Switch. But it all started with lack of faith in the hardware. If Nintendo really turned their things around and third parties are seeing a lot of titles sell well, that's awesome because that means we're going to get a lot more day and date titles next gen. And probably some of the games that skipped out on Nintendo Switch, you know, they're going to show up like, I wouldn't be surprised that Elden Ring and Street Fighter 6 and Baller Skate and Diablo 4 end up getting, you know, a year later or a year and a half later ports for NS2, but definitely likely. Unless a developer start doing this thing again, where it's like, maybe we can get people to double dip again, but I think that's probably going to want some earlier money and then, you know, put it parody, three platforms, same time, it's going to be really good. Like in my opinion, I'm biased because I play everything, but Nintendo is my overall favorite. I can say that. If you have a Nintendo console that gets the vast majority of third party games, I think a Nintendo system is for most people the most attractive because if you're getting the Mortal Kombat Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Tomb Raider, and then you're looking at what do you only get on Xbox, only get on PlayStation, only get on Nintendo, Nintendo's got the most. And they're firing on all cylinders this gen, you know, and I don't think that's going to stop. They're putting a billion dollars into software development over these next several years. So we didn't have any droughts this gen, you know, back in the day and 64 GameCube, you're like, oh, just waiting sometimes for a title. And this time we're like seven years in almost and we're still getting new titles that make it as good as some other systems year one. So I think Nintendo Switch's successor is going to be almost a guaranteed win. I was still too early to say because they've never sold more the next gen than before, with the exception of like we and then Switch to, you know, Wii U. Everything's been NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, you know, a couple outliers. But I've seen Nintendo like, yeah, seen like Red Dead One release on Switch. Like that is crazy to me. It could definitely be game changing for the next gen. Like we could see GTA V possibly, especially if it's got the power of a PS4, PS4 Pro, Red Dead 2. Like it's crazy. And Nintendo's gotten a lot more lenient, I feel like, on their eShop, like I feel like during the Wii U days, like they were just games not going on the store because Nintendo didn't allow it or whatever. Granted, a lot of the developers didn't want to support that console. But I feel like, you know, the eShop has just ascended. And I think it's just going to go from here, you know, any way up. You know what's also ascending? Little bonus topic. Sony's prices. What is going on? 33% price hike on their subscription service. Cross the board. Look, the subscription services always go up, right? They never go down. Well, holy crap. Like normally we're talking like a five-buck increase. What are we? Just, what? I was saying this before, like they're just trying to make Nintendo look good. Yeah. Nintendo now looks like a good guy. Yeah. They're trying to parody the prices of Game Pass when like they didn't do any added offering. Yeah, you're not offering what Game Pass does. Like the biggest selling point of Game Pass is brand new games. Yeah. Game's day one. Third party and first party. Like the fact that didn't announce like, you know, new game coming out like Spider-Man 2 launching with PlayStation essential day one or whatever premium plan for 160 bucks. Like if they did that, they would be like, okay, yeah, let's let's go and upgrade to the premium. But like they're just, hey guys, here's 33% hike. Get owned. I hate like this is. So someone was trying to tell me on Twitter that or X or whatever the hell it's called now that, you know, you can't really complain about it because this is just what happens. And most people are going to keep their sub and it is what it is. And I said, sure, but here's the thing. They're based here, which is 120 bucks an hour. We're just talking about basic features are locked behind a ever growing paywall. Basic features such as online play and cloud saves. Some people only have PS plus on the base tier for basic functionality. And they just saw a 33% price hike so they can continue to play games online, which by the way is free on PC. And so they can have access to backup their game save files, which again is free on PC. Is it free on Xbox? I can't remember if cloud saves are free on Xbox. That I don't remember. I'm pretty sure you have to have Game Pass Core for it. Yeah, you might have to. Okay. You have to have the course. But I'm like, that's what people are considering. It's like, fine, they hike the prices. And normally when you do this big of a price, like it comes with some sort of new feature, something to justify it. Their justification is, well, game pass charges. You have a game pass, you know, that that entire tier of stuff offers more. Yep. It just rate up does games. It just offers more. And like the one thing people don't even think about this, you know what Game Pass also offers? I don't know if it offers it every tier, but it definitely does at the top tier on Ultimate. You get discounts if you want to buy the games. And it comes with EA Play as well. So you don't have to buy your EA games. You could just get, you know, if you have Game Pass, I believe Core gets you 25 games online and obviously cloud saves and stuff with PlayStation. 999, you get monthly games online in an exclusive discounts. Yeah. But like they didn't announce like, I mean, the monthly games on PlayStation have always kind of been mid, but, you know, it's just really weird. So yeah. Every now that you get a gem, but for a lot of people, they already have that gem, right? Because it was one of their big, big games. And when we bought the PS5, like we got all of the, pretty much everyone got their backlog from PS4 games that they could, you know, out of their PS5. So it's like, I don't know what, I mean, I don't know what Sony is doing. They're doing what every corporation does. And this is always, when things like this come up, I'm always quickly reminded, and I remind a lot of people, the companies aren't our friends. They're here to make money. They care more about that than anything else. If they feel like they already got you by the balls, they're going to squeeze harder and they're going to just milk you for what you got. And that's just what companies are going to do that are for-profit entities. Even some nonprofit entities will do that. So it's one of those situations that I expect price hikes. Like streaming things aren't going to get cheaper. Like Netflix will never be cheaper. It's only ever going to go up. But at least they incrementally raise it over like a 10-year period. So you could sort of warm up to and get used to the hits on your pocketbooks. They don't just say, hey, we want 33% more next week. Have a good day. And the problem is, if you have an $8 subscription service and 33% more, it doesn't really feel like that much. But when you're talking like you're jumping $40 a year, that's a big price jump. And I get it for a lot of us that are, I don't know, maybe better off. It doesn't really matter what they charge. We'll just pay whatever. But I keep thinking back to when I was like super, super poor, couldn't barely afford one system, let alone three. And I mean, this wasn't even that long ago, like beginning of the switch era. I couldn't afford anything. I sold so much crap to buy the switch. And like when they opened charging to access, even though we knew it was coming, I was pissed at $20 a year that I now have to pay to access online play when I already pay to access the internet. We already have internet bills. I already pay a company $150 a month to access the damn internet. Why do I need to pay you who have nothing to do with my internet to access my own internet? I don't get it. And like, okay, you want to charge it so I have to play your games online fine, but it's also for third-party games on completely different servers. What are we, they're not getting a cut of that money. You're taking all of it. So what are we, what's, and then you have PC gaming where no one's going to dare charge you to access online game because they're all going to get trashed. PC community will just, if a game on there tries to be like, we're going to charge you an extra yearly fee, by the way, just so you can access the internet. You're not going to get destroyed. Or they've been established for 10, 20 years. And I know Xbox is the one that started all of this, right? They started the whole subscription thing. And I get it. So we can't like app like Xbox is all innocent. And yeah, they're all for profit too. Yeah, Game Pass is great, but we all see the reading and the tea leaves. It's all to go all digital and do services and cloud streaming. And I get it. We all sort of know at some point, you know, God