 Hey everyone, before I get into this video, I want to remind you to enter our giveaway for Paper Mario the origami king. In order to enter, you need to comment down below, like this video, subscribe to the channel and hit that bell icon, set it to all notification, so you're notified of every video and live stream we do. You can do that on every video throughout the month of July, winter will be announced at the end of the month, and I wish all of you guys luck. Hey everyone, are you ready for some prime news today? I know I'm ready for some prime news, and we have some amazing stories today. We got some weird budgetary things from Nintendo that seem to suggest that, hey look, they're making their next-gen system right now internally. We got some stuff from Gabe Newell, maybe getting involved in the console wars a little bit, and don't forget about, hey, Game Pass is a thing that Microsoft's been doing, but it's not making any money, so why are they doing it? That and more on today's prime news. So our first story is going to be about Gabe Newell. Yes, that Gabe Newell, who runs Valve, all that jazz. We can talk about a billion things with him. We did a recent interview and he said this about what he would get with the Xbox Series X versus a PlayStation 5. Christmas, PlayStation and Xbox are both coming out with new consoles. Which is better? The Xbox. Really? Why? Because it is. Because he's sweet for Microsoft? I don't have a stake in that race, so obviously we do most of our development on personal computers, so, but of the two, I would definitely go with an Xbox. As you can see, he clearly prefers Xbox. Now he doesn't give a reason why, he just says it's better, just because it's better. That doesn't really tell us a lot of information, but it is interesting as the console wars continue to fuel. A lot of people are feeling PlayStation 5 right now because they don't feel like the showing from Xbox was that impressive this last time around. At least it didn't show off the true power of an Xbox Series X. I think that's what people are waiting for, because Xbox Series X is supposedly the more powerful system, but it doesn't look that way graphically, as if graphics are the only thing that matter, but consumers can see with their own two eyeballs most of the time. Especially if the debate's 30 FPS versus 60, we always say 60 is better, but for advertising purposes, prettier visuals always look more impressive in these types of showing, so Microsoft maybe didn't have the most impressive of showings, and Gabe Newell doesn't care because he just legitimately thinks Xbox Series X is just better. Probably because it's more powerful and he's a PCI and more power is better, so yeah. Gabe Newell, given his thoughts for those who care about the Xbox Series X versus PlayStation 5 console war. Next up, we have Joe Rogan. Over the weekend, he was not, you know, he just got a podcast, all this stuff, and he said this about video games. And video games are a real problem. They're a real problem. You know, why? Because they're fucking fun. And you don't, yeah, well, I have a real problem with them, and you do them, and they're real exciting, but you don't get anywhere. It's like you could do like martial arts, right? You could learn jiu-jitsu. You'd get obsessed by jiu-jitsu. And then three years later, you're like an elite jiu-jitsu athlete. You're like, you're entering in competitions. You're a purple belt. You're moving up. Yeah, you're doing well. You're thinking like, I might be able to open my own school one day. You got confidence. Yeah, if I have 100 students and those 100 students are paying me X amount of dollars per month, I can make a living. Holy shit, I can have a, this would be amazing. And then you see your jiu-jitsu school, and your jiu-jitsu instructor has all these students and drives him Mercedes, and he's got a nice family, and like, that's the future. This way, you're doing something exciting and fun, and you don't, or you could just be playing fucking video games. Three years later, you could be that same kid, just playing video games, waiting for the next, whatever the fuck game is, you know, next Xbox game to come out, and you're going to waste your time. Now this naturally stirred a ton of controversy on the internet. Some people understanding his point, something he is completely off base. In general, I think, you know, I'm going to kind of look at this from both sides. On one hand, he's viewing video games under the perspective of a parent. So I understand from the parent side of things where he's coming from or video games can feel like a waste of time. Now it's a hobby, like any other hobby, do it in moderation, do it when it fits in your schedule, and don't neglect your real life responsibilities for it. And I feel like that's where Joe Rogan's have an issue is a lot of kids and even some adults really neglect real life responsibilities for video games. They don't pay their bills, but they'll always be able to play video games, right? And, you know, that's a balance, a work-life balance we try to find in general. And I struggle with that sometimes too. I'm a parent, I'm working, I'm in college, all this jazz, I've got this YouTube thing going on, and I want to find some time to play some video games because I actually want to play video games, not just talk about them. And so there's always that fine tune balance, but he's not really even talking about people like me because it sounded bad what he actually said, but honestly, I think that he is just approaching it from the perspective of a parent. I hate his comparison about becoming a leader of a dojo and all that. You can easily have something positive happen to you by playing video games as well, like becoming a YouTuber. But I do think that his general point was fine, how he made the point was wrong. So the other side of the coin is obviously people thinking he's just bashing video games and people that play lots of video games and that's a problem, he doesn't understand the medium. And it's true, I don't think he really understands the video game medium as well as we wish he did, but still I think he made some points and I think his points are being missed among the video game community. You know, crucify me for what you will for taking that stance, but it is what it is. I think he had a point, a good point, but he misrepresented the point massively. Maybe I'm giving him more benefit of the doubt than I should. I don't really watch Joe Rogan stuff. So I don't really know much about the guy. He seems to be kind of controversial. Some people like him. Some people don't. Then again, everyone's that way. Some of you guys watching this are watching this right now because you