The Power of Physical Media in a Digital Age

Projektitachi (00:21.169)
is up everybody? Welcome back to another week of the GZ Chop Shop Podcast. I am your host, Project Itachi joined by my good friend and co-host, Warnurse And we're doing this recording pretty late in the evening. We're both tired. We had really busy days, weeks, especially you, buddy. I know you're exhausted over there. But we needed to get...

Daniel (00:41.036)
I hate my wife.

Projektitachi (00:44.453)
this episode out to you guys, because we got to talk about the Sony servers that shut down and the whole hoopla that's been circling around about that. But before we dive in, gotta let you guys know we have officially launched the post is actually already out there too. We've officially launched our GZ Chop Shop press play newsletter, which is a, I guess you could say an attachment piece to the podcast and

If you guys have ever played or played read any game informers, electronic game magazine, Nintendo Power, any of that stuff back in the day, this newsletter will remind you of those days. We chalk it full of gaming news and sometimes promo codes as well as game keys that we get sometimes from developers to share with our community. So if any of that interests you, visit our website, GZchopshoppodcast.com.

And then right there at the top, there's a nice little button for you. Click newsletter. All you got to do is put in your email and you're in. It's absolutely free. So you guys could get gaming keys for free. I'm just saying, but you got to be a member of the newsletter. So go and check it out. And if you're curious of what it looks like before you sign up, when you go to the website, you visit the newsletter page. Every previous newsletter we put out, you can find right there on the page. It'll take you to the whole newsletter post page where you can check it out and see if it interests you.

Or if you think a friend would like it, you can share it with them. So go and check it out. GZ Chop Chop Podcast.com. Click the newsletter button. Join the newsletter. All right. Now, without further ado, let's talk about PlayStation and their server shutdown, which I do want to preface this by saying this was not as bad as what happened in 2011.

Daniel (02:31.182)
It's not and you know, just kind of like a little little side note here You know video game anything to do with the gaming industry You don't typically like very often see that stuff on the news like you know what mean? Usually if you see something to do with gaming on the news It's someone trying to like well that kid was angry and he played Call of Duty three years ago So that's you know what? I mean like it's just like Blaming the gaming industry for something

Projektitachi (02:54.585)
Yep, yeah.

Daniel (03:00.718)
This one wasn't though, this one was just like, was kind of surprised, but the transition is what got me because I was, I was at work. I was working with a patient that morning and the news was on and it was like local news. It was like four people died in a fire last night as a Dallas police department. And I'm like, okay. And then like it transitioned into the PlayStation network has been down for two days. And I'm talking like the transition of emotion.

Projektitachi (03:25.457)
You

Daniel (03:30.398)
and like to like a non violent video game finger pointing situation. It was just really funny to me. I was like, what? And then it was like the backlash of the players. And I'm like, don't what's like it just it was you don't see stuff like I said on the news about gaming. And for that to make the news that tells me two things. One, the gaming industry is that big now for that to make news and for them to talk about.

Projektitachi (03:35.224)
Right.

Daniel (04:00.12)
just the random stuff of gaming, impact of stuff that happens. But the gamers in general, they, I don't feel like people were as like, wasn't like you said, like it wasn't as bad as people said it was like we have servers that go out sometimes it happens. PlayStation does it. Xbox does it.

Everyone's been hacked on occasion. I'm not giving excuses here, but shit happens. And it seemed to me like the only community that was actually pissed was the Call of Duty community. They were the only ones that I heard about that were upset. And it made me happy. I'm sorry if you don't like that comment. I don't like you guys. I don't. So it made me happy.

Projektitachi (04:48.118)
You

You know, and it's funny you mention that because I didn't know, and I can 100 % admit this, yeah, it's the community, well, don't get me started on quality, but I didn't even know the servers were down until like 12 hours in. I didn't know until.

Daniel (04:58.658)
And I like Call of Duty. That's how much the community gets on my nerves.

Daniel (05:12.11)
I didn't either. I only knew because my son told me and I was like, wait, what? Cause like I, I mainly play PC and then I have my PlayStation. And he's like, he's like, you know, the server is down. like, I'm sorry. What? Like I was living on their walk. I woke night shift. I don't always catch everything.