willing, we all make it at some point in our lives. That's probably going to be what gaming is. But it's just, I just hate seeing these sort of price hikes just this quickly. And I think it doubly looks bad at this point with the 33% jump because we're in a recession. People have less money, not more. And now I know gaming is a luxury. And I get it. It's an optional luxury. And it's always been a more premium experience. You know, I get it. But I don't know, man. Yeah, I just think like if we look at, you know, Xbox, if they did a 40% increase or whatever to their service right now, like they'd be calling Phil Spencer to get fired. Like the entire industry would be like, okay, let's get this guy out of here. And the fact that, you know, do I think Jim Ryan is doing a good job? Yes. But like it's undeniable that, you know, PlayStation has kind of phoned it in this year. They've got Spider-Man too. But, you know, they're showcased that they did recently. Like the sentiment for PlayStation is like kind of in the shitter right now. So hopefully Jim, you know, pulls his head out of his hoo-hop place and they show up with a nice showcase. But I don't know. Like I'm obviously going to pay for the plans and stuff. But it's just really weird for that big increase without any added value. Like with Xbox doing it, they're like, I mean, you get Starfield. Like every game that's coming out for Xbox is day and date on Game Pass. PlayStation, you're going to pay 70 bucks for whatever game you want to play. That's exclusive. I guarantee you when Switch 2 comes out, Nintendo's going to see this now, oh man, we're the cheap ones. Let's raise our prices 20 bucks a year. Yeah. You know, if they made it 80 bucks a year, but they threw in Dreamcast and Gamecube, I would be so down. Well, I mean, yeah, sure. Sure. If it's that optional, you know, it's Nintendo because the way Nintendo has done it so far is they've had increases, but it's been tiers of increases that get you more features. They still have that basic tier to just play online and get cloud saves. They didn't get rid of that. And so I like that approach. And while Nintendo hasn't had a subscription service long enough, around long enough to know how they're going to approach because there will be a time that prices do need to increase. It's going to be interesting to see if they approach it by just adding more and more tiers. Or if they just hike the prices across the board. That's the interesting part, because I still don't understand, like, as an example, if you only want... I don't understand PlayStation Plus's tiers. I'm just going to put it... It doesn't make sense. Like, if they offered 25 games in the essential tier for $9.99, it would make sense. Like, you know, like... I don't know. Like, I looked... I was comparing the tiers today between them and Xbox, and I'm like, what's Sony doing? Like, I remember paying for this exact tier, online multiplayer and monthly games in the early days of, I believe, PS4, and like, you could get PlayStation Plus for a year for $30, and now it's like, it's $60 now. And then even like the PS3 era, when all we wanted was cloud saves, it was like, barely any money. You didn't have to pay for online, and if you wanted PlayStation Plus, you would just get your cloud saves. And that's all that mattered back then, but... You know what I mean? That's why I'm going to be a market leader, you know? He's looking into some of the tiers and some of the stuff he has thoughts. Before I drag you in, I just want to remind the chat who's watching this live version. For those who don't know, you're listening to Audio, where we do this podcast live, at 8 p.m. central time every Wednesday, unless otherwise stated, because sometimes we'll move things around for special guests. Like, when we're kidding Krista, you know, it's going to go earlier in the day, or we might have RGT85 out in the future, and he can't do Wednesday, so it might be a Tuesday or a Thursday. I just want to note that if you're here watching live, we always have a little Q&A section towards the end. And basically, to get your questions submitted into there, it's just like $2 super chats or whatever, get your questions, because it sets it aside in a separate queue that we can then feature and answer. I just wanted to throw that out there before we're done with this topic, because if we don't have any questions, then we just sort of end the show. Eric, now. Yeah, so just looking into it, GamesIndustry.biz is laying out what it believes is the new prices. I don't know if this is true or not. I haven't dug that much deeper into it. What it looks like, PlayStation Essential for 12 months is going from $59.99 to $79.99, so a $20 increase. PlayStation Plus Extra for the 12 months is going from $99.99 to $134.99, so a $30 increase. No, $35? Yeah, $35. $35, yeah. And then PlayStation Plus Premium is going from $119.99 to $159.99, so it's a $40 increase, so $20, $35, and $40 for the different tiers. So that's absolutely crazy. Man, no new features. No, yeah, no new features. God, Lord. But the other thing that kind of gets me, too, is I don't, again, I don't know if this is true. I don't know a whole lot about PlayStation Plus or anything like that, but it sounds like, from what I'm reading here, it sounds like the three tier was launched, or announced and launched last year. So to be just over a year and you're already raising your prices this much? And of course, they're doing it when PlayStation 5 is against the peak of its momentum, too, right now. Right. You know what's an interesting thought? I don't want to continue. I just had to say one more thought. One way, a little speculation. Maybe this is not a good thing to suggest, but just a thought, maybe they raise the price because their software isn't selling as much as they would like it to, and they have to make up their money otherwise, because you see in Japan, games just aren't selling. The split is 27 to three on the weekly. Now PlayStation 5 is doing better in software in the United States and Europe and stuff like that, but still we don't know if they're just gangbusters making what they want, because Sony does lose a little bit per console. Nintendo rarely ever sells a console at a loss. Like, Nintendo GameCube cost $182 to make. They were selling it for 200 bucks. They were making $18 per profit on that system. Nintendo DS, they had to make it 250 to not lose. Now Ambassador was a different story when they had to lose, but like, so Nintendo, they're always making a little bit. Sony and Microsoft, they usually lose in the beginning. So for Sony, it's really important that you're selling that first party hardware at a high level and a third party. The more successful that Nintendo is with people being okay with buying third party games on that system instead of Sony, takes away a little bit of that. The fewer PlayStation games that Sony has, which they haven't had a time this generation, you look at in the beginning with Insomniac games, they did rate with Spider-Man 2. They kind of carried it for a while with Ratchet and Clank, and they're going to continue. So maybe this is- Miles Morales, just correct me. Spider-Man 2 is an issue. Oh, sorry, sorry, yeah. Miles Morales. Just wanted to correct guys. Spider-Man 2, now come out. Awesome, awesome game. Maybe some of this price hike is a way to sneakily get in some extra profit that they are not getting satisfactorily wise from that software. Just a speculative thought. Well, no, you're probably right on the nose. Honestly, you're probably right on the nose. They're seeing their profits dip in other places, so you got to make it up somewhere else. And it's just, to me, I think it's more of the brazenness of just going full on out and just completely crazily increasing your prices. If they increased all their tiers by $10, $15, I don't think we'd be having this conversation. Because as time goes on, things get more expensive just because they can. But I don't think we're having this discussion if it is only $10 to $15 at most on each level. But because it's a crooked number in the front digit, it's much more alarming. It's much more slap in your face. Plus, you hear the 160 and you're just like, so are we five years away from then announcing $199.99? Yeah, I think it comes down to timing. If PlayStation would have announced the rebrand of all the different tiers and then said this is our new pricing, it would have been perfectly fine. But you got Xbox that's releasing one of their biggest exclusive games of the last decade. And PlayStation on the previous day is like, hey, we're hiking the prices, get owned. And then Starfield comes out like, like they're kind of shooting themselves in the foot. It's really weird. The timing of announcements is always everything. There's a lot of positive buzz right now around Nintendo because of the Mario stuff coming tomorrow. A lot of positive buzz around Xbox because there's, I mean, it's just been infinite Starfield leaks for weeks at this point. And all of it sounds pretty, pretty good. There is the one debate out there that seemingly got put to rest, but is it really put to rest? I don't know. I can't say anything because Wes is actually playing the damn thing and he can't talk. Can't talk till tomorrow. I can't even get an answer to the question. It's okay. I don't need an answer. I'll find out myself. But it's interesting because there's like so much positive buzz being built around these other ones. And by the way, PlayStation sort of had a little bit of a buzz. They're in a kind of a lull until they truly begin their heavy promotion for Spider-Man 2, which was probably going to begin fairly quickly here. But even then, you know, the last state of play they had that ended with Spider-Man 2, people were like, well, besides Spider-Man 2, there was a lot of nothing. Yeah. It was like literally punch. It's like death by a thousand cuts, essentially. And they're the top seller. They're number one player every month now. Complacency is going to put them back in the PS3 era. That's what I tweeted earlier. And I think that's facts. PlayStation 3 eventually got better at the tail end of the cycle, but 360 was dominating them at that time. I think this is their time. They got to show up, put up or shut up. