KFGD’s 2000th Episode Celebration! - Kinda Funny Games Daily 10.06.25

Summary

Kinda Funny Games Daily 2000th Episode Celebration!

Podcast: Kinda Funny Games Daily: Video Games News Podcast
Date: October 6, 2025
Hosts: Greg Miller, Tim Gettys, Blessing Adeoye Jr., Andrea Rene, Gary Whitta (+ dozens of recurring and guest voices throughout)
Special Guests & Cameos: Huge range of industry regulars and KFGD alumni via video
Description:
A massive milestone “supershow” celebrating 2000 episodes, filled with nostalgia, deep dives into gaming history, audience interaction, and tons of in-jokes for the Kinda Funny community. Part celebration, part roundup of the biggest games news moments of the past 25 years – with the signature blend of sarcasm, sincerity, and chaos that defines KFGD.

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Overview: Main Theme & Purpose

The 2000th episode is both a heartfelt celebration and a living time capsule of one of gaming’s most beloved podcasts. The crew gathers for a raucous, nearly 4-hour livestream, reminiscing about the evolution of Kinda Funny Games Daily (KFGD), the highs and lows of 2000 episodes, and the seismic shifts in gaming they've reported on. The episode features “greatest hits” moments, guest video tributes, community super chat interaction, games trivia, and a rapid-fire review of the games industry's biggest changes since 2000. It’s equal parts party, news show, interactive variety special, and roast.

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Key Segments, Insights & Memorable Moments

The Spirit of KFGD & Milestone Celebration

• Opening Celebrations:

  • Greg Miller, Andrea, Tim, Blessing, and much of the extended cast come together with nostalgia, jokes about the podcast's original purpose, and appreciation for fans.
  • Special recognition to Andrea Rene (founding host), behind-the-scenes crew, and poster artist Panda Musk.
  • The team thanks and credits community members, Patreon supporters and calls for a special push: 2,000 super chats in honor of 2,000 episodes (07:03).

• Signature Running Bits:

  • Recurring faux-tension about roles (“second best baby blues," “it's all Andrea,” etc.).
  • The “baker’s dozen” donut gag (14:47), complete with chaos over homemade donuts and in-jokes about the “worthlessness” of Nick in planning.
  • Ongoing super chat readings—fans sharing their favorite KFGD memories and well wishes throughout.

• Guest Tributes (129:24, 216:14):

  • Video messages from KFGD alumni, industry journalists, and collaborators – sharing love, inside jokes, and “KFGD changed my life” stories (Rebecca Valentine, Wesley LeBlanc, Danny O’Dwyer, Noobll, and more).
  • Standout: Chris Roper (namesake of the “Roper Report”) returns for a rare appearance to intro the news (12:32), sparking genuine emotion:

    "Chris Roper immediately welled up when I saw Roper. You know what I mean? I haven't talked to him in person in a long time." – Greg Miller (13:34)

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’Greatest Hits’ Recap: Big Industry News Over 2000 Episodes

Massive Acquisition Era & Industry Shocks

(32:43, 99:35, 111:49, 115:21)

• Audience/voted “biggest KFGD stories":

  1. Xbox acquires Activision Blizzard ($69 billion, 2022–2023 court battle)

     • Ongoing commentary on what it means for the industry, discussion about Game Pass pricing and value, and the ongoing fallout such as multi-studio layoffs, impact on Call of Duty sales (27:22–30:14).
     • “No other single topic in KFGD history created so many episodes of coverage.” (113:56)

     • “Game Pass is changing the gaming industry, and I don’t think it’s a good thing.” – Tim Gettys (120:12)

  2. Greg Miller’s infamous E3 ban (June 2019)

  • Tales of mistaken identity, viral emails, ESA confusion, ultimately cleared in time to host E3 itself (105:06–109:09).

    “They couldn’t have picked a worse guy to say did this… I had video footage proving I was still on-stage at E3 when my badge was apparently being used.” – Greg Miller (107:06)

  3. GTA 6 Trailer Leak (Dec. 2023):
  • Industry-wide scramble, sponsorship panic, “biggest leak ever?”

  • “It fucking sucked. It was the most erratic thing you've ever seen in your life. It felt like an episode of Succession.” – Andy Cortez (100:35)

Other Recurring Themes

• Endless studio acquisitions (EA buys Respawn, Microsoft buys Bethesda, Sony–Insomniac, Embracer buys everything, etc.), layoffs, and “the industry keeps eating itself” (02:33–04:09, 12:07–13:47, etc.)
• The live service and subscription era: game delays, delistings, platform “value” debates, and Microsoft's hardware future speculation (“is Xbox cooked?” segment, 18:25 ff).
• E3’s rise, endless “will it die” rumors, and its eulogy as the show finally ends. (04:47 onwards)