Projektitachi (05:19.994)
Yeah.

Projektitachi (05:27.171)
Right. And I know some people probably be like, but you have a gaming podcast and you do gaming journalism. How'd you not know the servers were down? I was playing on my PlayStation, but I play a lot of single player story driven games. So I didn't need the PlayStation network to play a good portion of my games. And I still get dis-based games when I can. So, you know, I was kind of in my own little world doing my own little thing. It was like 12 hours in before I found out.

that the servers had completely said, nope, we're done. And I only found out because I was on threads and the Xbox community were having a field day.

Daniel (06:07.758)
Dude, you know what? That's the thing about the gaming and y'all are horrible to each other, man. Let me tell you, like, like I know we say some, stuff about Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo, but it's, we're just talking about the facts, like stuff that happens. And then we might give a little bit of like our thoughts, but like when, when something happens in one of the communities or one of the, you you know, businesses, the Sony, Microsoft, they do not hesitate.

Projektitachi (06:13.311)
We are terrible.

Projektitachi (06:22.863)
Hmm.

Daniel (06:38.286)
They do not hesitate to go, see y'all are a bunch of POSs and your servers are lame and that's what you get for what?

Projektitachi (06:39.589)
They are on it.

Mm-hmm.

Projektitachi (06:49.937)
Right. Like Bet you wish it was so much bet you wish you had an Xbox. I was I was like, I was so confused. I was like, what is happening? What? OK, what did Sony do that now the tide has swung at Xbox's favor? And I saw the servers were down. I was like, and I'm like, dude, I didn't even know. I didn't notice.

Daniel (06:52.748)
Acting like the business models aren't similar.

Daniel (07:09.582)
You're going to act like Xbox live, never had issues. You know, who doesn't really have issues is Nintendo. Like they've had issues, but just not nearly as much. I think they got hacked like once or something. but yeah, it's Microsoft and so it's like watching a

Projektitachi (07:16.729)
It's always, it's just the flavor of the day.

Projektitachi (07:22.576)
Yeah.

Projektitachi (07:27.97)
once.

Daniel (07:37.294)
Like two of the richest spoil brats in the room, uh, one up each other every time the other one like, like it's like my father actually bought a new Lamborghini. Oh, well my father just bought in like what? Oh, well we have 500 shares and bar bar bar. And then it's like the other one has to want like, that's what it sounds like to me. We bought, we bought a new Butler. We bought one. Why? That's what they sound like.

Projektitachi (07:41.777)
For real

Projektitachi (07:59.225)
Yep. So.

You bought a new bother?

Daniel (08:06.741)
Every time,

Projektitachi (08:08.337)
It was hilarious and sometimes just annoying, but mostly hilarious watching the back and forth between the community. And the PC community was just eating it up too because they were just like, I'm on PC. I never have to worry about this regardless.

Daniel (08:16.494)
They're vicious! They're so vicious!

Daniel (08:24.846)
You remember being like a kid and like other kids you didn't know would be like making fun of each other and then like, you know, there'd be stuff like, like no one knew each other's parents or lives, but someone would like, your mom's a big fat whore. And you're like, what? Debra, you don't even know me. like Xbox and PlayStation is just like y'all are a piece of crap server and your community is dumb. it's like, I get kids fight man.

Projektitachi (08:34.385)
Right.

Daniel (08:53.26)
Why are they so angry with each other? Full disclosure, they're both they're both companies that part of the gaming industry they're out there to make money. They'll try to make you happy, but they won't hesitate to pull the rug out under your feet. And the biggest issue with all this is physical copies going away and the community supporting this, supporting this like it's not a problem.

Projektitachi (09:07.662)
Mm-hmm.

Projektitachi (09:14.289)
physical copies going away. I do. Yep.

Projektitachi (09:22.447)
I actually recently came across an article where someone pointed out, I think it was on Polygon, and they had to admit that the outage made them realize just how few of the games they have access to that they actually own.

