Sony Sells VR Patents to META

Hey everybody, welcome to Game Mess Mornings with me, Jeff Grubb, your host from GiantBomb.com. Thank you for tuning in. In this episode, we're going to be talking about some big new reviews and a big company consolidating more patents and tech for VR. It's going to be a good one because we have... Jason Fanelli on the show. Jason, how are you doing? I am doing well.

It's not a Friday, it's a Thursday here on Game Mush Afternoon, since now I mispronounce everything that we do here. Great to be here on GMA. No, this is cool. People are confused.

It's not Friday, it's.

Thursday, but I have New York Comic Con tomorrow, so I'll be going up to New York for the day.

You got a review out today.

I do, and I do. We're going to start with that. I have my first ever... Review for Giant Bomb, which is huge for me as a writer and as a person. The first ever quick.

Look, which.

That's what it's called. I will never live that down, and I don't want to, and I don't expect to. My first ever quick look. Really thrown to the wolves on this one. Going through some squelch and some viscera. You know, yes, there's lots of viscera, lots of lots of viscera. We had some being peeled. Yeah, we saw some hog. That was a nice thing to do together.

Brought us closer together.

It really did. It really did.

A lot of people clamoring for that. Release the full hog cut is what I'm hearing.

That's that's Jan's purview. He cages the dicks around here.

If you want, if you want the experience, listen, I'll give you the experience. Go to the store, buy a mushroom. And then go sit in your seat all the way back and put the mushroom in between your legs.

There you go. That's what it looks like. Yeah, you can imagine. Just play that game at home, everybody. Not Hellraiser, the mushroom game. The quick look was fun. The review was great. I read that and it was like, yeah, I am. I'll tell you what, after getting both the quick look in, and this is a game I'm interested in checking out. We'll get into what the reviews are like.

Some of the criticisms about it, it just kind of borrows from other games in the genre. I've lived long enough in video games where... I crave that now where, uh, I remember when we got, I said this on the quick play, uh, that we got a million, uh, uh, you know, Resident Evil clones after Resident Evil. And the industry was better when, when that, when we were getting those, even, even though most of them were mediocre, um, the industry industry was just better when we were getting a million different clones of that. And this, uh, kind of echoes and heart hearkens back to that time. And, uh, I was very into that. We'll talk about that game here more in a second, but let's, uh, Let's set the show up and explain ourselves. We're Giant Bomb. Go to giantbomb.com

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We're going to keep doing those, especially bringing in other people who are not the primary blight club team members so that we can have even more cool people do stuff like that. I wouldn't hate it if we just voted for Jerf over and over again, because that was so much fun. And I think people might like that, but Jan's right there, everybody. Jan's right there. He's right there.

He's seeing everything. He's seen it all. We don't know. No, we don't. He's right. He's right there. So, yeah, become a premium member and become a part of that. When we do like Blight Club, premium Blight Clubs in the future, we're going to open stuff up to votes and things like that. And you'll be able to participate if you become one of these producer like premium members that get a say in what that content looks like. It also, you know, a bunch of other premium shows are always happening.

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in the works. As far as this show goes, most weekdays, I, Jeff Grubb, will help piece your gaming life back together. That includes breaking news and maybe even some of our own original reporting. For all these topics, I'll get the input of a bona fide expert who will make me look smart. If you are watching live on Twitch, welcome.

You can always listen to the show later on podcast feeds by searching for Game Mess Mornings or find the RSS feed on giantbomb.com. You can also catch the show later with chapters and timestamps on YouTube. Hello, YouTube. All right. We have a lot to get into, so let's start the morning mess with... Hellraiser Revival reviews are in. It has a 75 on OpenCritic. Got a 7 out of 10 from PlayStation Universe's Thea Severance. Clive Barker's Hellraiser Revival isn't a perfect outing. Some of the creative choices, like adding in inexplorable sections, add more bloat for the sake of gameplay variety without adding significant substance. To boot, enemy AI in these parts of the game is very simple and offers little challenge. With that said, the true potency

of this game comes from the more focused, linear areas, where the concepts and scares get the chance to really show themselves. There are some cool ideas in Hellraiser Revival, and every Hellraiser fan needs to check it out. 6 out of 10 from Press Start's James Barrick, who says, Hellraiser Revival has all the blood, sex, and grotesquery you'd expect, almost perfectly capturing the Hellraiser experience in video game form.

but it struggles to carve out an identity of its own, mimicking plenty of horror greats without quite understanding what makes them so great. Regardless of its flaws, Revival tells a story that Hellraiser fans should enjoy, even if its uneven gameplay makes it much harder to sell for everyone else. And then four stars from Giant Bomb, Jason Finelli writes, I am pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed Hellraiser Revival.

Its respect for its source material is apparent throughout The Labyrinth, The Cenobites, the Genesis configuration being standout pieces of the puzzle. The rest of the game isn't reinventing the wheel for first-person horror, but the don't-fix-what-isn't-broken approach works just fine here. That's the sense I got when I was watching you play, Jason, is like a lot of this stuff is things that we know work, you know, weird little objects going into slots on doors so you can open them up, and then...

You know, I was really intrigued by the way that the pacing was working, where you were in this one space and then suddenly cuts away and you're in a different space, this labyrinth, and there's something cool happening there. And then you got through that and the game continues on. It's like, oh, yeah, they're like hitting the high notes here pretty frequently while also establishing a strong Hellraiser related storyline. So, yeah, some other thoughts, Jason, how else are you feeling about Hellraiser?

I don't necessarily disagree with the, with the critique that the combat is rudimentary. Uh, the gunplay is not anything you haven't done before. Uh, there are only five weapons, one that you're given and four that you can purchase throughout the game. And there it's a pistol, a shotgun, a Magnum revolver, an assault rifle, and an SMG all standard weapon fair. What, what, what, The appeal of it is, is mixing the powers of the Genesis configuration cube in with the gunplay. You can, and I mentioned this in the, in the, in the quick look, you can pull stuff out of the wall and just hold it there like a spike or a saw blade or what have you.