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Deep-dive: Two Decades in Gaming News (KFGD 2000 Segment: 138:36 – 215:46)

Panel: Greg, Andrea, Gary, Fran (cycling through years 2000–2017)
A rapid-fire (but inevitably chaotic) year-by-year highlight of the key gaming news stories:

• 2000: Launch of the PS2 — “the moment I became an adult gamer,” says Greg (142:57), and Microsoft’s acquisition of Bungie.
• 2001: Sega goes third-party, Dreamcast’s demise, birth of Xbox, GameCube, GBA.
• 2003: Steam launches out of beta — “the biggest industry turning point you take for granted is digital distribution.”
• 2004–2006: DS, Wii, PS3/360 launches, Xbox Live revolution, birth of the “HD generation,” and the dominance of Xbox 360/Live and the Wii.
• 2011–2013: 3DS, Wii U (the “catastrophic” launch), PS4/Xbox One, and the “Kinect killed Xbox One” legacy (“Don Mattrick can never be pilloried enough.” – Gary, 195:28)
• 2014/15: Minecraft sale to Microsoft, Mojang, Oculus/Facebook, passing of Satoru Iwata—Nintendo’s “never the same again” moment.
• 2016: Pokémon Go as pop culture “world peace.”
• 2017: Launch of Kinda Funny Games Daily itself.
• Highlights entire era:
  “You want to talk about things that ushered in innovation?… Xbox 360, the greatest Xbox generation ever.” – Andrea Rene (178:14)
  “…Valve didn’t want you to forget to play the universally acclaimed shooter. You had to sign up for Steam even if you bought the box at a store. It was a landmark moment in the transition from the old model of digital ownership.” – (Greg reading PC Gamer, 177:11)

Audience Call-outs (interspersed):

• What about World of Warcraft?! (223:12)
• The impact of Loot Boxes and microtransactions (119:07, 225:47)
• COVID’s impact: “We’ve just blacked it out,” says Andrea. (127:47)

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Signature KFGD “News Show” Section

• Current Events Deep-Dive:

  • Microsoft/Xbox’s hardware future, Game Pass value, and the fallout of the Activision Blizzard deal dominate the “Roper Report”. (15:55 onwards)
  • “Stagflation is real. We’re in it. Prices keep going up, wages not moving a dollar.” – Andrea Rene (21:00)
  • Community weighs in: Are you still buying new Xbox hardware? Is this the “Sega moment”?

    “Sam’s Club slashing Series X prices, Costco not carrying Xbox—these are not good signs.” – Tim Gettys (19:43)

  • Viral segment: “Why did Xbox ever agree to day-one Game Pass for Call of Duty? It cost $300 million in lost sales.” (28:07)

• Lighter News, Industry In-Jokes, & Rapid Fire (75:03 – 85:56):

  • “Out Today” quiz: Panel tries to identify fake historical game titles. (75:03)
  • WIi News Channel returns for a mini segment (72:40).

• Super Chats ongoing: Audience nostalgia, birthday tributes, and stories of “KFGD got me through tough times.” (66:05, 71:26, 91:45 ff.)

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Community: Notable Quotes & Audience Interaction

Heartfelt & Funny

• “Myles away, is forever iconic. Congrats on 2000s. I love Gary.” – Nimble Trent (66:40)
• “I still remember the first episode… you guys are a beacon of light each day.” – RL Ramsey (66:53)
• “Kinda Funny Games Daily would launch the era of live daily gaming news, and now there’s a million clones. Nobody else is as dumb as us to do it every damn day.” – Greg Miller (251:09)
• “You could probably stop now, right? You’ve made your point.” – Gary Whitta, video message (134:33)
• “The Grinch leak! That’s a classic episode of KFGD.” – Blessing Adeoye Jr. (105:21)

Industry Perspective

• “If you want to imagine the digital future everyone is scared of: go look at PC—no one misses boxes.” – Gary Whitta (171:27)
• “Game Pass’s genie can’t be put back in the bottle. The value equation of games is forever changed.” – Tim Gettys (120:24)
• “The biggest value of KFGD isn’t the news, it’s the camaraderie, the way we process the industry with actual emotion.” – Summed by guest video tribute (218:20)

Easter Eggs & Meta Moments

• Gary’s “What Grinds My Gears” meta-rant spirals into a Dune Awakening “join my base” recruitment campaign. (221:53–234:09)
• A fan’s letter commemorates having their username finally pronounced correctly on-air—a microcosm of Kinda Funny’s community focus (239:58).