Daniel (09:40.558)
Well, right. And even, even with the disks nowadays, you still, a lot of times need that online access to even play, even with the disk is just instead of downloading it from online. Now you're downloading it from the desk and then you still have to get the patches from online. So, I mean, really physical copies almost, they don't really even matter anymore.

Projektitachi (10:02.129)
Yeah, and I do want to stress when we mentioned the physical copies, because I know a lot of people because we get keyboard warriors almost every episode. Like even we have happy go lucky episode, somebody comes in there and they're like, so we know that the current physical discs are glorified CD keys. We know that we're talking the classic discs where the game, the whole game was on the disc. And I get it. They were saying, well, you know,

These games are so massive, they don't fit on the discs anymore. The manufacturing costs would be more. And it just doesn't, the artwork for the, and all the stuff they come up with, I'm like, you know how that...

Daniel (10:39.148)
Yeah, I want your shit about about costs when game prices continue to go up when they got rid of the physical aspects of it.

Projektitachi (10:47.185)
Right. And then the digital costs just as much as the physical. So even if they're like, well, we have to raise the price of the physical. I'm like, well, there's collector value that but hey, how about you cut down the marketing cost a little bit.

Daniel (11:00.928)
No, for real, because you got to think like when these AAA games are getting as bad as Hollywood now, where they will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make a game and then another 50 million, a hundred million to market the game for the game to either fail or not mean expectations. And then you don't even get the physical copy. You don't even get, you know,

Projektitachi (11:11.857)
Looking at you, Call of Duty.

Daniel (11:28.236)
the stuff that comes with the game anymore, ownership of the game. You don't get like the cool little maps or whatever that used to come with you. don't get, there's way less enjoyment purchasing a game than they used to. Now when you buy the game, you're buying the game, but that's it. You're not getting the extra stuff that made gaming exciting even six, seven, eight years ago.

Projektitachi (11:28.357)
Ownership.

Projektitachi (11:52.753)
Well, you're not even buying the game anymore. You're buying the license to indefinitely rent the game. Because what a lot of people forget, and this should be an eye opener, especially with Sony pushing so hard for digital product and removing physical, that is a terrible idea. But a lot of gamers of the current generation don't understand why this is not a good thing. Is it more convenient? Yes.

But in the long term, it's gonna be the same issue that I think a lot of PC gamers refuse to acknowledge. The price they pay for having their games on a superior system is they have zero collector value.

Daniel (12:34.614)
Right. And it's, it's something that, I love steam, steam. think steam is a great, it's a great, application to have. And it's the number one in, in digital games and they've done a great job for the most part handling it. but it's not gonna, they're not gonna have that CEO forever. They're not gonna have that business model forever. Eventually someone's going to pass away.

leadership's going to change, someone's going to get greedy. That's how things go. Hopefully not, but it's most likely going to happen. And as good as Steam tends to be towards its player base and community, that may not last forever. And Xbox and PlayStation are, or Sony and Microsoft, they're going down the route, not just Netflix, especially Xbox, but

There's been talks in the gaming industry and I think Ubisoft was a big one. Ubisoft made a comment, made comments about like renting games out like hourly versus downloading the game and purchasing it to rent long term, which is what we do now. So.

Projektitachi (13:47.665)
Yeah, they wanted a permanent business model that kept the money coming for each individual game. So even if the game failed, it was still generate revenue.

Daniel (13:59.646)
Right in their argument was well if we sell you a $70 game and you play that game for 700 800 hours like maybe you like Skyrim or something you really love that game. They're not in their minds if they're not getting the money's worth on their end for your enjoyment of the game which takes away a huge aspect of what the gaming industry used to be which was. For fun the games are created for fun yes to make money.

But the point wasn't to be so greedy that you ruin the game and player experience. And that's what that would do. Don't, don't, don't let greed destroy the gaming industry. And it already is. It's already having ripple effects across the board with the Netflix style, the live service games. And that's, it's such a bad idea. And it's so far gone there. There's not a whole lot we can do about it until we watch that thing collapse. Cause

Projektitachi (14:35.302)
Yeah.