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things too that we could also talk about how Microsoft has really dropped the ball and not had a lot of games come out yet either. But I always look at all of this. I'm like, yes, but also Microsoft in the last five years has bought a crap load of studios, and those studios are going to bear fruit one day. And when they do, it's going to be a non-stop. I mean, it was something Phil Spencer mentioned at Gamescom. What is it? Like 83? Yeah. Something titles landing in the next three, four years. I'm like, what? Yeah. They're saying four Microsoft first-party titles a year. What? That's huge. And like, by the way, when you say Microsoft, he's not just like talking, oh, you know, our small, no, AAA. That is, what? That's huge. No, no. For Nintendo, we're just like, oh, yeah, I mean, we get our Zelda, Mario, Splatoon, and, you know, Metroid all in the same year. I'm like, okay, but that's Nintendo. Everyone knows Nintendo's output is insane. We're not talking about that. We're just comparing like what these high-budget five-plus-year projects are doing. And Microsoft, especially once they get done acquiring Activision Blizzard, should close up around October, assuming the CMA and everything goes good. It's like, man, they're going to have probably four major releases every year once they start hitting for the foreseeable future. Can Sony really start releasing systems where they don't really get into the heyday of their releases till three and a half years in? Can they keep that up? Or is there going to be ground to gain for Xbox? And I know Xbox doesn't care as much about the console sales right now, because obviously they're pushing services and Game Pass and, you know, Cloud a little bit, but it's also one of those, yeah, but once these studios bear fruit and if they keep bearing fruit, the way Starfield might be bearing fruit, people will switch. People will eventually be like, we can't just keep buying PlayStation on promises. And I don't like crapping on PlayStation. I enjoy my PlayStation. We love PlayStation. But it does gather the most dust in my house right now. It just doesn't have enough games coming out. That's interesting. Now, to be fair, the Xbox will be gathering a little dust as well. I finished high-five Russia a while ago. And if it wasn't for the fact that I was playing Madden 24, it was basically collecting dust if I wasn't playing that game. But, you know, I played Final Fantasy XV this year on PlayStation 5. I ended up not enjoying the game. I was actually surprised I didn't enjoy it, considering how much I enjoyed the prior Final Fantasy games. So, you know, I'm waiting on Spider-Man. It just sits there waiting for Spider-Man. And it's just not good timing for the announcement. Timing is everything. As Wes said, when they reconfigured all their tiers, that was the time to increase. I still wouldn't have liked the amount of the increase, but then it's like, well, these are all new. They're reorganizing everything. Technically, you can't compare. But, okay, fine. People would have forgot and they would have focused on the showcase. Yeah, they would have been like, oh, whatever, they reorganized the tiers. Now it's more expensive. It'll be like maybe a 12-hour complaint on some social media channel and we move on with our day. But it's like, nope, when the other two have a bunch of positive news coming on, and your only positive news is, hey, we're the number one selling system every month in the U.S. Okay, cool. And oh, you're jumping prices by a lot to try to compete with what Microsoft is doing that offers more compelling things in their tiers. It just, it's just a bad look. And as I said, on the Nintendo side of things, it just makes Nintendo look great because they haven't raised prices at all. They just add new tiers that have new features every time. Oh, but it's like 80 bucks. No, no, no. It's optionally 80 bucks a year. That's actually a different price tier and you get more things in that tier. That's why I- You see Nintendo doing like an olacard system where you like check the box and like, hey, I want GameCube stuff. I want this and here's my subscription price. Dude, that would be sweet. That would be pretty cool. Dude, if they change NSO to an olacard thing, like we have our base $20. This is what you get. But then if you want this system and that system, we just alter our prices based on what you want included in. That would be awesome. Yes, no, but I can see them abusing that. I'll just check all options. They're going to abuse it. They're going to abuse it. They're going to say basically, look, you either want to check all the boxes and then you get our ultra mega super tier at 120 a year or you could just check select ones and yet somehow end up paying more. It's like a Dreamcast and GameCube and Atari 2600 and suddenly that collectively is $130 a year or you can just have a model for 120. Same thing when it comes down to people wanting to own and don't get me wrong. I wouldn't mind owning again some titles like from N64 and Genesis, SNES, etc. But I do own original copies of them, but a lot of people like, I wish I could just buy these games. Well, if you were buying them at a reasonable cost of like, let's say seven or 12 bucks per game, depending on what platform it is. And if you're buying like 12 titles and I just spent $120 to get these games that I want. Dang, that's six years of NSO. That's six years of 20 bucks a year to rent them. What is the better value? I mean, I guess owning it forever is, but you think of how successful the Netflix model is where you can't own it, you're just renting it. And would you be renting or would you be buying that many episodes? Would you be buying that many TV shows and movies and like, yep, I want to have that in my DVD shelf and I want to own this whole series of this show on Disney Plus. But I guess it is a little bit different with the video games and movies and film and stuff, but really this long-term renting ability, which is what all these streaming services are, they are a really good value. I mean, if you, I used to pay $2 to rent a game back in the 90s and early 2000s and I got to own it for two days. It would take me 25 games, not that I did this, but I would have to rent 25 games in a row and it would last me 50 days and I would spend 50 bucks for 25 different experiences. Nintendo Switch Online, 50 bucks, gives me 300 games for 365 days. So even if I was buying like 10 titles at seven bucks each to permanently own, I would have 70 games if I did an all-a-card kind of system. So do I really want to own Ocarina of Time again when I have my original Ocarina? I probably wouldn't. I'd buy a remake. Yeah. I mean, I think that should include the option eventually. The option would be good. Especially because NSO, you've got to be online. It's got to check your connection every time and if you're on the go, look if you really want to play it, buy it. Option's still good, for sure. Now, I do the family plans. I pay eight bucks, not sorry, I pay 10. I pay 10 bucks a year for expansion back and that's the way to go. Does PlayStation have that to be able to split? I don't think so, huh? That would be another thing. This price hike, if they introduced this price hike but said, starting now, we're also introducing the following three prices that have gone up. You could split it with seven friends. Kind of like how Nintendo does it. The family plan is pretty sick. The family plan, that's honestly. Whoever at Nintendo came up with that idea and then the person above them that approved it, thank you. That's amazing. That's a standout feature from the other platforms. I love that. That they should do. I mean, that's what Netflix took away, right? And now you can kind of self-led it and boom, boom, boom. They used to encourage it. They would