freaking hate me. It is what it is. Nintendo has something cooking. I'm not sure what, but I have a good idea on what it might be because Nintendo has increased their research and development budget by 122% year over year. So from 2019 to 2020, they had 122% increase in the research and development of budget. They're usually hovering around the 600 million mark. This time they were at 775 million in terms of their marketing or I'm not the marketing, their research and development budget. And this is according to tech raptor radar or whatever they dug deep into Nintendo's recent financial report. And the big thing to take away from this is the last time they had 122% ironically the exact same percentage increase in research and development was from 2013 to 2014. What we know about that time period is in 2014 is when they massively started pushing development of the Nintendo switch. Now this budget isn't just for Nintendo switch or the next gen switch. They include hardware and software development in their research and development. So this is the entire budget for all of their video games as well. But bottom line is when you see a 122% increase it basically means one thing. Nintendo is working on whatever comes next. And this has obviously become kind of a topic this week because there's a certain indie game that was like, hey look we're raising all this money at Kickstarter and we plan to release on Nintendo's next gen system. But they don't actually know what that next gen system is. They're just saying the current switch isn't powerful enough. They're assuming the next whatever Nintendo system will be to run their game. So I kind of a non-story in a way but I got people talking about next gen switch. But then we have this come out and it certainly looks like Nintendo's working on what comes next. Now this could just be Switch Pro of course. Could we put a lot of research and development into a Switch Pro they plan to release next year or the year after. But chances are this budget increase is about their next gen system and we don't know what that's going to be. Is it going to be a switch too? Are they going to do something completely different? This is Nintendo. They're one of the most unpredictable hardware companies out there between the big three. So I don't know what's going to happen but I'm always excited for what's next. And you know what we get a chance to talk about what's next. And what's next is whatever your heart desires because we really don't know what hell Nintendo is doing. Hey are you still playing Animal Crossing? Well here's some good news. As of July 30 if you are a Nintendo Switch online member you will now be able to back up your save file through a feature called Island Backup. It is being added in an update that was planned to be released for a summer content update in August. They're pushing it up now to July 30th. And this feature is basically what we wanted in Animal Crossing from the very beginning. It will save your game to the cloud or to some online infrastructure at certain times it claims. But the weird thing is that you'll only be able to recover it in the event that you lose your Switch or your Switch gets damaged. They don't talk about buying an upgraded Switch or buying a Switch Lite and transferring it in between. That's not what this update service is for. So it is not the same sort of game save backup system that all the other games have. It is random. You don't really control it. You might not be at the right save point on your island. Oh and by the way it says you may be able to recover. So even though this is really great news and Nintendo promised us a system that was like this anyways and now it's coming and it's better to have it than not. It still doesn't seem foolproof and it's weird that you can only really get your data back if you basically destroy your Switch. That's not really a true backup system because the user can't control anything. Like basically people that play other games between their Switch Lite and regular Switch can't do Animal Crossing. I don't know what Nintendo is doing here. But hey it's better than nothing. And until this point we have had zero backups outside of the hacking community. So cool. Well guess we just take what we can freaking get at this point huh. Aaron Greenberg from Microsoft kind of runs their marketing and PR stuff. He came out to talk about Xbox Game Pass today and he basically admitted that it's not a big profit play. Direct quotes. And what he was responding to is a question about how does Microsoft make money on Game Pass. He basically was saying we don't make money on Game Pass. But he did go on to note that one Microsoft is going to be just fine. Their gaming division isn't even a big deal to Microsoft. They make so much money from Windows and all their other servers and everything else that honestly the video game division is like a drop in the bucket for them. So yes they are losing money or at least it appears they are losing money or not making much money off of Game Pass. However he says Game Pass is worth investing in now because Microsoft understands the long term goals and the long term payoffs. So if 10 million subscribers now does not justify all the games available there. But I think they are hoping that 10 million becomes 20, 30, 40, 50 million over the years here. And once you get to that point it starts to justify the games being on there because that's a lot of subscription money you have coming in. And I think that's the entire plan here. It's the kind of Xbox Live goal that were maybe Xbox Live when it initially launched wasn't the most profitable thing but you get enough people subscribe to it eventually and it becomes a massive recurring revenue stream for Microsoft. So yeah I think that it's a long haul plan. People always wonder how could they even do Game Pass because nobody else in the industry is doing it. No one else can really afford to do it. Nintendo and Sony can't really afford to do this kind of thing. Microsoft has the deepest pockets of the big three manufacturers, big three console manufacturers. They're the ones doing it. I wish them luck. I think Game Pass is one of the greatest values in all of gaming and if you own an Xbox One and don't have Game Pass, as Red, you would say. What's wrong with you? Now that being said I want to thank you guys all for tuning in to this episode of Prime Freakin News. It feels so good to be back. This is dose two days in a row. Hope you enjoy the five big stories. I know I'm sitting here looking, I'll fly and all that. And you know what we had a special request today. This is from an old school episode. But you know I'm just going to get to it and I'll catch you guys in the next video.