Projektitachi (14:47.727)
live service games.

Daniel (14:57.272)
Don't think for a second that these studios are getting their money back for all these live service games, because they're not.

Projektitachi (15:04.795)
They're already half of them don't even make it two to three years. Like a lot of people are thinking. For that's a big exception because it was one of the pioneers. So the ones who started are going to thrive. They created it. But we've had like four to five failures already. Concord being one battle born was another one. There was.

Daniel (15:09.536)
No, there's exceptions like Fortnite is a big exception.

Daniel (15:21.281)
Yeah.

Projektitachi (15:31.982)
See, they've already died. can't even remember half of them. But there's like two, three more that came out that died upon launch.

Daniel (15:36.184)
Well, and it's not.

Daniel (15:40.43)
And the one, the biggest issue is when, a company owns so many of the studios and they put it on a, and this goes for Sony too. Xbox is just more, their business model is slightly different and they're closer to a Netflix style versus Sony's is. but when you own so many triple A studios and so many triple A titles and you're only charging people one person or a household, whatever.

Projektitachi (15:55.813)
Yeah, with Game Pass and yeah.

Daniel (16:10.19)
$20 a month and then you're selling AAA games that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and you should have probably sold 60, 70 million copies or you know, whatever the case to like worldwide to make up for that, but you're not. Don't think for a second that $20 per person worldwide is going to cover the costs of all of these games that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And people like, well, that's where micro transactions come in. Sure. But all of that, all of that money is not going to that specific studio to get their money back. It's being split between all of the studios that are owned under one branch.

Projektitachi (16:57.263)
Yep, that that budget is getting strained. The income is getting split into, you know, a ton of different directions. And most of those developers aren't seeing that return themselves because they're paid upfront, usually a flat fee. So it's just Microsoft and Sony trying to get that flat fee and then some back because that money coming in, yeah.

It goes into a budget of sorts, but it's for the shareholders because they want their money back and triple. And if they're not getting the money back that they put in, then that's when you start seeing these layoffs, these closures, corners cut, you know, games not even last in a year or two years.

Daniel (17:31.982)
Right.

Daniel (17:46.574)
And I think too, like people don't realize this or maybe they don't know it. Netflix was started in 1997. And it wasn't until I think like 2000, like 2008 or something like around that area, 2006 or eight, that they started actually offering streaming. And then eventually they cut off the physical copy for like the DVDs.

Projektitachi (18:10.353)
physical.

Daniel (18:12.142)
And then all these other companies followed suit. started following that business. That's the thing with capitalism, right? When you see something working, everybody tries to copy it and then capitalize off of it. And he either does really well or everybody ends up failing in it, bubble bursts or whatever. And in this case, everyone fell for it. And now we're all stuck in this streaming service life. Everything has a subscription and it's gross, man. It is so gross.

Projektitachi (18:42.377)
I am not a fan of the subscription model. Obviously, I have subscriptions because they're inescapable. There's things I love that are behind subscriptions. So I'm like, well, you know, I'm not going to stop the things I love doing.

Daniel (18:56.718)
Well, and I think on top of this, all the talks about putting ads and games and stuff too, think you want like imagine not being able to play a game without a ad pop up or, or like you, or like you go, Oh my God.

Projektitachi (19:02.641)
There, yeah.

Projektitachi (19:07.898)
It would be mobile gaming.

It would be mobile gaming.

Daniel (19:13.198)
then, they already have that, but like, you know, like you sign in an X-Box or PlayStation and then at the, it's like, you already get the ads for promote promoting games, which I'm fine with, but, just like pop-ups in general. Aren't you depressed? Okay.

Projektitachi (19:29.673)
Just in the middle of your game, you're in the middle of your boss fight and then an ad for for him comes on. Like. Yeah. And depending on your subscription tier depends on how many ads you get.

Daniel (19:32.844)
Have you had a rough few weeks? Simbolta. Playing a game. Simbolta. I had that week. Jesus Christ. And they think they're slick, by the way, because I was getting a PlayStation premium for my kids and I was just going to buy like the premium plan and then I was going to buy like.

