 Hey everyone. We have four big stories for you today. We're actually going to spend a lot of it talking about Microsoft versus Sony. So stay tuned for that. It's going to be our final topic today but it's going to make up a majority of today's video. Before we get into this news, however, I want to thank our new subscribers that subscribed just yesterday in Joe Schmo, Stephen Arroyo, and Mario Dima Troba. Thank you so much for subscribing and because you subscribed this month you've actually been entered to win a $20 eShop gift card. That's right. All new subscribers in the month of August get entered for an opportunity to win a $20 eShop gift card. If you would like to see your name shouted out and be entered to win that eShop gift card, I would just appreciate if you would subscribe to the channel if you're not already. And don't worry. I didn't forget about everybody else. All of our subscribers actually get an opportunity to win something this month. We're giving away a $300 item that's really, really awesome. And yeah, we have a link to go enter that down in the pinned comment and the description. Now let's get into our first story today and that is Kirby's Dream Buffet. We now have a release date for this game mysteriously announced last month without one and they announced it technically at Kirby's 30th anniversary concert out in Japan. It is coming out on August 17th and it looks like it's going to be $14.99. The release date has now been shared by Nintendo of America and Europe as well. Pricing in for some reason Nintendo of America at the time of recording this hasn't really been revealed but based on pricing in other regions it's probably going to be $14.99 on the eShop. So that's cool. It's nice to have a nice release date for Kirby's Dream Buffet. The new footage obviously looks pretty good and I want to just hop right into our next story. And that next story is that Thymisia from team 17 is coming to Nintendo Switch on August 18th. Wow. That's a really, really big action RPG. Unfortunately, it's the cloud version. The game does feature Corvus, a masked and mysterious protagonist who incidentally can turn into a raven battling the forces of evil and spilling onto the streets of Hermes, a kingdom on the brink of total ruin by the looks of it. To help combat these plague-ridden foes, Corvus has an intricate plague weapon system which will let you customize your build to match your play style. Chain combos together and generally dodge and stab your way to victory in your creepy plague doctor getup. They don't mention Dark Souls in this official blurb, but those unforgiving enemies and the game's focus on combat and unrelenting bleakness certainly give a soul-easy-in feel to them. This definitely has a sort of Souls-like feel. I have no idea if the game is going to be any good, but it's the cloud version on Switch which is unfortunate. It is a next gen I believe only title. I think PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC. So hey, I guess that's one way to get it on Switch. Cloud versions just irk me a little bit sometimes. I'd rather have the game than not, but I don't know. Sometimes the cloud versions work out fine, but then sometimes we get Kingdom Hearts and it's an embarrassment. Nintendo of America is unfortunately facing another workplace complaint. If you remember back in April, someone filed with the National Labor Relations Board claiming that Nintendo was preventing them from unionizing and some of the complaints that led to them wanting to unionize had to do with the treatment of contract employees, treating them unfairly, or promising advancement opportunities that don't actually exist, and a whole bunch of other stuff working in poor conditions and having unrealistic demands put upon them. The same sort of labor complaints we see at many other companies. We talked about this at length back in April, but there really hasn't been anything updated since then beyond some former employees coming out and verifying some of that stuff. Well, a new complaint has been filed with the National Labor Relations Board on Monday against Nintendo, and yes, they're hiring firm Ashton Carter, so this complaint is lodged against both, and it alleges that the companies establish coercive rules and in some way retaliated, discharged, or disciplined a worker for engaging in protected activities with others. Now, for it to be a protected activity, it has to be something that by law cannot be punishable. One aspect that this might be, and I give credit to Eric from the Nintendo Prime Podcast for mentioning this, Mike Perez as well, you know, you can't actually fire someone for discussing wages. It is often frowned upon at many, many workplaces to discuss wages. This is because they don't want you to know that you're making more or less than other employees because that could cause issues. However, in the United States, it's a legally protected right that even at work, you can discuss your wages with fellow employees. So this is obviously just a shot in the dark at one possibility of a legally protected activity that they're participating with other people in the workplace in sharing wage information. It is protected by law. So you can't be fired for it. You can't be disciplined for it. You can't have wage reductions or anything else because you did this even if the company doesn't want you to do it. So that's just one possibility. Obviously, it's a shot in the dark. There could be other legally protected rights as well happening in this circumstance. But yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see what if anything comes of this. Obviously, we haven't heard much since the April complaint. Now we have this. And what is clear, and you know, Doug Bowser has responded a little bit, is that there does seem to be a little bit of issues with some of the contract employees at least being disgruntled for one reason or another. And possibly that Nintendo of America is maybe not giving them the fairest of treatments, or maybe it's not even on them. Maybe it's on Ashton Carter, not giving them the fairest of treatments or clearly explaining the job before they sign on. I know that a lot of people will argue contract employees aren't actually employees of the company, but they are legally called contract employees. They still work and