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 09:40 – Old Kinda Funny Games Daily desk/set returns
• 13:32 – Chris Roper cameo, namesake of “Roper Report”
• 14:47 – The infamous “Baker’s Dozen”/donut segment
• 32:43 – Big acquisitions news recap (Xbox, PlayStation, Embracer)
• 66:05 / 91:45+ – Audience Super Chats of gratitude & memories
• 99:35 – Audience-voted “Biggest Stories” of KFGD: GTA6 leak, Xbox–Activision, Greg banned from E3
• 111:49 – Xbox–Activision acquisition deep dive & reflection
• 138:36–215:46 – KFGD 2000: Year-by-year “biggest gaming news” rapid-fire segment
• 216:14 – Industry journalist tribute montage
• 221:53 – “What Grinds Gary’s Gears” / Dune Awakening live read-along
• 239:58 – Fan letter: why KFGD is special to listeners
• 252:01+ – Closing reflections, thanks, and appeals for continued support

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Flow & Tone

Raucous, personal, and perfectly “Kinda Funny”—the crew pokes fun at themselves, gets real about the struggles of independent media, and sneaks in both sharp analysis and dumb jokes at rapid pace. Signature running gags abut up to genuine tears, sincere audience appreciation, and the recurring theme: “We couldn’t have gotten here without all of you.”

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Standout Quotes & Moments

• On KFGD’s Purpose:

  “It’s a mix of a gaming podcast and the midday news—a genius idea—and the show is a bastion of insightful takes sprinkled with goofs and just telling it how it is.” – Fan letter (239:58)

• On Games Industry Changes:

  “The console wars are over. They lost the game they were playing. They need to figure out what game to play.” – Tim Gettys (34:01)

• On Industry Sincerity:

  “Companies used to eat the cost for goodwill… Now, they just don’t have to care about the consumer. And that sucks, man.” – Andrea Rene (39:34)

• On Community:

  “I started my weight loss journey shortly after discovering Kind of Funny… Here I am, eight years later, 150 pounds down. You’ve been a beacon of light.” – Super Chat from Spartan (66:05)

• On Why KFGD Endures:

  “More than the news, the reason we connect is because of the camaraderie, the heartbreak, and the pure joy—every day in the studio, on this show, with all of you.” – Summed by multiple hosts and audience letters

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Conclusion

KFGD's 2000th episode is simultaneously a masterclass in community-building, a history lesson in gaming, and a four-hour inside joke between the cast and their fans. Stacked with industry insight, loving lampooning, and a sincere sense of “we are all in this together,” it’s both a marker of how far games media has come and a promise that the wild ride continues—one live show at a time.

Transcript

[Andrea Rene]

This episode is brought to you by White Claw Search. Great podcast pick friend. No surprises there. After all, you're all about finding the.

[Andy Cortez]

Tastiest flavors out there.

[Andrea Rene]

Just like White Claw Surge. And with big bold flavors to enjoy like blood orange, BlackBerry, cranberry and more, it's time to go all in on taste.

[Greg Miller]

Unleash the flavor.

[Andrea Rene]

Unleash White Claw Surge. Please drink responsibly. Hard seltzer with flavors. 8% alcohol by volume. Whitecloth seltzer works Chicago, Illinois.

[Greg Miller]

Today, in the nerdy news you need to know about, we're celebrating 2,000 episodes of kinda Funny Games Daily. Andrea Renee is here and so are a few other familiar faces. And we're talking about the past, present and future of Kinda Funny Games Daily. We'll have all this and more because this is Kinda Funny Games Daily. If I had to guess, a lot more of you are excited about my second new show. Ten years ago I was lucky enough to be a founding member of Podcast Beyond. And of course once we last started Kinda Funny and immediately copied the podcast called it PS I love u xoxo but we wanted to go a bit bigger. What's up everybody? Welcome to Kinda Funny Games Daily. Kinda Funny Games Daily will be the breaking news. It will be what's happening day in, day out in the industry. We're gonna do the Ropers report. It's gonna cover everything.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

For now, let's begin with what is and forever will be the ro.

[Greg Miller]

Time for some new.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We have six stories today.

[Gary Whitta]

A baker's dozen.

[Andrea Rene]

That's right.

[Gary Whitta]

Thanks.

[Andrea Rene]

Cool Greg.