brag about sharing your account with family and stuff. Now they're like, nah, we need more money. I think less people would be upset with this PlayStation thing if they said, starting now, you could, you know. These new prices are a family deal. Or no, you can buy them individually or you can have a family with up to five, six, eight people and you can split up with us. Yeah. Props to Nintendo on that one. Yeah, please Nintendo, don't take that away, ever. Yeah. That would, I mean, look, I can see Nintendo taking it away someday, but please don't. I love that thing. I, look, here's why I love it. They considered me. I now have a family plan because all of my kids have to be on it. And so does my fiance. And I don't have to pay separate subscriptions for them to play games with me over the internet. Like it's, so it's, it is nice that Nintendo was considerate of that. And it was just one of their brilliant ideas. You know, but, but, but, you know, for every brilliant idea, there's a, you know, how they originally handled voice chat through, well, how they're still doing it through a phone app. But then if you want to gain audio and stuff through the phone app, you had to use a dongle splitter and get audio from two different devices. You know, Nintendo really thought that through it. When they didn't support Bluetooth headphones, even though they have Bluetooth capabilities the entire time. Or what else? Like, I could just keep rattling off all the, we had Benkate, Joy-Con Drift. What else? How about some of the OLED panels you guys get and they're like totally green tinted all the way through. Man, do we just keep going with the bent docks? That was part of Benkate back in the original launch units. The docks were actually slightly bent from one of the manufacturers. And people noticed when they played long TV sessions, it was actually physically bending their switch because it was melding to the bent dock. That was an issue at launch. They quickly fixed that, but it was like, for a hot minute there in that first month, they always say with people that buy launch units, you're kind of the guinea pigs of any manufacturing defects or issues. You're going to get to deal with that. I mean, that was seem true with what? Early PS5 controllers. The rubber used to crack super easy on the control sticks for some reason. And it wasn't all of them. It was, again, a certain manufacturer they were using. Everything off that line kept cracking. So like it's Nintendo. That's not only perfect guys, but like that is one tier that's nice about it. And yeah, Sony's just making them look good right now. Obviously making Microsoft look good, even though they're a little more expensive because Microsoft, we don't have to alter our prices right now. And we already did our price. Like, and when we did it, we reorganized all our tiers because we're not idiots. And by the way, we think what we offer is pretty compelling shit. And we got infinite money to spend. You literally do not need to buy video games if you join our tiers. We're saving you money. That's the argument. With Sony, like that's what sucks. It's like, you get that top tier on Sony, but guess what? You still got to spend that 70 bucks every time they drop a game. Or you can wait in front of your disc omens eventually, but yeah. Oh man. Do you think Microsoft backed themselves into a corner in a way? Like I'm going to say this, trying to say it the right way. If they ever stop Game Pass, they might be in trouble because their audience is not used to now paying 60 bucks, 70 bucks per title. You know what I mean? Like they're used to the good life of relatively cheap prep a year and playing a lot. But if they ever stopped that model, does that built, does that community in that ecosystem, are they going to be buying games in the millions? Like when they really have a really high quality title. I think there's really one. They have to do this forever now. If they either do it forever or if it bombs out and Microsoft bails, then they literally just become a third party company and just put games on the platform. Yeah. The thing is, is like it's Microsoft. They've got three trillion dollars. So they can make it cut a. They could eat it forever. They could eat it for centuries. And they make it like losing. Yeah, exactly. Power strings, the red ring of death. But it was like whatever. Yeah. If you look at Game Pass numbers. That was a tax write off for them probably. If you look at Game Pass subscription numbers, like they're they're like a billion dollars. What was this article? Like they made a billion dollars and a quarter. So think about like, you know, they're they're trying to gain or they're trying to increase the subscribers from 25 million to like 100 million to 100 million. And they're doing it through PC. They're not really focused much on the console side of things. So I don't think that I think it's either subscription or bust. Like if this the Game Pass doesn't work, then it's just Xbox division is over. Yeah. I think they either sell off everything or they sell off the whole division and it just becomes a third party development. I think they'll kill it before they even sell it off. I don't know. Here's the thing. Now they're going to own that vision blizzard number. I think there's too much value there because I guess there was talks. I only did this is just like whispers that were being reported out there that if that vision blizzard deal went through, Microsoft might have sold off the entire Xbox division to someone. Like that's how much was hinging on it. You could also explain why Phil Spencer on that kind of funny podcast was like in a really shitty mood that week when there's all bad news and he might know behind the scenes if this if this fails. That's it. Yeah, I think that, you know, they have to do a better job and they've done a better job. I can't say that. Yeah. I mean, we see high five rush. We see all the games, like the breakout success is because of Game Pass. Like high on life. No one would know what that game is if it wasn't for Game Pass. That was a game that was literally it lived because of Game Pass. So I think that, you know, we're going to see the offerings just continue. And I sort of believe what Microsoft has this messaging right now that we don't we want games everywhere. I think they do. And I think as an example, I know it sounds crazy to say, oh, a partnership to Microsoft and Nintendo to put stuff on switch through streaming or whatever. I don't know that it's really that crazy. It just comes down to will Nintendo allow the Microsoft account system to exist on their platform. That's it. Nintendo could just get a cut of any subscribers through their system and they just get the profit. Now, I will say, well, third party companies necessarily like that that put their games on Game Pass. No, but maybe they do because now they can argue, hey, we're also available to 100 million Nintendo players. You need to pay us more to be on Game Pass. So they can even negotiate bigger deals. So I honestly, I do truly believe Microsoft's message that they want to put everything everywhere. And that's sort of what makes some of this pricing sort of weird is people kind of see what Microsoft's doing. And whether or not it works, I mean, nobody knows. It has to turn a profit at some point or it doesn't work. And the window is probably at this point similar to what Netflix was. It took what Netflix a decade before they actually made a profit once they went to streaming. And that's good. And Netflix went ahead and made a bunch of money, but we'll see. I think that's why there was so much hinting on the Activision Blizzard deal. Just a lot of money, but it's guaranteed revenue in areas that they're not getting it currently. Give you an example. Mobile, mobile, mobile, mobile. That's where, like, everyone talks about how massive and like, oh yeah, video games is like almost a trillion dollar industry. Yeah, and 900 billion of that is the mobile gaming space. Not these dedicated platforms that we spend all this time talking about. And Microsoft has like nothing successful on that except Minecraft. But they need, and Minecraft is never a top 10 earner every month on that platform. Candy Crush is. What is Candy Crush is? They want that mobile revenue. Like Candy Crush, Diablo, Immortal, like. Like, oh man, they paid 79 billion for Call of Duty. No, 50 billion of that was for King. Call of Duty ain't worth nothing compared to Candy Crush. That's why they're like, hey, I'm saying that. It sounds crazy, but Call of Duty ain't worth it. Candy Crush is the most valuable IP they are getting in this acquisition. Oh, man. Dude, they do Candy Crush esports out in Asia, man. It's dude. It's insane. That's wild. It's massive. It is. It's popularity is. It's like been doing Pokemon Go longer than Pokemon Go. It just it just keeps going. It just doesn't stop. And by the way, King has other games out there too, by the way. It's not their only successful mobile game. It's just the most successful one. So. Oh, man. So like it