I was going to get it for like three months just to see like if they actually use a lot. And then if they do, you know, I'll get it for a year. But I noticed something. Okay. When you go in there and this is on the PlayStation, this isn't like online when you go to the PlayStation, you know, store or whatever it's it's on the PlayStation. does this when you make, when you make your choice and you're like, I want one month or three months. I premium or plus it will try to trick you.

You will, you will click X on the option you want and then it'll go, it'll, it'll phrase it in a way that it'll, it's trying to get you to choose yes to a year and charge you that without you realizing it. So if you're not reading it, you're going to charge yourself $160 because of the way it's written and it automatically puts it on yes. And it's so grimy. is so

Projektitachi (20:42.799)
Yep.

Projektitachi (20:55.491)
And a lot of, yeah, a lot of companies do that now.

Daniel (20:57.87)
freaking grimy and I was asking a buddy about this a couple days ago because I don't have an Xbox and he does and I was like, does this Xbox do this? Like when you go on there to apply and he goes, yeah, they do the same thing. I was like, this is, this is ridiculous, man. And I gave it to Nintendo cause I got on the switch just to check it out and they don't do that. Like whichever one. And I'm not like, I'm not glazing on Nintendo. They got their own problem. just saying like,

Projektitachi (21:25.616)
Mm.

Daniel (21:26.698)
At least in that from in that thing, they're a little more. They haven't adopted it yet, probably. But yeah, at least so far there. But I was like, man, that's grimy. And I was talking to my kids. I was like showing them, you know, like, look, you guys have to read stuff before you choose to buy something because this is what they're going to try to do. They're going to try to lie to you. But it's not a lie. It's like a deception. then, you know, and they're like.

Projektitachi (21:28.421)
They haven't adopted it yet.

Daniel (21:54.85)
look at me like, why do people do that? like, I don't know, greed, but just, just be careful.

Projektitachi (21:57.809)
Greed. Greed. Yep. That's why even though, cause I wonder if people crunch the numbers sometimes, sometimes paying for a year for things today is not as much of a discount as it used to be like 10 years ago. Like sometimes you're better off doing that month to month. If you notice back then the year was like a special privilege. They didn't push it as hard.

Daniel (22:15.725)
Yeah.

Projektitachi (22:25.201)
because they actually made more money on the month to month. But the year actually saved you money. Like sometimes you'd do like 50, 50, 60 bucks. But now they're pushing the year because they know the difference in discount isn't that huge. And once you're in, you can get mad, you can cancel, they already got your money. They want that year's worth upfront.

Daniel (22:28.695)
huh.

Daniel (22:48.46)
And do you remember when you used to sign up for things for, six months or a year that was it. And you had to choose to, resubscribe after that, that, that went away. I'm not sure when that went away. It's just something that I've noticed, that things now, even if you choose the year, it auto resubscribed, you have to, you have to buy the year, subscribe to the year and then immediately go into the settings after that and unsubscribe.

Projektitachi (23:01.243)
re-subscribe.

Projektitachi (23:10.193)
Yeah, open, yeah.

Projektitachi (23:18.085)
Yeah. And you got to be careful too, because you think you'll remember the next month. But if you notice companies love to change their billing cycles and they'll change their billing cycle. So by the time you remember that years come and do they send you, it's the email that says where he took the money. You're good for another year. And you're like, crap, I forgot because the billing cycle changed.

Daniel (23:18.486)
And then for the next, yeah.

Daniel (23:37.078)
Yeah. Yep. That happened. That happened to me with Amazon. Like this was like two or three years ago. I did the yearly subscription and I, I didn't, that's how I learned. I didn't realize that you have to choose not to resubscribe. and like a year came through and I was like, why did a hundred, you know, like $49 or whatever come out of my calendar? What the hell? And, I went on there and Amazon like, thank you for resubscribing. I'm like, bitch, I didn't.

Projektitachi (24:03.505)
Yep. Yep. Just granted themself access. Yep.