[Greg Miller]

It's going to be a one on one podcast. Me and my co host. So of course I wanted another expert, someone else to be part of this show. And I figured like, well, why settle for one? I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller, alongside Blessing, Eddie Ohye Jr. Gary Whitta, Janet Garcia.

[Tim Gettys]

Fun Houses Alana Pierce, Fran Mirabella iii.

[Andrea Rene]

Imran Khan from Game Informer.

[Tim Gettys]

Tamor Hussein.

[Greg Miller]

Rebecca Valentine from gamesindustry Biz.

[Tim Gettys]

Isla Hank from Easy Allies.

[Greg Miller]

Hi everybody. Jared Petty. Who are you?

[Andrea Rene]

I'm chastity Vicencio from GameSpot.

[Greg Miller]

Cali Plagey spawn on Mes Khalif Adams.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What up Liana Rupert.

[Greg Miller]

Rihanna Man. Well, from what's Good Games, Gamertag Radio's Paris Lilly Kotaku's own Jason Dreyer.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Double Fines.

[Tim Gettys]

Tim Schafer, Boo Bakar Saleem.

[Greg Miller]

Samoa Joe.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Story number one.

[Tim Gettys]

EA is buying Titanfall. Developer Respawn.

[Andrea Rene]

Epic has bought the Rocket league developer Psyonix.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

PlayStation has bought Insomniac Microsoft has acquired Bethesda.

[Greg Miller]

Epic Games is buying fall guys.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Developer EA has acquired Playdemic. Sony has bought Bungie. PlayStation has bought Heathen Studios. Embracer Group acquires everything.

[Tim Gettys]

Microsoft has finalized its $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

$69 billion. And sorry, what was the number again for the people that got laid up? 1900.

[Greg Miller]

Sony announces significant PlayStation layoffs.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

EAs to layoff around 670 workers.

[Mike Mahardy]

Microsoft to lay off thousands story number.

[Greg Miller]

One layoffs will be laid off Lays.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Off plans to lay off Lays off.

[Greg Miller]

Layoffs Laid off Laid off. Fortnite is the next to copy PUBG. Cyberpunk to 2077 has been delayed. Cyberpunk is on track and has been delayed once again.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Lets you customize your genitals has gone gold.

[Greg Miller]

Sony Interactive delists Cyberpunk.

[Andy Cortez]

PlayStation plans to Release more than 10 live service games.

[Greg Miller]

Concord sales will cease immediately. Google might be getting a game service.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Google is shutting down stadia.

[Greg Miller]

They're skipping E3. Wow, that's impossible.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

E3 2020 has been canceled.

[Greg Miller]

E3 is back. I, Greg Miller, am banned from e. He's hosting E3. Xbox. Nintendo and PlayStation won't be a part of E3. We gather to say goodbye to the electronic Entertainment Expo.

[Mike Mahardy]

A little to the left has a DLC coming out. Cupboards and drawers. Chat's trying to correct me. I'm reading off a blessing script. He says cupboards and drawers.

[Andy Cortez]

Cupboards.

[Mike Mahardy]

People up tight.

[Andy Cortez]

Cupboards.

[Mike Mahardy]

He has cupboards.

[Andy Cortez]

That's how it's spelled though.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh.

[Greg Miller]

Ladies and gentlemen, this has been kind of funny Games daily.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Each and every weekday we run you through the nerdy news and you know about.

[Greg Miller]

But until next time, Game daily. Anything jump to mind for you, Mr. Whitt?

[Gary Whitta]

I'm going to be completely honest with you, Greg.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

While you were reading that question, I was miles away.

[Mike Mahardy]

California, Watch out.

[Greg Miller]

There we go. California City. What's up everybody? Welcome to Kinda Funny games daily for Monday, October 6, 2025. I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller, alongside the busiest lady in the business, Andrea Renee.

[Andrea Rene]

What's good, Greg?

[Greg Miller]

Not much. Andrea, welcome back to the studio.

[Andrea Rene]

Thank you. Thank you so much. It's so lovely to be here. Thank you for having me and congrats to all of you guys and the entire kind of fun a team on 2000 episodes of the best show in video game news.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you so much. Congratulations to yourself. Of course, the KFGD founder over here. Don't sell yourself.

[Andrea Rene]

It's all me, everybody. You guys wouldn't be here without me. Let's go.

[Greg Miller]

You carried us through those first few seasons when we were doing it, of course. Next to you, Forbes 30 under 30, aka the second best baby blues in San Francisco. Aka the expectant father, Tim Gettys.

[Tim Gettys]

Let's Tim host. Very happy to be here. People in the chat calling this the Daylenium. It's like the millennium, but daily.