anyways, getting back to the original point that it's going to be quite interesting just to see if there's any long term negative effects from this. If this is just signaling, you know, as was sort of suggested earlier, like Sony taking another turn like they did with PlayStation 3 where they maybe get a little too greedy, a little too full of themselves because they've been on top for too long and their rival system, which right now they consider it to be Xbox. You know, isn't necessarily selling, you know, anywhere close to what they're doing for now. I will say don't count your eggs before they hatch, because if Starfield delivers. Watch this holiday season. I'm just saying they have a $300 system. This thing's playable on. Watch this holiday season. Watch what happens if this is a if this is a generation defining. I'm just saying watch. Play on your phone. Watch what happens. It's don't don't don't don't get too complacent, Sony. That's that's when you're at your worst is when you get really comfortable with what you're sitting at the PS2 made them that way for PS3. And then you kind of saw what happened. How they got back on the ground for a PS4. Love it. Love it. Love it. Now they're like, oh, we're riding high. We're just going to do what we want. No one can touch us complacency. Like that. Whatever you have Starfield, the biggest game launching this year in terms of like hype scale, like playable on your freaking phone and on your on your Samsung TV as well. Like that's going to be crazy, man. A-Pas about to be crazy. So we're going to get to the Q&A section. Quick. We only have one question submitted. Reminder, if you guys want to get your questions in for this Q&A section, you can ask us anything about video games. It's all good. I can either use your member chats. If you're a member, you get one of those free per month or you can use $2 and up super chats to get your questions in and they will get featured on screen just like this one. Member chat coming in from the elemental hero, the Shadow Link Dragon Wolf King. I swear the longest user name on YouTube. Probably not. There's probably someone that I don't know. Maybe that's the max characters. I don't know what the max characters is. Do you think Nintendo Live, Tokyo Game Show and Game Awards have something that Nintendo is hiding? Like the Switch 2 and any rumored games that may come this year? Oh, boy. I mean, I'm sure Paul Gale's hoping Nintendo Live has all of that, all of the above. All the behind scenes, closed doors, stuff. Paul, we got to show you something in the back. I mean, don't tell anyone. Sign this NDA real quick. Let's say Paul's got a few connections. A few connections. If there's something in the back, Paul's probably there. If he doesn't show up next week, then we know. Don't come to the podcast if something happens. You know, I'll be like, Hey, Paul, how's it going, my dude? I can't even come on your podcast for a while. I know too much. I know too much. That would be incredible. Tokyo Game Show, I will say, absolutely. They literally are only there for business meetings. So everything behind the scenes will be about the future and in working with Nintendo and forming partnerships. So Tokyo Game Show will absolutely have Switch 2 stuff going on. Behind the scenes. Absolutely. Gamescom had it. Tokyo Game Show is going to have it. I don't know if it's going to be so much about their Nintendo's future games because a lot of these business meetings are with third-party companies. They're working on deals. Who knows? I mean, it's possible even the Astral Chain stuff when that deal got locked in with Platinum, that could have happened at Tokyo Game Show. So that's the only reason Nintendo announces every year we're at Tokyo Game Show doing business deals. So that show will absolutely have something about their next system behind the scenes but only for developers. Nintendo Live? Look, they've done one before and it was pretty much a nothing burger. It's just a celebration to get people together and enjoy Nintendo. But you never know, right? Like just because that's what it was before doesn't mean that's what it's going to be now. So who... And this Nintendo Live 2023 is happening at the same time as PAX, which does have game demos and other things. I don't think Nintendo is on the floor at PAX West. I haven't checked the floor plans or to find out if they have a their own booth there or not, if they're just going to funnel people to Nintendo Live. But I'm not expecting much out of Nintendo Live to be clear. But I'd love to be proven wrong and if Paul finds out something and I'm gone this weekend you'll know why. Because if I'm telling you guys, damn, I can't believe I just sold a $3,000 monitor. Oh, wait, oh, wait. What is that? What's going on? Yeah, don't worry about it. Okay. I got things to do. We'll find a TV partner. Yeah, right. We'll find a TV partner. I got to get ahold of Jake Randall quick when he's feeling better. Be like, hey, man, you have that LG connection. Dude, I need your hookup. I need it. I need to get a new monitor. Anyways, then we have the Game Awards. I don't know. Paul, have you ever been to the Game Awards? I don't know if anything really happens there behind the scenes, besides like the after party. Yeah. And you know, it's a good event and gosh, could Nintendo show off hardware there? See if they show off hardware. Xbox did it. I mean, Xbox did. Yeah, that was that Xbox Series X and that was that was a pretty big shocker. That was crazy. Game Awards is a big audience. Like that's the one thing it has going for it is the most watched gaming event of the year, especially Nintendo possibly up for Game of the Year, you know? Dude, yeah, if they won Game of the Year announced DLC expansion for Tears of the Kingdom. Oh, guess what? Expansion coming day one to the Switch 2. All right, hear me out. Okay, you know what? Just stop talking. We're over hyping the Game Awards. Here's the funny thing. See, Nintendo did big things at the Game Awards and then Reggie retired. And once Reggie retired, there seemed to be like a fraying of a relationship because Jeff Keely wasn't as close with Doug Mauser. And so for a number of years, Nintendo didn't really do anything but show up to accept awards and then just buy commercial ad space in between. And then last year, they showed up and decided to start advertising games again. So I'm just like, you know what? I guess him and Doug are good again. So you never know what Nintendo's going to do at the Game Awards. And maybe that was happening as a precursor to the system this year at it because maybe here's the main thing. The only way they would announce the Switch 2 at the Game Awards, like public facing, would be because it's coming out like super early next year, first three months. And it wouldn't even be like a full unveiling. It would be more like the 2016 October teas that they did and then the real full unveil event is an event they do later. That's what I think they're going to do this year. I think that October, like mid-October, they're going to reveal the new Switch and then December. Because we know that there's, I mean, we don't know, but we can guess that here's the Kingdom will have some DLC. Like we can kind of, you know, assume that they're going to do DLC for Tears of the Kingdom. So if they reveal that at, you know, the Game Awards, it would make sense, you know. Whenever they do, if it's this year, I think they have to drop at the price of the other hardware because otherwise, if it's too close, like it's coming out in March, people could hold off on March. I don't need a new buy new system until March. I could wait like if it's announced in December, it's coming out in March or April, yeah, three, four months, I'll wait. But if it's coming out in March or April, now the existing hardware that's currently available for the people who didn't buy it is price reduced by a significant amount, 33%, something like that. Oh, yeah, okay, I'll buy it and then I'll get the new one a little bit later on. Like this will last me. They don't want to cannibalize holidays. You know, they've won the last six December's in a row in the United States. That's an all-time record from 17 through 22. You know, I mean, I don't know if they care about winning this December. I mean, they surely want to do well, but winning probably doesn't matter as much. Yeah, I don't think they care as much this time. Like they already projected over only $7.15 million. That's true. By the way, it's still a lot. But then they're also like, we already know if we're going to hit that. And it's like, they're kind of accepting. When you hear that, it's like, we know, we know we're going like this. We're okay with that because we know what's coming. And we just, I'm not going to tell you guys yet. Like there's a wave. There's a wave coming. It's done. There's no time. So like, I, yeah, I mean, obviously, I don't think any sort of teas couldn't come with an announcement of a price drop or an announcement of like, let's say this holiday, they do their first ever actual