And then once you have an enemy in your sights, you can shoot it out and it knocks and it, and it takes them out. Eventually you can gather fire from it. And fire is very potent against all of the enemies, be they cultists or the undead unworthy who are people that were, tried to be converted into the Cinnabite through this cult's rite of revival, I think is the full name of it, and they just turned into standard shambling zombies. In fact, I put a modification on my shotgun to make it Dragon's Breath, so every shot immolated the enemy, and that made combat even easier, just because of how potent fire is in this game. The appeal of the game, though, is when it gets super creepy.

The labyrinth, I cannot say enough about the labyrinth and the way that it's seamlessly transitions from real world to labyrinth to the point where it blends so much. Eventually you don't know where the labyrinth ends and the new world and the real world begins and vice versa. You, you could look out a window in the real world in like the, the, the, the club or in your apartment and it looks like the labyrinth out there. And I think that's just part of the mind F the mind fuck that they're trying to do here. I, I, The Cenobites are here, the Cenobites are here, and they are present, and you do talk to them, but they are not overbearing. There are points where you forget you're playing Hellraiser, if not for the cube, and then they

show up, like Pinhead or Hellpriest will show up and talk to you, and that's when you make the deal. Or the Open Throat, whose other name eludes me, she will just appear at random moments. She's the one who gives you some of your powers the chatterer just chases you through the labyrinth as you saw in the quick look that was great that there's multiple moments like that and they get more and more difficult as you go on yeah I you know you know me I'm not a horror guy I'm famously not a horror guy played the original fear by watching it on YouTube first and doing scenes a little bit at a time so to go through this review and to go through that psychic pain and ultimately gaining the pleasure of playing the game

that's just hellraiser baby.

Yeah just fulfilling the prophecy yeah i think so i mean yeah to me that was a really good sign you kind of you going in there some trepidation and then uh it winning you over uh to me that's that's a job well done uh for this game and you know The thing pointed out here is maybe going to be the most like in all these reviews is maybe the most important point, because there are so many great games right now. I think people are going to look at one where it's like, oh, I might like this.

I might not or might find it like not necessarily fully worth my time or money compared to something else I could spend my time and money on. But if you are if you have an affinity for Hellraiser, this is going to deliver. It sounds like that's kind of unquestionable. And that that's nice to see. I'm sure there will be some true freaks that have some criticisms about something.

But it seems for the most part, if you are looking for a Hellraiser experience, this is this is going to nail that. And yeah, I mean, you know, this is Sabre. They got a whole bunch of teams, but, you know, they did stuff like Space Marine 2, which I think got like low 80s on Open Critic. And I love that game. Space Marine 2 was a ton of fun. And it's like, yeah, this is kind of in that range. Uh, so you can kind of expect something similar in terms of the level of quality. I would say.

I would also like to point out, and this is not, this did not color my review because I didn't realize it until I got the press release for the game launching this morning. Game's 40 bucks. You're not paying the full 70, 80 for it. Uh, for this time of year, for you want us, if you want a spooky game on the cheap, uh, 39 99 for this or 50 for the deluxe edition, if you're a pinhead freak, um, That seems worth it to me, based on the 11 or 12, actually, just under 11 hours. 1057, I think, is what my playthrough clocked in at on PlayStation 5.

I'll check that to be sure. But, yeah, that seems worth it to me. And you also get the authenticity of Doug Bradley being Pinhead, Hellpriest. Again, he commands the screen. Every time he's on screen, it's fantastic. Yeah, really, really cool stuff. I loved it.

Other reviews out today for Dragon's Dogma 2, Dark Arisen. Got an 85 on OpenCritic. That was a game that was already well-reviewed, and Dark Arisen seems to have delivered in terms of really putting a bow on that package. Let's see here. Kevin Kelly from the Outer Haven Productions says, Dragon's Dogma 2, Dark Arisen, does what the original expansion accomplished and sets the bar higher. With both Dark Arisen's original premise and the Lost Rites challenges, there are more things to do, fight, and see within the world, even before deciding to end it at the finishing fight. Let's see, Robert Ramsey at Push Square gave it a 9 out of 10, said Dragon's Dogma 2 Dark Arisen is often Capcom's open-world RPG at its absolute peak. It's one hell

of a meaty expansion, delivering a surprisingly involved story, joyous exploration, and deeply compelling combat. A transformative DLC. And then Johnny Hurricane over at Gamers Heroes gave it an 85 out of 100 and says, Dragon's Dogma 2 Dark Risen is an excellent addition to an already meaty game. If you like the base game, Dark Risen offers even more difficult challenges alongside even greater rewards. So, yeah, I think that's exactly what people who like Dragon's Dogma 2 were hoping to hear and people maybe who held off on playing Dragon's Dogma 2 liked. I'm like, okay, well, I had a great experience with Dark Arisen in the first game.

Now I want to try that again here. It sounds like it's going to deliver on exactly that. This is one that if I had all the time in the world, I definitely would be playing this. I just can't justify it right now. Very much the same.

This is the subset of my backlog that says requires an entire weekend or an entire week if you have time. Surgery games, I like to call them. If you're recovering from surgery, you just sit and knock one of these games out. Uh, I have always been interested in this one. Uh, the fact that this expansion is out now gives me more of a reason to potentially, you know, have surgery so I can play it for a week. Uh, also shout out to the early nineties wrestling gimmick, reviewing games for gamers, heroes, Johnny hurricane.

I salute you. That's a great name. That's no jobber.

That's no jobber, but no, this is cool. I'm glad to see that the expansion is getting the hype. that the first game sort of got i can't remember what the original release was on open critic but it was similar to.

That it was it was well reviewed um you know it was one of those ones that was really well reviewed by critics right when it came out and then had a litany of problems in the release window uh as a bunch of people played it and like ah this is running like dog shit and there's you know if you try to play it this way it's not as fulfilling if you play it that way uh You know, Capcom, the whole thing here is we listen to all of the feedback and then we're also adding in this very, as two reviewers here said, meaty expansion. Sure.