Daniel (24:07.336)
You chose for me. So a couple couple things like that. It's like, so I tell people that you have to read this stuff because everything's very deceptive and they want you to be subscribed. You know, it's bad when there's commercials for apps that you type in your email address and it brings up all your subscriptions of your and and and then you have to pay a subscription for that. Get rid of your subscriptions like. And then what there was talks about like.

Projektitachi (24:28.266)
subscription fee for them to tell you how to save on subscriptions.

Daniel (24:36.128)
subscriptions for your car to have like heating pads? Was that was that BMW that did that? Jesus Christ. Do I need to pay a subscription for like gas or something?

Projektitachi (24:41.285)
I think that was BMW that did that. Yep.

Dude, don't even get that started. Don't even put that out there. Reneg, renege on that one. But I do want to come back to something I'm, I want to, guys, guys, subscribe to the podcast. It's absolutely free though, but subscribe, follow the subscription model. I want to come back to something I brought up earlier about the ownership that, know, ownership of games and GameStop throwing shade at PlayStation saying, I guess you guys,

Daniel (24:50.828)
Holy shit!

my god. Re-subscribe!

Projektitachi (25:17.489)
wish you had physical copies now. And you know what? They weren't wrong because I know a lot of people were on there and they're saying, well, I was still playing my digital games through the night. I'm going to explain to you why, because I know a lot of you do not read the TOS. I didn't read a lot of TOS's until stuff started changing. The reason your digital game worked isn't because you own it. It's because the licensing service for your specific game was up and running and checked that

Daniel (25:18.712)
I'll be using it.

Projektitachi (25:46.863)
you had the license active for that game. Ask anyone who tried to play Minecraft how well that went for them.

Daniel (25:55.719)
And it didn't require for you to be online to play it.

Projektitachi (25:59.621)
So it wasn't just the multiplayer games that were down. There was actually a lot of single player games that were down, especially ones that don't have a partnership with Sony because who owns Minecraft? Microsoft and Microsoft utilizing, you know, through the PlayStation Network is like, that's the handshake. Your network's up. We can check a person's license through your network. That's the handshake that goes down. Microsoft's like, no, no, no, no, no. You don't get to play our game.

Daniel (26:22.382)
He knows.

Projektitachi (26:28.931)
until we can verify you have the license for it. So that's why physical copies will always be superior. And I mean, old school physical, because that was never an issue.

Daniel (26:45.006)
Gone are the days where you, you gotta imagine it like when you bought a big game back in the day and it came with four discs, you're like, this is a big game. But games now that are story driven, I can't imagine, like even with modern day technology and stuff they've done with discs, I can't imagine how many discs, imagine like open up to eight discs.

Projektitachi (27:08.145)
I mean, Final Fantasy Rebirth was two discs, but let's be realistic. Not all of these games need to be as big as they are. A lot of them are massive for no reason.

Daniel (27:19.446)
yeah, shaders is a big one. I don't know if you've ever like looked at games with them without shaders, but a fun fact here for me is it doesn't fucking matter. It really doesn't. It really doesn't matter. I don't know what the whole thing with shaders is because I've never seen a difference. I have a pretty damn good PC and the only difference I see is if I don't, if I don't use the shaders, my performance sucks.

Projektitachi (27:28.945)
You

Projektitachi (27:44.195)
I will die, and this is my opinion, people.

Daniel (27:47.532)
I think it's just fluff. think it's fucking video game fluff.

Projektitachi (27:49.905)
It's fluff. Yeah. And this is my opinion. I think a lot of this stemmed from competitive gaming via PC because there are little nuances in there in those games that on a person on a player to player basis matters to them. Just like the FPS. Like they're like, I can't play anything under 120. Sir, I didn't even know that that was a thing until like

the late 2000s. I was playing games since the Nintendo entertainment system. I've played on a VTEC. If y'all don't know what VTEC is, well, that I just told you how old I am. Yeah, I needed my cane. I was playing on a VTEC. You know what wasn't a concern shaders and frames per second. And I have played at least one of every

Daniel (28:34.35)
I'll get you your cane, man.