sale and have a Black Friday special sale price and they drop everything $50. And then the announcement comes and for the thing at the game awards, then they also go, Oh, by the way, that's just the new, here's our new price for the switch. It's literally just keep that sale price and keep it permanent. That could be a really good way how to how to transition. Yeah. Yeah. So Black Friday is only weeks before the game awards. So it could be the deal that you just got. Don't feel like you are missing out. This is the new price. This is the new price. And for all you guys, like, hey, this new system's coming soon. An event in January, like they did last time or whatever. But again, this is all obviously speculation that that could happen. In terms of rumored game, oh, okay. You're predicting my predictions, right? As for rumored games, I mean, look, they had Mario Wonder demos. You know, privately, a game's come from press. So that's pretty well known at this point. It has been enough people that have sort of opened up about that. It's for previews, coverage at the run or NDAs. I believe I heard the NDA lifts tomorrow. So at some time, I think it's after the direct. So basically, it's going to be directed into previews, which is crazy because, again, overlapping with Starfield. That is what it is. Starfield isn't on Nintendo. So I don't think Nintendo's too worried about Starfield really interfering with them because they're a different platform. And I don't think they're worried about Spider-Man 2 coming out August, October 20th, either, because again, it's a different platform. Spider-Man 2 does nothing to do with their system. At all. Like, at all. So that being said, I don't know that besides Mario Wonder, possibly being behind the scenes, like even at Tokyo Gameshow, what if they let private, privately let press play it or something. I don't think they're going to have anything like rumored unannounced games. You know, I don't think any of that's going to be at these. I don't recall any private event that I'm aware of anyways, that had unannounced games at it early. Besides the, from Nintendo, by the way, I'm not talking about other companies. Besides E3, sometimes there was a private play session for certain media before E3 kicked off. And Nintendo would have some of the games that they haven't announced yet or didn't know we're going to have demos at that event. So Presca get a little bit of a head start on coverage. But that's like the only thing I'm aware of. And as we all know, E3 isn't around anymore. I mean, they claim they're going to try to come back. Nope. They can't get Nintendo Sony or Microsoft there. They're not. I don't think they come back, but Keeley, you found a snap them. I want Keeley. Keeley had his first little in person. But you'll play demo stuff last year. Was it smaller? But apparently your summer game. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, it was after summer game. Yeah, they had a days of play. Summer days of games. Yeah, they had a days of play. Summer days. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like that. And that could be with the new thing. And if he starts to snatch up major companies into that, then who knows? Maybe that ends up replacing it. But that's cool if it does. I'd like to have another event to go to. That'd be great. Another reason to go out to the sunny California. Cool. I just want some Fat Tomato Pizza. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Next. Next to me. Coming in was from Samuel. Talks about games for $4.99. Says, what do you think about Xbox Game Pass being natively on Switch 2? I think it's possible, but Nintendo is very prideful. Yeah. Look, I don't think Nintendo, here's my thing. Nintendo, I think, would be because they work with a lot of the same third party companies. But I think a version of Game Pass that maybe is just the exclusives that don't normally come over for a set price, Nintendo would be fine with because they wouldn't have that anyways. And Nintendo would now just get a cut of those subscriptions or whatever. Because absolutely, there are some games that could run natively on Switch 2, depending on what the harbor is. I could see Halo Infinite or something running on there. So I do think that there is an opportunity for that. Obviously, we know Phil Spencer and Nintendo talk often enough and are very friendly with each other. So I don't want to say that's not possible. I don't think every game would. I think it'd be like a Game Pass core situation where it's like, here's 25 games only on the Switch. You have us $9 and have fun. So I don't think it has nothing to do with Nintendo's pride. It's getting more money. They aren't getting. I think people confuse that because Nintendo releases so many exclusive games that they just don't want other companies' games. Why wouldn't they? They get 30 percent. Yeah, it would hurt PlayStation and Nintendo's ecosystem for their eShop and their store. And if this happens and Sony doesn't have anything like this in place, it just sort of makes Sony look petty because they're not because clearly, oh, look, Nintendo's willing to work with Microsoft. Why won't you? Yeah. I mean, if Madden gets on there and people have like Game Pass and Madden's day one on Game Pass on Switch, Nintendo obviously wants these people to spend the $70 because they get a bigger cut. And PlayStation just won't do it because it would also affect them in the same way. So it would have to be a situation where it's like, here are Xbox exclusive games and we're going to call it Game Pass core. And it's $9. You give me the Xbox exclusive games. I might get rid of my Xbox. Yeah, exactly. I mean, is there any other streaming services or subscription services on Nintendo Switch right now? There's like anime ones, like Crunchy Roll and stuff. Hulu. Yeah. Hulu, yeah. Is there any A-Play on there? Is what on there? A-Play or Ubisoft Plus? No, I don't think so. Yeah, I would say the DOS probably make it switch to before any of the others. But even then. The Ubisoft Plus account system I know is on there, but you can't sign up for the paid service. Maybe Ubisoft would be the first one to move because they've got a pretty good relationship with their third party. Oh, sure. Yeah, no, I don't think that Nintendo is willing to budge on that. They're kind of like, you know, they're always delayed with most of the moves like Nintendo usually is. They're kind of behind. But I don't think they're going to jump into subscription services yet because they've got their Nintendo online that, you know, they're trying to gain subscribers from that like crazy. Yeah. All right. Eric, got any thoughts? It'd be great if it was, but man. It's probably not. No. No. I think most people are just from a logical perspective and just thinking about Nintendo and like this would be unprecedented that, you know, you would go probably not. Not impossible. Like I don't know that I'd ever say, look, it's we just talked to I was like, there's a possibility that you can somehow make this work. It just doesn't seem like. So a very good question. Thank you so much. We got one more in here right now from Jacob Dressback for $2 says, do we need more original games or remasters slash remakes? I mean, how do you just say we just need more games? That sounds like yes to answer your question. Yes. Yes. And yes. And yes. We need games. I think he's saying do we need more original or would you guys rather have remakes? I think he meant either. But yes. The answer is yes, either way. Yeah. Who doesn't want in 2028, five years from now, the 30th anniversary edition of the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, full on a remake, getting the Resident Evil 2 remake, 4 remake treatment, like come on. Who doesn't want that? Right? I mean, say if you don't, but I do. So I'm always up for like a good remake or remaster of a beloved title. When enough time passes, a whole new generation is going to experience for the first time with that remake. For us, we could go back to 1998 in our minds and play Operative Time and still have a good time now. For some people that might be interested in the Legend of Zelda series or that title, it's too difficult to go back to that era of visuals because it doesn't hold up as well to what they're used to seeing now. Our eyes, I mean, I think I'm the oldest one here, by a bit, are used to that. We grew up with it so we could rewind. It's like black and white movies. If you ever grew up watching them, you go back and watch a favorite one. But if you never did, and all you did was, you know, current day CG, modern day Pixar stuff, can you really enjoy some of these older hits? Maybe, maybe not. Not everyone works that way. So remasters, remakes of classic stuff, bring it on. If you don't like it, don't play it. Or don't buy it. See, we don't have to choose either or. Yeah, remastered remakes are great. But I'll always go with original games. Original brand new games, because for me, I've already played a lot of these remakes and rematches that are going to