It's always good to when an expansion comes out and performs just as well as the base game. You hate to see when like a DLC chapter comes out and it's comparatively worse to the point where like future playthroughs, you don't even mess with it. So I'm glad that they're able to expand on this in a way that makes people happy. And I hope that those who play Dragon's Dogma 2 have an excuse to go back and have some more fun.

Yeah, and I agree with this from PowerDunker in chat. Austin Walker's opinion is the definitive on this topic. And it sounds like he's on remap tomorrow, so I'll be listening. Because he loves Dragon's Dogma. I want to hear what he thinks of Dark Arisen, if he's been playing it, which he probably has. All right, continuing right along. August 2026, U.S.

video game market highlights from our friend Matt Piscitella over at Circana. August 2026, U.S. video game market highlights. Let's see here. The U.S. video game projected total spending across content, hardware, and accessories dipped 9% in August when compared to a year ago to $ 4. 3 billion total. Uh, let's see here.

Mobile was the primary driver of the overall August spending decline falling 18% versus a year ago. Uh, let's see here. Mobile spending. Of course they get that from a sensor tower console content spend declined by 7% PC content increased by 13% and subscriptions grew by 3%. Uh, let's see here. The top selling games. It's a ton of new games at the top of the list here. So let's go through them. Number one was NBA two K 27. Number two is Madden NFL 27. Uh, Number three is Marvel token fighting souls. Number four is the kickoff bundle, which is, I believe Madden and NCAA football together. Number five is Star Wars Zero Company. And all of those are new additions to this list. They were not released before this month.

Number six is Halo Campaign Evolved. And number seven, Elden Ring, which must be because it launched on Switch, right? Switch 2, Tarnished Edition. Yeah, that's what I would say. It went from 41 up to seven. That's a big jump. And then number eight, new on the list, Big Walk. Yeah, well-deserved. Hell yeah. That's going to be one where there's a strong chance that game actually wins a bunch of Game of the Year awards, and it's just going to keep selling.

Number nine is Mario Kart World, which jumped from 19 to number nine. I wonder if that's... I'm trying to think. Oh, maybe that's because of the bundle. Maybe it got bundled and they started counting that again. There was a time when they didn't count bundles. I can't remember how that goes. And then number 10 is Splatoon Raiders. Okay. The big thing here is, like, August video game hardware spending was down, fell 3% when compared to a year ago to $ 302 million.

Year-to-date hardware spending is 11% behind 2025's pace at $ 2. 5 billion. PlayStation 5 hardware dollar sales grew 17% in August when compared to a year ago. This growth was offset by 13% spending drops across both Xbox Series and Switch 2 hardware, but PlayStation 5 also more expensive than ever before. a lot of those price increases have gone into effect. And they aren't necessarily selling more PlayStations. It's just a higher price.

Total August 2026 video game hardware unit sales fell 15% versus a year ago. The lowest August total since 2013. So in 2013, there was 423,000 new hardware units sold. This August was 559,000. So that's the second lowest since 2013 or So not too surprising as hardware gets more and more expensive to see that show up in these numbers. Right, Jason?

Yeah, hardware is getting more expensive, as is everything else around you. I went to get my car washed today in the gas station across the street. I believe it's at 450, which for this area is probably the highest I've ever seen it. Maybe 460 like a week ago. Certainly up there. Just a sign of the times, really.

Normally the end of the summer season, beginning of September is the lull in terms of video game sales. But the fact that they're so, because it's leading up to the holiday season, right? People are gearing up for the busy fall and like November. But the fact that it's so, it dropped so much that it's the lowest total since 2013, I think speaks to a larger economy issue. It's not that people don't want to play games. It's that they can't, afford them because these consoles are so expensive even the used ones as we learned yesterday on this show with the what $ 500 markup on the used PlayStation 5 Pro at that beautiful wonderful ethical retailer that shall not be named dipshit anyway but I'm not surprised by any of

this I love just to put a positive spin on it I love seeing big walk on that chart it belongs to be there I love seeing all those new titles.

Granted, most of them are sports titles. Just an added little....

Caveat to the 2K27. Not only was it number one for the month of August, it is now the number three best-selling game of the year to date in that second chart, debuting on that chart at number three.

It's the only new game from that month that showed up on the top ten for the year.

Falling only behind Requiem and 007 First Light, which is impressive for an NBA game. Uh, I know that people, a lot of people like, uh, you know, basketball games and stuff like that, but I always thought that that was, as far as popularity was concerned, a little bit below Madden, but to see it beat the crap out of it in sales here, that's pretty neat.

Not, not for a few years now, Madden or, uh, NBA has kind of been the king on that for, for a hot minute. Now, uh, part of this is always going to be worth looking at these asterisks. NBA does include digital point of sales, actuals, and then Madden does not, or no, includes digital sales projections. So they project.

So yeah, but I mean, he's still trying to do the math there and still Madden didn't show up on this list. Part of that is also, you know, a big part of this Madden skews is this kickoff bundle, you know? Right. And they separate those. So that's, that's going to kind of cause that a little bit.

I like a, Sorry, I like seeing Tokon on there too. New fighting games are always a little, you never know. People are going to take on them.

Number three. Looks like they are. That's a big month.

I want to see what happens in September, how much it's fallen off. But to see it debut in the top three of its launch month is a good sign for that game, as was the DLC trailer for Phoenix Cyclops yesterday.