Projektitachi (28:47.949)
generation of console and old school PC games before they really were being built for gaming. I'm talking when prodigy was still a thing. Once again, if you don't know what that is, probably too young for this show playing old school games on that. So when these things with shaders and frames per second came out, I'm like, what the heck is everyone talking about? Does the game run? Can you see it? Then you're good.

But once like they started pushing this stuff, I think like when developers for these parts to put their parts out, they needed a way to justify it. So they were telling people, yeah, games run at 120 frames per second. No less. If anything less is so far and people ate it up. They ate it up and they're like, yeah, you can see a difference. There is a difference. Well, I mean, if I want to sell you a product, what is the first thing I'm going to do?

I'm going to create the problem that my product can solve. So I'm going to downplay everything else. I'm going to show you a game in the poorest quality possible to tell you my product makes the game look like this.

Daniel (30:04.428)
It's like when you go to a store like Best Buy, right? And the TVs, the screens look insanely good. Like how do they look that good? But you couldn't, take it home and you're like, why doesn't it look the same way? Cause you don't know. Most people don't understand what just happened and they don't have the equipment that they were using for that TV.

Projektitachi (30:11.3)
insanely good.

Projektitachi (30:15.921)
Yeah.

Projektitachi (30:23.417)
Including the store lighting if you actually read up on it the store lighting plays a huge role the vivid colors are specific settings to complement the store lighting that is specifically set in position at the entertainment entertainment parts of the store It's all part of the plan It's all part of the plan, but this is why you know, many doing away with physical

Daniel (30:44.046)
It's all part of the plan.

Projektitachi (30:50.957)
media actually it really ticks me off because I don't want gaming to go into this digital only thing like because basically what they're saying is at any given moment we can take your games away and you're gonna pay us full price still but when we don't want to supply this game anymore we don't have to and there's nothing you can do about it because you paid for a long-term rental

Daniel (31:15.342)
Yeah. And like five years, five or six years on the next gen console, they'll have it up there for you to rebuy, uh, as a backlog for the previous con the previous generation, which right now it doesn't seem like a big, big deal, right? Cause they're playing off the nostalgia of our age group, which works. Like I, when I was able to get legend of the Jagune for $10 and play it, um, I was like, Oh, this is awesome. Uh, but I knew what was happening. Damn. Then

Projektitachi (31:26.533)
Yeah.

Projektitachi (31:43.439)
That's why I am so glad that nightmare creatures and they and look, someone is sitting on that IP, but hey, at least they're not milking it and abusing it. But yeah, I see that all the time. I go on PlayStation and they almost get me to they're like, hey, remember this game from the PS3? We remastered it. And I'm like, I would get it if I.

Daniel (31:44.846)
but they

questions.

Projektitachi (32:10.705)
didn't still have my PS3. Thankfully I do with all my physical copy games. Yay for me.

Daniel (32:15.31)
I just want to say, this is, this is my personal opinion. and I will die on this Hill. If your game, if a company puts a game out and for that game to thrive and make money, it requires micro transactions and skin and battle passes. Your game is bad. Your game is a scam. Your game is not good because you never gave anyone the game. You gave everybody.

You gave everybody a lie, you gave everybody part of the game, and they have to purchase pieces of the game throughout the game's existence. It's ridiculous.

Projektitachi (32:45.105)
Hope.

Projektitachi (32:54.331)
You know what this reminds me of? I don't remember what year it is, but do you remember the guy who sold the statue of imagination?

Daniel (33:03.182)
That was so long ago. Holy crap. That was that's a core memory.

Projektitachi (33:06.062)
Yeah.

Yeah, if you guys don't know what I'm talking about, look up the guy who sold the statue of imagination. And you'll see that what what Daniel says is exactly that. They're selling you a blank canvas. And they're saying the more you pay us for this blank canvas, then the more we will add to it. Instead of where before they had to give us the finished painting.

and we paid them for the finished painting. Now they give us a blank canvas and they say, it is a huge canvas. They'll come at us with this big ass canvas and be like, see this? And we're like, yeah, there's so much that could go on that canvas. They're like, yes, now pay us to put stuff on it.