represent the company and they still have Nintendo on their paychecks. So yes, they are technically still employees just because you're a contract worker doesn't change that. It just means that you're temporary, right? You're not a salaried employee that's going to be, you know, there until you either quit or the company fires you. You have a contract. It's got terms that last for a certain long time. And then at the end of that contract, you know, both parties have to decide to renew. So anyways, it's just a complaint. I wanted to throw it out there. You know, get your guys's thoughts on that. Now we get to today's big story because we've known for a while that Microsoft was trying to buy Activision Blizzard for $79 billion. And we knew that it was going to take a long time for this to get approved. And obviously here in the United States, we were focusing on getting approved by the Federal Trade Commission or the FTC, but Microsoft actually needs to get this approved by 20 different regulation groups in different countries. So even if the FTC, which does look like it's going to approve of the sale, approves of it, it doesn't mean the sale goes through. It also needs to be approved by the European Union. And it actually looks like it's going to be approved by the European Union. But that's just two. There's actually 18 other places that needs to be approved. And if even one of those places denies it, then the acquisition cannot go through. Now it's very rare that the 18 other places will go against the FTC and European Union's rulings, but still they have to go through the regulation process. Now this is fine. This is just normal for any acquisition. Now there's one interesting aspect to this because we normally don't hear much out of these meetings. A lot of things are redacted and or just not shared publicly outside of one area. In Brazil, they keep all of these investigations, transgressions and debates public. Now there will be a number of redacted information, of course, in these public documents, but they believe in complete transparency with the people of their country and they hide nothing besides obviously very, very specific company redacted information that's private information about specific companies. So because of this, we actually have gotten a deep look at what's happening behind the scenes. And it appears that the only company in the world upset about this is Sony. Sony is actively trying to block this acquisition. And Microsoft has a specific response to them. Let's get into these nitty gritty details. I'll provide a link to the breakdown. And they and through there they have a link to all the legal documents and the questions being asked. Well, let's just go through this breakdown because this is wild. It's basically Sony versus Microsoft, the ultimate console war. So other AAA third party studios don't seem to see any competitive issues when they were asked all these questions. And they all listed franchises that compete at very high levels with the top Activision Blizzard games including World of Warcraft, Candy Crush, and Call of Duty, which is at the center of Sony's argument. Top tech companies like Google and Apple don't really care about this at all. And they decided gaming is far too large for this to even put a dent in the competitive nature. However, Sony absolutely is trying to block this acquisition and they are going all in. They say from a development slash publication perspective, game development typically involves an early stage that is neutral in relation to the platform before the game is adapted for one or more specific platforms. They believe that all games compete for engagement of the player. Players choose their gaming platform based on pricing, technical features, and available game types. The available content is the main factor for the player to choose a platform. They say that there are few barriers to entry in game development in publishing for PC. That only one developer can create an indie game and distribute it online but creating a high and AAA game like Activision's Call of Duty requires a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of employees. They say that apart from Activision, there are few developers and publishers capable of producing AAA games such as EA with FIFA, Take 2 and Rockstar with Grand Theft Auto, and Epic Games with Fortnite. These games tend to be long running franchises with big budgets, multi-year development cycles, and very supportive followers. Despite all of that, Sony believes that none of these developers could create a franchise to rival Activision's Call of Duty, which stands out as a gaming category on its own. That's why they believe that Call of Duty is so popular that it influences users' choices of console. In fact, their network of loyal users is so ingrained that even if a competitor had the budget to develop a similar product, they would not be able to create a rival. They talk about the time, money, and number of employees, millions of followers, sales, and other data points related to Call of Duty to show how it's a very unique franchise that cannot be replaced. They agree that subscription services compete with game purchases for a one-time fee, but they think that the lowest upfront cost of subscription services could be anti-competitive in relation to publishers who recoup the significant investments in games by selling them for an upfront fee. They also think that this could harm consumers by reducing the quality of the games. They say that over the past five years, Game Pass has grown to capture approximately 60 to 70% of the global subscription service market and that market share is even greater in Brazil, where the Game Pass represents roughly 70 to 80% of PC subscription service market. They believe that it would take several years for a competitor, even with substantial investments, to create a rival effective to Game Pass. Call of Duty represents an important revenue stream for PlayStation and they do provide the data, but the data has been redacted and it's one of Sony's interactive entertainment's biggest sources of revenue from third parties. Now, Sony is making a lot of claims here that no one can compete with Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, Call of Duty, and Game Pass is anti-competitive. Microsoft obviously