Holy shit. But back to the hardware. Sorry to get us off track there. Yeah, please. I wonder if it's going to be worse now that the Switch is going up too. this kind of month right yeah it's i think it's going to be i think uh so yeah that was right it's the next month because this is for august we do not have the switch price increase included here and the switch you know you would assume like that last run-up was gonna like get another boost it was actually down a little bit now it was the top selling unit uh or top top selling hardware of the month let's get to some of this other stuff yeah nintendo switch 2 led the u.s market a A hardware market in both unit and dollar sales for both August and also 2026 year to date. PlayStation 5,

of course, ranks second in both measures in both in for both that month and year to date. Meanwhile, also, you know, getting back to the price PlayStation or I'm sorry, the average price paid for a new unit of video game hardware in the U.S. reached an August record of five hundred and forty one dollars. The previous August record was $ 476 set a year ago. So it just continues to be this huge stepladder of every year it's a new massive step up for the price of hardware. And we are all expecting prices to continue to climb, as you pointed out, that PS5 Pro price over at GameStop to get it used. $ 1, 400 and there's a $ 1, 500 version as well. As far as content goes, yeah, NBA kind of what was dominant here. But a lot of new

games on the chart. People are showing up for new games. Yeah, the Nintendo Switch 2 version of Eldering was released, and that's what boosted that. Accessories, August accessory spending increased 3% when compared to a year ago to $ 176 million. Year-to-date accessory spending was 4% behind the pace of a year ago.

PlayStation does really well with accessories. There's a lot of people in that ecosystem now. that are still buying a lot of stuff that speaks to an engaged audience of people who still really like their, like using their PlayStation remote play device spending increased by 39% versus a year ago. The PlayStation portal, midnight blank, but midnight black ranked as the third best-selling accessory in August dollar sales behind the midnight black versions of the dual sense and the dual sense edge. So that's one, two, and then the portal was third. So yeah, Yeah, look, we talk a lot about, you know, how's PlayStation doing? Are they kind of keeping people happy? People want to be playing their PlayStation. That's

what that accessory spending says. And it's just like if they could deliver on the game side of stuff, it just people will probably go nuts and spend a ton of money. And I guess they're at PlayStation are just counting on Grand Theft Auto six to be that moment, which in all in their defense, completely fair.

It's going to be that. Yeah, it's already trending to be that moment. The remote play device is interesting. The PlayStation portal being so high. I wonder if that's people who are a little more tech savvy, who are a little more ingrained in the space, getting ready for Grand Theft Auto and being able to play it anywhere in their house, right? Not being beholden to their console and their television.

Did that price go up recently too? Also, was that, did that price? I don't remember. I don't remember. I wouldn't be surprised, but I don't have any recollection of that.

Because that would also indicate why the spending increase would go up if people were just paying more money for it. I'd be interested to see how many units it sold versus if that price did go up. I can't remember off the top of my head. I feel like it went up like maybe $ 20, $ 30, but anyhow. I also want to know how many Switch 2 owners had to replace their Joy-Cons or Pro Controllers after playing Elden Ring for the first time. I imagine there's a couple of snapped joysticks or whatever. Their drift is probably out of sight at this point.

But this is.

again, the kind of, the kind of thing you expect to see in August, uh, in an economy that we're in right now, if these, if we're hearing downturn numbers and, and, you know, less year over year in like November, when that game comes out, then we're in trouble.

I don't think that's going to happen. Of course. No, I think in September, we're going to start seeing the curve of excitement change because of the Netflix special and things like that. Yeah. Yeah.

I could see that too. But, um, Matt Piscitello does good work. Fellow Paisan, I do.

Appreciate it very much. All right. We are going to take a break. When we come back, plenty of headlines to get into. Xbox has a new film and television division. Sony is selling stuff to Mark Zuckerberg. We'll get into all of that after this. If you want to skip out on the ad messages, go to giantbomb.com slash join.

The ad-free version of the video and audio show are available there. We will be right back. All right, it's Game Mess Mornings. That's Jason Finelli. I am Jeff Grubb. Real quick before we move on too far from the sales story, I believe the game business, Christopher Dring, had just a quick tidbit here of Wolverine launch sales. 35% of Wolverine launch sales were on disk, according to some data.

Data suggests 35% of Sony's Wolverine launch sales were on disk. 35% still a very big number, right?

Yes, it is probably bigger than PlayStation expected. I wonder if that's why that came out. That's the thing.

They know that a game like Wolverine sells on disc. When they talk about the reasons that they're shifting, they're mad that there's 35% still. And, you know, I think on average, if you only look at games that have a disc as an option, the number really is around 35%. It's somewhere between 30 and 40% of people still buying physical. Obviously, there's going to be somewhere it's like barely anyone gets it physically, but there are somewhere closer to 50% bi-physical. Um, yeah, it's the, the story that Sony tells is very twisted here and boy, are they, I mean, have you seen social media recently? Like I saw everything they do. Like the video, uh, I saw yesterday that had the most views, like 40 million views, some crazy shit is all about

hacking PlayStation 5, the NPS5, you know, porting project to port PlayStation 5 games to PC. People are not just like excited about that. They are calling it like karmic retribution for Sony doing no disc in the future. And everyone's like, this is, hey, we have, We are righteous in this campaign against Sony. And when we go to play their games on PS5, they already have the phrase locked and loaded where it's, oh, Sony says you don't own your games. Well, guess what? You don't own the PlayStation 5 hardware anymore. Now that's all digital on my PC.

And people are running with that. And, you know. We talk about, oh, well, Sony changed their mind. You know, obviously the numbers are in their favor. There are attributes to that like this that, you know, we don't really consider until it's right there. And at least I'll speak for myself that I didn't really consider until it's right there in my face of, oh, people are going to use this as an excuse to sort of amplify all the efforts to crack open the PlayStation 5. And that's going to, you know, people are going to jump aboard that because they are feeling like they are in the right to fight against Sony. And that is manifesting before our very eyes right now. Yes, it is. All right.

Let's keep going here. Xbox has a new film and television division. Xbox announced XP this morning, a division covering film and television merchandise, partnerships and live experiences. That includes attractions and theme parks. Former Mojang president Kayleen Walters will lead it. Xbox Xbox chief strategy offer Matthew Ball. states the ambition plainly, the number one entertainment company in the world.