come. So it's like, I want just more new games. And original games are great. And when I hear original, to me, that's just new because we get new games all the time. To me, that's like original, original. Like when it's a latune drop, that was a brand new IP, original idea. Arms, opposite Starfield coming out here. Like I like these more original big games because it brings something new. And honestly, for some of these companies, risky to the market. Yeah, it's scary as a publisher, you know. Yeah, like for how expensive it is to make these games. So I, but I like that because remasters and remakes to me are always like safe. If you're an all-time classic game and you're coming back. One, you're a good game. So people that play you for the first time are going to probably have a good time. People who loved you before are probably going to buy you again just to try it out again. But that's safe. It's easy. It's also cheaper, usually. Not everyone's doing Final Fantasy VII remake, which isn't even really the original Final Fantasy VII anymore. So not everyone's doing that. They're mostly doing things like, I don't know what they did with Last of Us, Part One, Remastered. Remastered and then remastered or whatever. Or, you know, the Super Mario Kart 8, you deluxe. Like they're just doing stuff like that, which is so much cheaper and easier and obviously more profitable in many, many ways unless that original game truly takes off. So yeah, but I always prefer new and original games over remasters and remakes. As cool as it is to see someone like my childhood or at this point, I mean, we're getting remasters and remakes of things that are not even from my childhood. I mean, they came out like five years ago. But I used to be that when you had a remaster or a remake, it had to be like, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago. Now it's like, nope. Did it come out like two years ago? Yeah, you know what? We might just release a remastered version. Yeah, they're like about to remaster Horizon Zero Dawn. And I feel like that one just like recently came out like. That was like 2017. Yeah, it was 2017. Yeah. It should be a law that it's like a law. Remaster remakes have to be like 20 years old or more before you can remaster remake them. Yeah, I did. It really comes down to like, would you rather, like as a publisher, would you rather have guaranteed money or would you rather have like, you know, risky for the biscuit? So you want your cake and eat it too. That's what you really want. Yeah, that's true. Game pass because, you know, I can fail in remasters and remakes or original games. Golly. I mean, I like both of them, but the remasters remakes, it walks a fine line because there have been remaster remakes where they break the game. Final Fantasy Chronicles perk off. What? GTA trilogy ruining my childhood. Yeah, right. Thanks. Where so there's that, you know, and new games. Yeah, there's there's a chance that it just flops because it's not a good game. But I think I would rather have a new game that flopped because it wasn't good than, you know, trying to bring back an old game, but completely ruin it. You know, I had the chance of ruining it. You know, if it's if it's well done, like there are many of them out there, then yeah, that's great. But I think just because I'm always liking new ideas, I think originally original games would be kind of where I'm at. All right, Wes, you understand here? You're just going to be like, you know, well, I think that we need more original games. Nintendo is at its best whenever they're coming up with new ideas and the amount of new ideas that they come up with their existing franchises, I would love to see them, you know, hone in on a brand new IP, give us something for Switch2 that they've been working on for the past five years and just laid on us, you know, like just let's see what they got. And that's that's my answer. That's a good answer. I'm playing Starfield. So that's an original IP. And yeah, it's a nice reminder when you are playing an original, like how nice it is that we're fresh experience. Oh, dude, it's surreal. Yeah, we had to set a quick $2 one from David Mann. I just want to thank you so much for supporting the show. Venato712 snuck a question in here for $5 saying, in each of your opinion, what's the percentage chance, given the new rumors, we get a public tease and reveal of the next gen Switch? Like probably tomorrow. I guess that's what they meant. Like I doubt tomorrow. Okay, that's all about Mario tomorrow. Well, I'm going to go with 100% eventually. Did you mean like this year or like in general? They're going to tease it in general at some point. What's the time frame? Yeah, this year. Okay. Yeah. He meant this year. I double checked it. Okay. So this year, well, I mean, we know what West things, right? October. It's happening in mid-October. Surprise trailer. Damn, maybe after maybe like closer to the tail end of October. Either way, October, October. I would, I would lose. You would own your, your brand new red Joy-Con Nintendo Switch you got from this Mario wonder. And the Nintendo would turn around and release a new Switch. Like that's, you know, you got to get rid of all the old, the old and then. So say you're on with 100% left. I'm going to toss in three in there. Oh yeah. 100% or not. I would say like 99.9% October. He's got to give himself one minor, one minor out. Paul Gale. Yeah, you're, you're, you're the one tightest with Nintendo among this entire crew. This year. Yeah. He's just, he just says a public T slash reveal. Not released or anything. We're not going crazy. See, I'm paying so close attention right now. This man has photos with Miyamoto on his, on his Twitter. He's like next week, bro. Intently paying attention. I think the release, I think the reveal and the release is going to be within a five month span. So I could only say, I think it's going to be shown this year if it comes out before April 30th. The majority of the next five months is 2023. You know, so it's possible, but you know, I'm, I'm, I'm leaning towards Nintendo Switch to being, you know, a spring console, but a lot of it lines up well with it being a November platform this time around. Then you're also trying to see, does it need to, so they don't, they don't need to rush it. It's so weird because every other Nintendo hardware we've known about for so long in advance, Nintendo Switch to Nintendo Switch, they dropped in Wii U. It's like, whatever, we know the system is failing. It got that October. It got that January. It got that March with NS2. It's, it's tough to say, I'd say like a, I'm on like 40% chance that it gets shown off this year and that it is shown off because I have confidence in them that if they show it off this year in October, which is, you know, pretty likely there's a good chance that they instantly take, you know, take charge and drop the other price drop because they just don't want to cannibalize their hardware sales. They're going to have such a good holiday season. Regardless of their first or not, they're going to sell several million consoles that if they play it wrong, they'll reveal it too soon when they didn't have to and they will have a dip in their, you know, hardware output that gets sold unless that they do a drop or maybe just compelling or maybe they just don't advertise it that well, but they tell it to the hardcore fans, you know what I mean? So several million people watch it, but not the, you know, several million plus fans that are not going to be tuning in that don't know about it that end up buying the hardware anyways, the moms and pops that walk in a GameStop that want something for the holidays. They didn't watch that Nintendo Direct in October, you know? Some, I would be, I would love to be wrong and think, dang, it was shown off. This is fantastic, but I'm still on that. I don't think they're going to show it off this year. It's going to be a next, but it really could. He's giving, he's saying there's a chance. Watch, next time he's on after Nintendo Live, he's like, look guys, 80% chance it's happening. 