Daniel (33:52.526)
Well, that's why we're not going to see resurgence of physical copies ever again. It's gone, it's not going to happen. it's because now that things are digital, now they can do things like battle passes. They can't do all those extra transactions and stuff with physical copies. That's why live service games aren't going anywhere.

Projektitachi (33:58.671)
Now it's done. Yeah.

Projektitachi (34:14.275)
Yeah, it really sucks to see that.

Daniel (34:15.224)
But thank God for indie companies putting out good games.

Projektitachi (34:22.171)
but what do you guys think? Like I said, I don't think that the server going down for a day was a terrible thing. I know everyone's a little.

Daniel (34:29.838)
I was was I thought it was close to the 48 hours.

Projektitachi (34:32.825)
or yeah, like two days, I guess, but compared to two.

Daniel (34:35.018)
Over the weekend, which honestly guys, come on. Let's be honest. We needed to I'm saying this as a gamer. Sometimes we need Sometimes we need to go outside. Like come on And that's coming for me. Okay, I i'm pushing 500 hours in satisfactory people That's coming for me. Sometimes we got to go outside. Okay Let's admit that

Projektitachi (34:39.766)
Yeah, couple days off. I was gonna say some of us probably could have, could do with some sunlight.

Projektitachi (34:52.657)
Yeah, I'm not I'm not putting my game in hours out there. I'm not embarrassing myself. Anyway, all I know is that yeah compared to 2011 What?

Daniel (35:01.154)
How dare you!

500 hours of satisfactories. That's impressive. It's damn good game.

Projektitachi (35:07.921)
That is impressive. That is impressive. I just have a game that I've put over 1129 hours in. And I still haven't beaten that. Yeah, yeah, don't make me do my anime glasses thing. I'll do it. I'm not proud because not of the hours, but of the game that those hours are in.

Daniel (35:17.454)
Okay, okay. All right, let's just go on

Nerd.

Daniel (35:29.304)
What game is it?

Projektitachi (35:29.979)
Destiny 2!

Daniel (35:32.046)
Oh my God, I'm Shame. I need a shame bell. need a shame bell.

Projektitachi (35:34.897)
Or was it destiny? It's one of the destinies. do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, either way. I never I have yet to triumph over that

Daniel (35:43.79)
It's your biggest failure.

Projektitachi (35:45.945)
My biggest failure. I was a huge Destiny fan. I love Destiny, man. And that was before it went free to play.

Yeah, one day I'll have a game top it. thought Elden Ring kink. Elden Ring got close, but I need like 300 more hours.

But yeah, I don't think the two days were as bad as people thought and Sony given five free days I know doesn't seem like a lot because a lot of people probably pay for like months in advance or already have a year and they're like, well, what are five days going to do? Well, they can't give you a free game because a free game to what? 16 million subscribers. You're talking billions of dollars in revenue they would lose to give anyone a free game. And then people would complain about the free game. Yeah.

Daniel (36:28.684)
Yeah. And let's be honest, we didn't, we didn't lose money. Like really loot life 48 hours. Like to me, it was just one of those things. Things happen. The world's not perfect. Things happen. Sometimes we got to chill out.

Projektitachi (36:41.593)
If it really bothers you, you can always do this is one of reasons I started doing the month to month. Once I realized the difference wasn't really that big in a month and a year. When you add it all up, just do the month to month subscription. And then when the service crashes, cancel your subscription. Then if you can ride out the rest of your subscription, they're not getting any more of your money until they fix it. And you don't feel jipped when they come back and say.

We're giving everyone extra days because then you get a five free days that you otherwise wouldn't have had anyway, because you canceled your subscription because their shit wasn't working. Problem solved.

So, but yeah, what do you guys think? Did you even know that the surfers were down or were you like me and totally oblivious until like halfway through it? There was something about a fire and yeah, Sony, Sony PlayStation network is down. But are you guys okay with physical copies going away or do you think physical copies should try to make a resurgence? Do you think it doesn't really make a difference in the end?

Daniel (37:30.786)
I knew it because Dallas morning news and my son and something about a fire.

Projektitachi (37:50.927)
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