That's what they want to be. And it's nice to want things. Microsoft points to Minecraft's expansion into movies and merchandising as the model. So that's really what happened here is Minecraft has successfully done this, you know, because it's Minecraft, but they are taking the person who oversaw those efforts, this Kayleen Walters, and now applying that to Xbox as a whole. And, you know, Good luck. Good luck. Because what else do they have that is Minecraft? I mean, they own Call of Duty, but even Call of Duty is just not merchandisable. Like, are they going to have a Call of Duty attraction at Cedar Point? Are they going to have movies? I guess they're making a Call of Duty movie. Are they going to have a Call

of Duty movie that anyone actually gives a fuck about and is like any better than the Battleship movie, which I believe is directed by the same person who's doing the Call of Duty movie. Someone who I like, but no one gave a shit about the Battleship movie. And I feel like Call of Duty's fate could be very similar.

What are your expectations for this? Just because I think that they will struggle to replicate the success they had with Minecraft. Crash and Spyro. Do they know they have that? Well, that's true.

But they could probably get something out of Crash and Spyro, be it a children's or like a tween-oriented television show or limited series or something like that. In a bit of a broken clock scenario, the name Xbox XP, admittedly, is not bad.

No, sure.

It's a good name. I look forward to Xbox Vista. an Xbox 10, an Xbox 11.

Okay. Well done.

But, you know, it would depend on how deep into their franchise cachet they're willing to go.

To do this thing.

I do love the pure neck, to use an English term, of these people at Xbox who are just saying they're seeing two to three times growth, and we want to be the number one entertainment company in the world because Minecraft is good, and we can do that with every other... There is a mouse who would have something to say about the number one entertainment company in the world. You got a tall hill to climb. We're not talking about video games anymore.

They're not even in the top ten, right?

Yeah.

No, yeah.

And then there's a big merger that just closed this week who might have something to say about that, too.

I mean, Nintendo is a bigger entertainment company if we're just talking about entertainment. Like, yeah.

Pokemon alone is a bigger entertainment company than all of Xbox.

That's right. Since that has broken itself off. That's exactly right. They're not just going to jump in and be like, oh, we're number one now. Sorry, guys.

This is the meme where the guy is popping champagne and kissing the woman and going and biting the.

Metal and all that.

And he's all the way down in eighth place. And the actual platforms are all the way up there. I.

Good luck, right? Good luck.

Are you going to partner with Universal to put some things in Epic Universe? That would be kind of weird, right? To have Nintendo over here and Xbox over there. Throw Sony in there somewhere, too. What is their plan here? They're always they're talking about how they have these big plans for the future.

What the fuck are they? You haven't actually said what your plans are. You're just saying what you want to do and what your ambition is. Yes, exactly. And I get setting the bar high, but that is an aspect of Microsoft and Xbox's division for a long time. That was one of Phil Spencer's tricks is we're going to set the bar very high. And that forces us to think of every way to accomplish this stuff. And then they never actually did. They always missed it. But look, keep setting the bar high. That's fine. But I mean, does it like a dose, like an ounce of realism about the fact that the rest of these things are not Minecraft? Does that actually hurt? Like maybe just try to get a little creative. They have a lot of IP.

Wanting to leverage that stuff makes sense. Coming in with your dick swinging and being like, we're going to do what we did for Minecraft for everything else just makes you look like you don't know what you actually have.

How do you do what Minecraft did for Halo? How do you do that? I mean, shirts and yeah, well, sure. You got to actually make the game. But like Minecraft was a juggernaut because it caught on with basically all ages. There's nothing else in your coffers that'll be able to do that. I don't like this at all.

Kabosky in chat says, was the Minecraft movie good for them? Yes, without a doubt. Yes, that was a massive, massive success. They benefit from that. Everyone involved benefits from that. And then the game reinvigorates its cultural cachet, which was never in doubt. But no, it really did reinvigorate this thing that was already not reinvigorated. So yeah, it's been really good for them. And they want to all these companies realize this simultaneously when they have like Sonic the Hedgehog really is the one that proved it in movies. And The Witcher really proved it on Netflix. When you have these cross media successes, it shows up in game sales in a massive way. And everyone wants that. And the,

and Hollywood is recognizing video games as a really good source for recognizable IP, something that they love because they are terrified of original ideas. So give me something that someone knows about. We'll make a movie based on that. And so there's a lot of reasons why this stuff is all lining up right now. But that again, you start getting down that roster real fast and we'll see what happens. Like once Nintendo gets past Mario and Zelda, what do they do after that? What's the third one and how recognizable is that? Now there's an advantage there.

Kids know every character in smash brothers. So any, any character that's in smash brothers just has this intrinsic advantage, but yeah.

And you would think that Xbox would know that considering they had two characters, it Minecraft pays for itself.

Why didn't they capitalize on banjo still waiting for that? Yep. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's keep it going here so we don't run late for the triple I initiative, which we are going to be talking over after this, everybody. Sony sells VR patents to Meta. Let's go. Reporting based on U.S. patent records says Sony transferred 43 VR patents to Meta.

The agreement, signed in December, reportedly encompasses more than 400 patents internationally. with additional transfers involved. Sony is transferring intellectual property to the company behind Quest after providing limited original first-party software for PSVR 2. PSVR 2 launched in February 2023 for $ 550. And then its lack of compatibility with the original PSVR games, expensive entry point, and limited software support complicated its prospects, which is the kind way of saying it was dead on arrival. Sony subsequently added PC support through an adapter, but there is no formal announcement here that Sony is ending PlayStation VR, canceling future hardware.

But I think we can safely assume when they transfer the patents to Meta that they do not have a future PlayStation VR 3 in the works right now. That seems like the safe assumption. And why would they after they put out PSVR 2 and had seemingly zero interest in supporting that thing?

Dearly beloved, we have gathered here today to mourn the loss of PlayStation VR. The corpse has been cold for a while, but we're finally getting around to the funeral now.

Let's think of the back for a while. Yeah. Yeah. It was in Hellraiser. It was in the Hellraiser. We found it. It was the one. It was the one hung up with its skin. Yeah. Yeah. Flesh peeled like a skirt. Yeah. Yeah.

So let's play a guessing game. I don't know if this wasn't in the report. I'm going to make sure you didn't actually just say it. How many first party PlayStation VR two games did Sony release?