80% chance. You know something's up if I'm like, you know what? 80% chance. Like, that's how soon Nintendo is going to show it off and they're going to say, hey, surprise is coming up November. All right, all right, Eric. All right, Eric, what are we, what are we thinking? I kind of agree with Paul about 40. That's, that's what I was thinking before he actually said it. You know, I, I wanted to cop out and go 50, 50, but you know, it's, I don't know. It's hard to tell where the hell they're going to throw this thing. Because Nintendo, it's probably ready to go even. And Nintendo's just possibly sitting on it, waiting for it to just decide whenever they want to drop it. Cause that's what seems to be what Nintendo is doing lately. So yeah, go ahead. What'll help a little bit is if we get a Nintendo Direct around September 14th and depending on how many games they show off and how they finish the tagline. Like let's just say, I don't know if it's going to be shown, but Metroid Prime 4 coming spring 2024. If that's the case, I'm like, okay, I think Nintendo Switch 2 is going to be shown off next month. And Nintendo Switch 2 is going to come out in April. Because Metroid Prime 4, I just have a feeling that that one's going to be some kind of dual release, or they're going to want to optimize it and have it release on the original console and be optimized for the hardware. So if that Nintendo Direct comes out and Metroid Prime 4 is shown, and it says, if it says coming next, coming 2024, that's not enough for me to say, yeah, I think Switch is coming out, the successor is coming out early. But if it says spring or it has a month, and that month is in that first half, then I'll say, okay, maybe that October, I'm going to switch to like 70, 30 now. Maybe. So it's fun to speculate. That's what we do. I've been around long enough that I've talked to people in advance of things coming out, and in advance of announcements happening. So I've seen different ways of how it has worked in the past. So I know that anything that we've talked about today is possible. I just don't know what it is, you know? Yet. I would love, Paul, like you said, if they ended the Direct in September with Metroid Prime 4 and at the end, credits where it shows kind of like coming, blah, blah, blah. And then at the bottom of it, you just see the next logo, and that's it. They just tease it that way. So you have the Switch logo, and then you have the next Switch logo or whatever the next gen logo is, and they just drop that, and they don't say anything about it. By the way, you might have noticed that. Yeah, right. Yep. And then in October, then they come back and yeah. That would be a freaking great way to just drive hype and then drop the release announcement trailer in October. But yeah. All right. I'm going to be a fence sitter. 50-50. Flip that damn coin. Yeah, right. Flip the coin. Look, Mimo, what's your percentage? 99.9. What is it? 99.9. I think it's happening. Okay. So you're, well, I hope you're right for what? By the way, we all would like it revealed sooner than later. We're all going to buy the damn thing. Like, let's just get it out of here. I want to play it sooner, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, especially if there's backwards compatibility that happens to slightly increased performance of current games, that would be sick. I mean, we don't know that will be a thing, but yeah. But no, 50-50. Look, it's, I don't know anything. I haven't heard anything about when it's like getting on bail or anything like that. Nobody that I'm even aware of that has dev units or anything has said a word about that because they don't control any of that. It's interesting, you know, there was a point that I didn't bring up earlier in the Nintendo Switch 2 topic about some reports that existed earlier this year from a place that was correct about production timing in the past for the Nintendo Switch 2. It came from, I can't remember, I can't remember what company it was that said it, but they basically said that the system itself was going to begin mass production right around end of October, beginning of November. And apparently, and I checked all, some of this, I didn't check all of it, but some people did some digging into this. And it looks like when things go into mass production, they tend to launch about six months later. So if it's going into mass production, let's just say November, that means it's launching right at the start of the next fiscal year. That makes sense to me, whether it's March or April, that makes sense. And if that's the case, then I could see a tease before the year is out. That's mostly just announcing a bigger event. Yeah. But maybe it's even like a silhouette. Oh, yeah, something. A silhouette. And then we hear a wahoo. There you go. And you're like, what just happened? It'll break the internet. Just a silhouette with a wahoo and a date drop for an event. Like I could see Nintendo doing some of that, and that would be a tease. That is a tease. And then we're speculating what the heck is this? Why does it look so weird compared to Switch? What is going on? What is this thing? It's going to be... I could see that possibly happening if that release timing is true. I've been more on the releasing next summer train, so then they would reveal it early next year. But Nintendo does sometimes give us longer run-ups for systems. So it's at a point that we just know this thing's coming. I don't know anything about when they're going to tease or reveal it. But you know what? I want to be Wes. I want to just believe. I want to be Paul Gale sometimes. I want to just meet all the people and ask them directly, and then I will never get to meet them again because I'm asking questions and no, they can't answer. Yes, there's a certain level of professionalism when you're actually around the real people. There's things you just know you're not supposed to talk about. I'm aware of these things. I've been around a few, just a couple, and I'm like, okay, you just don't bring up certain things. But I couldn't help it. I would just end my YouTube career by just looking for a collar in the face, dude. Just wink when I get to the month that it's going to be dropped. The reveal. Just me, November, December. He's like trying to hold his eyes open. I'm like, wait, you blinked on two months. Is that a drop and then release? Let's go. Anyways, guys, that's going to do it, I believe. Thank you so much for all of those lovely questions. Remember, guys, if you are listening to our audio version, you'd like to get your questions, and you've got to check out the live version. Get that super chatted. And even if you can't stick around for the whole thing, you can do it at the beginning. Don't get answered. You can hear it later on the audio version. It's been a lot of fun. We'll be back again probably same time next week. I technically don't have anyone scheduled for next week yet, but we'll take care of that in the next couple of days. Besides him. I should be here. I mean, unless he cancels on me, which happens. Yeah, life, man. Before we head out though, what do we got going on? Where can we find you? Let's start with a good old Wes. I mean, we know what you're doing, but what do you got coming? Yep, playing Starfield. I should have my review slash impressions. I don't know what I'm going to post tomorrow, but it'll be something going on live on the channel. My post gaming news, stuff like that. I'd ship post on Twitter. So if you guys like to follow those. Spider-Man 2 just got bigger. Hell yeah. Yeah. So that's what I'm doing. Playing a lot of games. Thank you for having me on the show as well. Appreciate you guys. Yeah, no problem. You guys should go check out his channel. Hopefully one of our mods gets the link up there for you in the chat. Paul Gale, the emergency film, but always a joy. And I forgot that school started for you this week as well as my children. So I was like, oh man, I kind of, whoops. I'm happy to be here. Thanks. Have a little better. I got to remember a little better planning now to get Paul out. He's got work to do. Oh, this was a good time. I finished teaching my last classes and I'm happy to be on a really good discussion. Awesome. You guys are going to check out his YouTube channel, Paul Gale Network, or he's got Paul Gale Network.com as well where he posts a few things now and then sales data and other goodies every now and then teases a few little things he hears here and there every now and then throws a few, throws about usually just sales data that he tells you about early, but every now and then the birdies, the birdies sing his direction apparently, not just Nate the Hates. I mean, Eric, you just find him here next week, right? I'm pretty sure. As for me, hey, the next thing we got going on, you know, if you're watching live, be ready. We have the Mario Wonder Direct where we live streaming that tomorrow live reacting. In fact, when we end this live version, it'll actually kick you over there so you can set your notifications. And that is about it. I don't, otherwise I just have, oh, I can just say, hey, look, I don't know if you guys noticed, I sort of have like a semi-schedule for posting videos now. So I've already technically announced it. I just haven't made a big deal out of it yet because until I'm consistently hitting the schedule time, I don't want to make it like, oh, this is the schedule that never gets hit. But we're working there. Okay. Like I've had audio issues for a couple of days and now I'm hopefully fixing it maybe until I have more issues. You know, this is, I have to, I can't just do things the easy way. I can't just voice over gameplay and call it a day, right? Like that's just, no. It wouldn't be a video here if it didn't have some sort of issue. Anyways, guys, hopefully next week, I can be able to be like, confidently, we now have our set times and they're going to happen every time with this stuff. All right. Thank you so much for being here and we'll catch you in the next podcast. Peace. Goodbye.