did not like this and they responded and said, and this is in the documents, only one third party, Sony, presented materially different opinions than the applicants and other third parties consulted by SG, which is the initials for Brazil's group. Sony is isolated in this understanding and curiously even contradicts itself in response to the letter, as will be detailed below. Sony's public statements on subscription games and its responses to SG's letter are clear. Sony does not want attractive subscription services to threaten its dominance in the digital distribution market for console games. In other words, Sony rails against the introduction of new monetization models capable of challenging its business model. Stating that Call of Duty has a loyal following is a premise from which does not follow from the conclusion that the game is a gaming category per se. Sony's own PlayStation incidentally has an established base of loyal players. Such a finding, however, does not lead to the conclusion that PlayStation, or any branded product with loyal customers, is a separate market from all other consoles. Extrapolating from such a finding to the extreme conclusion that Call of Duty is a category of gaming per se is simply unjustifiable under any quantitative or qualitative analysis. Microsoft also added some additional claims on why Sony is wrong stating that it's not part of Microsoft's strategy to remove content from players and Call of Duty will still be on PlayStation as a paid title. Data shows that players see subscription services as only one way to pay for games. Sony's claim ignores the dynamic nature of subscription services and the fact that Sony actually has its own subscription service too. There are numerous other game distribution channels and subscription services, many of which include content that isn't available on Xbox. Microsoft also claims that arranging exclusivity deals has been at the heart of Sony's strategy to strengthen its position in the games industry and that as well as having its own first party exclusives, it also has exclusivity deals with third party publishers. Notably for this sale to be approved, obviously it needs to be approved by all 20 regulating bodies. Now it's not really shocking to see that Sony is the main proponent trying to block this and nobody else really seems to have an issue with it. Sony does obviously see a significant portion of revenue from Call of Duty every single year as maybe the top third party published game on their platform in terms of revenue, both shared revenue from game sales and obviously all the microtransactions and DLC and everything else. I kind of look at this as an interesting perspective of Sony the old guard versus Microsoft the new guard where Microsoft is trying to do something new and Sony just doesn't like it. It's really interesting because Sony has already spoken at link publicly about how they can't make a competitor or game pass. They just can't. Which they could but it would require a type of sacrifice that requires a lot of money and sunk costs that a lot of companies really can't afford to do. Microsoft obviously can, but so could other companies and there are other subscription services. It is true that game pass is probably the biggest of them of course. So I do find this to be quite fascinating that Sony and Microsoft are essentially going at each other in a legal way because Sony really really does not want the Activision Blizzard acquisition to go through. They view nothing positive from it because even if the games stay on PlayStation, Sony is extremely afraid that they will lose some of their consumer base to game pass because it would become day and date on game pass and there's lots of accusations in these documents that Sony is actually blocking some games from coming to game pass because it views game pass as too much of a competitor. So they're paying companies to not put their games on game pass not to block them from Microsoft but to not have them on game pass. I find that to be a rather fascinating take and it shows at least bare minimum because let's say the regulators approve all of this anyways. It shows bare minimum that Sony is deathly afraid of what game pass is doing and that is very strange for a company that has a very strong market of its own. They should be pretty confident in what they're doing and be making strides if not to compete with game pass to at least maybe make game pass not be this defining element that's going to make people leave. It just kind of sounds like Microsoft has a really really cool idea. Sony is jealous of that idea and so we want to block everything. This seems to go well beyond just Activision Blizzard but Sony being really really salty over game passes existence. So I find this to be rather interesting. I want to know your guys' thoughts obviously and all this down in the comments below. This is literally the ultimate console war. This is you know get rid of the friendliness of Sony congratulating success of game pass and Microsoft congratulating Sony on the success of PlayStation 5 and this is beyond the public statements. This is what the companies are really doing to each other behind the scenes. Microsoft is trying to get this sale approved and really pushing game pass and Sony hates game pass and hates that this sale is even on the table because they're worried about losing revenue themselves. This is all a bunch of e-peaning over money and it's hilarious to me watching these multi-billion dollar companies go at it. Of course Microsoft significantly bigger than Sony but it is funny watching these two gaming divisions at least go at it behind the scenes and as a innocent bystander as a Nintendo fan it's whatever. You know I play on Xbox and PlayStation and Switch and I'm just going to play the games where I want to play them and I do love game pass. So yeah if Call of Duty was on game pass I'd probably be more likely to start playing Call of Duty again because right now I don't buy Call of Duty hardly ever. So anyways folks let me know what you think about this down in the comments below. I am Nathaniel Roppeljanz from Nintendo Prime and I want to thank you guys for tuning in. By the way today's entry uh today's code for another 20 entries today's giveaway is Switch. Let's switch it up everyone. Peace out.