I mean, I know they did call the mountain and I am struggling to think of anything else. So I'll just say two in case there's one. I forgot. That is correct. Okay.

Two since February, 2023, based on a report that I was reading about this before we started two games. First party, PlayStation VR 2. Tell me you don't give a shit without telling me you don't give a shit.

And this is the story of every single PlayStation product that is not the core PlayStation product. Correct. The PSP, the PS Vita, the PlayStation VR 1, and now this. But the difference is it gets worse with each subsequent one. Like the PSP had quite a bit of support compared to this. It just didn't have the support that PlayStation 3 was getting or whatever. Uh, this is just like, they do not have the resources to support these things.

And then they realize a bit too late. Oh, this thing's a niche product. We can't put good money after bad by actually supporting the niche product and say, how, why the fuck do you put it on the first place? Then how would you end up here? It's crazy. Now, of course they always have this situation where these things tend to sell pretty well. PSVR one sold really well, all things considered. So they supported it. with a lot of partnerships. And then they just did zero of that for PSVR too. And it was so obvious that like that thing had momentum to get it, get it across the finish line as priorities were changing inside of PlayStation.

And they just kind of put it out because it was better than not putting it out. But really that thing for all intents and purposes, other than getting released was canceled before it ever released. It was canceled without being canceled. It was just, here it is.

We did it. Let's forget about it. And we'll never have to speak of it again. Kind of disappointing because VR, PSVR had a time where it could have been really good, but Meta's kind of eaten its lunch in terms of VR just by being the only one around. I know Valve just put one out too, and there's a couple other ones.

Yeah, Valve's just for the sickos, though. Like, they're not going to subsidize it. You know, and that's the thing here. That's the real frustrating side of this is... Sony does know how to sell games, so they could have put that thing out and maybe subsidized it or put out new ones and subsidized the price a little bit and sold some games. Meta is going to subsidize it by stealing our data and tracking things in your home, using the cameras on that device. We know how terrifying their privacy policy or lack thereof is. And they are trying to consolidate as much power in that space because they believe that space is going to transform into various other kinds of wearable computing. And they seem to be right

about that because people are putting on more glasses. And these glasses have AR, VR, mixed reality stuff built in. And that's going to be one of the features that sort of gets these things sold and put on people's faces. And then the business reality will be... the real money will come from tracking people's data, tracking their eyes, tracking what they're looking at, advertising based on how long your eyes lingered on a pair of pants at the store, like my minority report. And having control of these patents gives them sort of a protection, a field of protection to make sure that they are the ones that can own this space over the next 10-ish years. These patents are going to probably expire in about 10 years, but

That'll be enough time to get a good first step into that space and dominate it in a way that, God, I wish anyone else other than Mark Zuckerberg was going to dominate it. Yeah. And you know what else?

Those wearable glasses have a reputation for perverts. And if this country ever comes to its senses. and decides that they don't want shit like that anymore, Meta's gonna feel the pain really, really fast. I can't guarantee that's going to happen, but I can guarantee that the pervert glasses and the MetaQuest will never be in this house.

And that's all I can do. For as long as these freaks are lining up behind any new president of the United States so they can butter up their ass cheeks and get the laws made that they want, we're gonna continue to be the guinea pigs so that these people can make as much money as possible, for sure. Yeah.

I said it a couple of times now, though, but it's been very frustrating, frustrating to have the realization of, you know, they're the movie they live. You put on the glasses, you see the truth. And here it's like they sell you glasses that just will steal your data and cause you to just have misinformation being directly into your eyeballs like a machine gun in a way that the people who wrote they live never could have imagined.

And it's cool to live in that fucking reality. All right. Let's say a better story. Star Wars Zero Company staff returning to work after being furloughed pre-release. This is from Andy Robinson at VGC. I don't think it's like this is in a full success, but there's some good news because there was no guarantee that they were all going to come back or any were going to come back.

Star Wars Zero Company developer Bit Reactor says it started returning some of its staff who were furloughed ahead of its release in late August. Around 80% of Bit Reactor staff were reportedly sidelined without pay ahead of its release because the studio was running out of money. Now, according to CEO Greg Forst, staff have begun returning to work.

According to New Zoo, Zero Company was the sixth best-selling PC game of August in the six major Western gaming markets ranked by revenue. This week, we started the process of returning more of our team back to work at Bit Reactor, an important step forward in our continued support for Zero Company. Forsht said in a statement. Let's see here.

Having to ask team members to step away after we navigated unexpected business developments outside of our control and so close to launch was an incredibly difficult decision, but one that was necessary to help us eventually bring as many people back as possible. This team means a tremendous amount to me, and I am incredibly proud. Blah, blah, blah.

According to GameFile sources, this is Stephen Tillow's newsletter, which everyone should follow. I always try to trumpet that one when we talk about that. The staff returns announced today bring Bitreactor's payroll headcount to more than half of what it was ahead of the furloughs, meaning many workers remain without pay. So that is the caveat here, where this is not everyone's back. The reality here is this is still a way to do one of those, make a game, staff up, release a game, cut staff. They've kind of ended up still in the same place as one of those.

but put a nice little sort of silver lining around it by saying we brought people back. Isn't that great? So yeah, not a perfect story, but yeah, some people coming back to work is better than everyone not having a job or not getting paid. And hopefully more people continue to come back. This game does seem like it should be successful enough to eventually do that. But who the hell knows, Jason?

As somebody on my blue sky said, I want to think, I think it was Joseph Noop about this story. What a, what a situation we find ourself in where this, is the silver lining where people, half of their staff, uh, coming back, uh, is a good thing. And we want more of that props to them. Glad they have a job again. Glad they're getting back into the office.

Sure. Yes, for sure.

I hope the other 50% can join them shortly. Uh, but it, it needs to be said that we're, this is where we are right now that we're all celebrating something like this, uh, Christ on a Christ almighty. It's just, it's not a, not a good time. Not that that needs to be said. Everyone knows that, but yeah, good for them. They deserve it because the game is good.

Clearly the studio knows what they're doing with this format. Hope they can build on it. And yeah, great.

Yep. Meanwhile, the Gears of War studio head addressed layoff worries after E-Day release and says the next game won't take nearly as long. Chris Scullion over at VGC wrote that headline in this story. The head of Gears of War studio, The Coalition, has addressed reports that staff are concerned for their future. Last week, a report suggested that employees at the coalition were worried they may be laid off immediately following the game's release. Now, in an interview with the BBC studio head, Mike Crump says his message to the team has been to continue doing their best.

Of course it is, because things like layoffs are out of their control. What a wonderful life to lead. What I say to myself, what I say to the team is we just need to focus on the things that we can control, Crump said. For us, that's about shipping a great game that people are going to love. And I feel like as a team, we've done that. He added, we've got a great team here. And the leadership team in particular has worked together for upwards of 20 years.

So there's definitely a continuity of knowledge and experience, which that will probably be decimated as well. Crump also stated that E-Day, which was largely built from scratch instead of building on top of previous Gears titles, will provide a great foundation for future entries in the series, meaning, quote, the next game will not take nearly as long to make.

So you can almost hear him like negotiating with Microsoft Xbox leadership in this public statement of, look, we controlled what we did. We lived up to our side of the bargain. We made a game that people love and seems to be doing very well. We have a leadership team that's been together for 20 years. That's how we were able to do this because we have that continuity of knowledge and experience. And if we go back to any of these recent stories like Jason Schreier doing is, hey, what happened to this game? What happened to that game?

Why did this game work? Why did that one not work? The common through line is always the ones that seem to be working are the ones that have continuity of leadership and knowledge for 20 plus years. And so he's like trying to make that big statement. And then and then kind of just going and like, all right, yeah, we did what we could. Now it's up to Microsoft to decide and hopefully they do the right thing. Being a senior developer in this industry has got to be very frustrating because you have so many people's lives in your hands, but also don't have the control to give them the guarantee that they're going to be around to continue making this game. it must be very frustrating. And of course, being in that situation where, you know, you're

on the chopping block because you've seen what happened to every other studio at Xbox. And meanwhile, you were rushing to get your game out. And, you know, at the end of that, it's, it could be lights out for the studio or before at least portions of the studio. The morale must be in the dumpster for a lot of these teams. Yeah.

You can say you could focus on the things you can control all you like, but it's hard to do that when there are sharks in the C-suite and they only know how to bite down. So, great i hope this team isn't decimated uh like we both seem to think it is um they are looking for that two to three times growth remember and the only way to do that is to oust all the long-time employees to them it seems we still don't have all of the layoffs that they were talking about we're at what 1378 of the 3200 or whatever that number is it's probably more than that.

Now There's like 25 percent more still coming or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So good for them. They got the game done. The future games won't take as long. But is he protesting too much also, too? Does he potentially know something?

I mean, I think he I mean, I think everyone here maybe doesn't know, like in the way that, oh, someone's told him, like, here's who's going to be fired or anything like that. but they all know the reality here that the only studios that have not been completely decimated or thrown around or given new structure to work under are these three teams at Xbox that have not released their games yet. And now Gears of War is out.

And then in the meanwhile, in exile with Clockwork Revolution, And Playgrounds with Fable are awaiting the wings as well. So they know it's coming. They know it's coming. And so I think he's just making his case. We've stuck together for a long time. That's how we were able to make a great game that people love. And now that we have this foundation, we'll be able to do the next one even faster, i.e. more affordably. Keep us together.

Let us keep doing this. That is his case. And we just, I think we all know that is going to fall on deaf ears because the Xbox leadership Here's, oh, something's working. That has nothing to do with me, bro. We break things. We move fast and break things. That's the mindset we bring in. And it's just, it's trash all the way down. I hate that.

Every time I hear move fast and break things, I just want to punch Zuck in the face every time.

Yep, absolutely. All right, then last story here. Richard Garriott is officially regaining control of the Ultima series. This is from Andy Robinson at VGC. Game designer Richard Garriott has confirmed he will soon regain the rights to the influential RPG and MMO series Ultima from Electronic Arts. Ultima is considered one of the most influential early RPG series, having established many genre norms, especially in world building and exploration.

Garriott sold the series to EA in 1992, along with his studio Origin Systems for $ 30 million. Although the publisher would go on to release several Ultima games in the 90s, including MMO Ultima Online, it canceled all of Origin's projects in 2000 and Garriott left. Now the series creator, Garriott, could soon be back in control of his Ultima series under Section 203 of the U.S. Copyright Act, authors have the right to terminate past copyright transfers after 35 years.

For Ultima, that window is months away. That's actually fucked up that it's been 35 years. And the designer has already given EA notice. I sold Origin to Electronic Arts in 1992. And there's a really weird United States copyright law that says if you are the original holder of a copyright and you assign it or sell it to any publisher or other entity, after 35 years, you can just take it back. Gary confirmed to someone, Jesse Pintrilla.

There's no money that needs to transfer. All you have to do is tell them a year before you take it back. And so in April of this year, I told Electronic Arts, by the way, I'm going to take the copyrights to Altima back. And they wrote back and said, yeah, we know that's the law. We will act accordingly. Cool.

That's awesome.

Someone who knows what they're doing. I love to hear that. And he gets it back for free and he can do whatever he wants with it.

Good. I am looking forward.

To seeing what he does with that or who he partners with to get some more Ultima out there. That's a name that I think could do some damage in 2028, 2029, if put in the proper hands.

Yeah, sure. I mean, he gets it back, builds up a small team to help him manage stuff, and then you start working with partners like Night Dive and all these others to remaster these older games, get them back in front of people in the best way possible, and then make a new Ultima that is basically just a sequel to, I think, Ultima 4. Four is the one that is everyone's favorite of the traditional RPG style ones.

Make one that looks kind of just like that again with a new story. And I bet that just goes down so sweet right now with just a few modern quality of life improvements. I'm excited. I keep thinking more and more about Ultima. This is a series I eventually do want to get into and play all the games as much as possible. So, hey, 2027 might be the year to do it. Real quick, someone does point out a little bit of breaking news. GTA 6's radio stations have begun to be detailed by Rockstar. Let's see, there is a radio station that's going to feature acts like Bad Bunny. There's Backcountry Radio that has Loretta Lynn and Hank Williams Jr. and Waylon Jennings. Yeah, a whole bunch here.

Black Sabbath is going to be on The Chamber 106.6 alongside Pantera and Slayer. Flash FM will have Charlie XCX, MGMT. Yeah, a bunch of cool stuff. The Dirty South Classics will feature JT Money featuring Soleil. I bet I said that wrong. and Pitbull. So yeah, I don't know. These are things that I like to discover in the game. I can only get so excited being like, yeah, they're going to have music and drink Grand Theft Auto 6. Yeah, of course they are. Yeah, and Metal.

I'll listen to the Metal Station. Great system of a down there too. Also, Cyber Leaks came back with more footage where Jason's just walking around full hog, birthday suit.

Yeah. Dropping in the breeze.

I think he asked for money. Yeah, I think so. Purple hair, pink hair or something.

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, Mr. Worldwide, everybody. Yeah, we got a whole bunch of fun stuff happening in the video game space, everybody. But that does it for the big headlines this week. Let's talk about today. Triple I initiative is a 45 minute showcase. It's going to feature roughly 40 games, eight exclusive world premieres. Listed games include Pony Island 2, Outward 2, Dave the Diver, and Risk of Rain 2. It starts immediately after the usual GMM.

So just hang out here, everybody. We'll go right into it. And then tomorrow, Dragon's Dogma 2, Dark Arisen, Paperhead, and Sesame Street Friends and Fun are on the release calendar. So tune in for that, everybody. It's going to be a good time. All right. And then, of course, you know. We're going to be back with a bunch of fun stuff, but we'll get into all that here in a second.

Let's do this first, the poll question from Wednesday's show. I am going to refresh and get the most recent and up-to-date results. Have you ever used Amazon Luna? 10% said yes, 90% said no. And I was definitely curious about that because I was surprised Amazon Luna was still going. And then I was even more surprised to discover... You can just play through all the single-player content for free if you have, well, at no additional charge, if you have Amazon Prime on Amazon Luna. Just bananas. I talked about that on the show yesterday. So I imagine this number might go up a little bit, but I did see some people excited to go try that out. I mean, if you have Prime, you know, go use their servers.

Cost them money. Get your money's worth there and go play that game. A very, very cool thing. Yeah, you ever, honestly, have you used any cloud service and have you used Amazon Luna, Jason Finelli? I also own the Amazon Luna controller. Hey, yeah. I have one somewhere around here. It's right there, yeah, right there. You might not be able to see it on the thing.

But yeah, I've dabbled in Luna. I've dabbled in a couple other ones.

Sure, fine.

You can go play Galactic Razor single player on there.

Have fun.

I mean, it's free with Prime, so it might as well be worth a shot. Just connect the controller and see what you can get out of it on your phone or on your PC.

If it works, great. Cool. All right. New poll question. We'll get to it here in a second. Before we do that, Jason Minnelli, tell people where they can find you on the Internet. Tell them what you have going on. All that good stuff.

Jason Finnelli.com on blue sky, big man Finnelli on Instagram, hell razor revival review and quick look now on giant bomb.com and YouTube and everywhere else. I've shared it everywhere that I can. Please go check that out. Comment, like subscribe. So they bring me back to do more. Uh, I will be at New York comic con tomorrow. I have a lot of offsite stuff, but I will be on the floor for a couple of hours at the end of the day. So if you're going up to New York comic con and you see me, please feel free to say hello. I will be, of course, at the Magic the Gathering panel at 7.45 p.m. Whoever scheduled that did it just to piss me off. But should be a good time. Should be a good day up there in New York. And then, yeah, there'll be coverage coming

from that. Multiple previews. Some embargoed, some not. So you might be hearing from me sooner rather than later.

All right. Excellent. New poll question. Have you ever played Ultima? And Ultima. Any Ultima. Yes or no? I'm kind of curious to see where the audience is on this one.

And it doesn't count if you cast Ultima in Final Fantasy.

Very important clarification. Thank you so much, Jason Finley. That's why you paid the big bucks. All right, everybody. Let's see here. That's out of the way. So when we get the results of that poll question, it will be here on Game Mess Mornings. on tomorrow's show here on Giant Bomb. Speaking of Giant Bomb, we will, of course, wrap up that show with the Bomb 12 because tomorrow is Friday. So go to giantbomb.com, scroll down, find the vote here button, add your game for this month or for this week, excuse me. We'll do that on the bomb 12 tomorrow. Uh, later today we have voicemail dump truck.

We have the triple I initiative before that. So we're going to be talking over that. Watch us hang out. It's going to be low key. We're just going to see what games they have. Watch some trailers. Sounds like a good time to me. That's, that's a job. You can get paid to do that apparently. And I'm not complaining about it. Uh, later, uh, later today after voicemail dump truck, fingers crossed the final big walk. Uh, we, we kind of got things to a place where things seem to be working, uh, as well as we can hope so, considering all the tech problems we had. Shouts out to both Sean and Chuck for doing lots of testing and a lot of work to build our own solution in some ways. So just elated with those guys

and the work they've done there. So let's do it. I am so excited. I love Big Walk. Cannot wait to see what that game has in store for us. Me and Mike had to do a little side quest to go grab one of the eggs that we weren't holding the last time we left the game. So we picked that up again and I was just like immediately excited I love, love playing this game. So that'll be after Voicemail Dump Truck. Busy day. So we're going to get out of here. Let's see here tomorrow. UPF, all that good stuff. Jason Pinelli, thank you so much for hanging out with me today and talk about video games, man.

I really appreciate it. Happy to do it, sir. Talk to you soon. Thank you all for watching and listening. Best audience in gaming. Love you. Goodbye.

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