[Greg Miller]

But I don't know if I like.

[Tim Gettys]

It, but I think by the end of the show, I'm going to love it. Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Like the music over the kind of Funny Games Daily 2000 logo.

[Tim Gettys]

Fantastic.

[Greg Miller]

That's a good callback to WrestleMania. Not expecting that that's how they're doing it.

[Tim Gettys]

And also shout out to everyone working on this, like, I can't believe we get to just show up and be a part of a cool thing that we know very little about.

[Greg Miller]

I was going to save it, of course.

[Tim Gettys]

Excellent montage. All that stuff's great. You guys are killing it.

[Greg Miller]

Yes, of course. Forbes 30 under 30, aka New York Game Awards. Nominated aka the man who made all this happen alongside Roger Picordi. Blessing eddie. Oh, yea, Junior.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Good day, Greg. Happy 2000, y'.

[Greg Miller]

All. Happy 2000 to you, Blessing. And yes, a round of applause to bless to Roger. I know Joey helped plan stuff, too, but there was a lot of organization going on that, yes, I had nothing to do with. So tell me about that blessing. How did we get here for this episode?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, I think it happened when.

[Greg Miller]

I was out of town during a.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Meeting where Roger was like, greg told me to plan episode 2000. And so I'm going to hit you up.

[Greg Miller]

Here's how it went together. Joey's like, oh, hey, we got an email. We're coming up on kind of Funny Games Daily 2000. And I said, we should do something for that. Can you make a shirt that looks like the WrestleMania 2000 logo?

[Tim Gettys]

And here we are.

[Greg Miller]

And then Joey's like, yeah, I think so. And then Roger was like, I'd love to actually plan an episode. Like, go for it. And, yeah, you and him knocked it out of the park.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And so, yeah, me and him. Me and him sat down, we talked about all the things that we thought we wanted to do for episode 2000. Hash out some ideas and, like, shout out to Roger. Roger came prepared with, like, a vision, right? Like, we'll get into more of what we're doing this episode later. But, you know, he came with a lot of ideas. I sat down with him, we refined them, figured out, like, how to divvy up the work so that we can actually make this happen. And so, you know, a lot of the segments we'll get into are, you know, my creation. But like, you look at this production and all of this, when you look at the video wall, when you look at, you know, putting that video together, shout out to Cameron Kennedy. But Roger is the one who was able to reach out and figure out the vision for what that stuff looks like. And so round of applause to Roger for sure.

[Greg Miller]

Roger.

[Andrea Rene]

Roger.

[Greg Miller]

Never forget the tastemaker and never forget that this is Kind of Funny Games Daily. Each and every weekday we run you through the nerdy video game news need to know about live on Twitch TV, kind of funn, YouTube.com kindafunnygames and of course podcast services around the globe. If you like that, pick up a Kinda funny membership on patreon.com kinda funny YouTube.com kindafunnygames Apple and Spotify, of course we've been going for 2000 episodes of this show, but 10 years of making goofy content for your amusement and we couldn't do it without your support. $10 a month gets you all of our shows ad free. Your daily dose of me. And of course, good karma for supporting a small independent 11 person business doing the unthinkable each and every weekday. However, this episode I'm going to urge you more than anything to Super Chat. If you're watching live, you can go to YouTube.com kindafunnygames in super chat. We set quite the milestone here. All right. To celebrate 2000 episodes of kinda Funny Games Daily, we want to hit a special goal. 2,000 super chats. We're going to be throughout the show throwing to Mike and Andy to see what's going on so they can read in what's going answer the question of of course, what's your favorite kind of Funny Games Daily memory. And let's check in with them right now. Andy and Mike.

[Andy Cortez]

It's real cold right here, Mike.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, Andy's complaining about the AC and.

[Greg Miller]

I'm living in it. I'm loving it.

[Mike Mahardy]

Could have swore it was cup boards. Yeah, that's my man.

[Greg Miller]

That's my bad.

[Tim Gettys]

Andy.

[Andy Cortez]

We learn new stuff all the time. You know what we're learning?

[Mike Mahardy]

We're going to read your Super Chats all throughout the episode. So get those super chats in with your favorite moments, memories and just appreciation for those four over there and the whole team here at Kind of Funny. And all of you, the best community.

[Greg Miller]

On the Internet, don't feel like you got to do A big super chat. Again, we want to hit the number 2000. So if you only got a buck to toss our way, go ahead and do it. They'll go through to the messages. And again, can we go back to that shot and give another shout out to the fact that that looks like they are on the old set.

[Andrea Rene]

It's really incredible.

[Greg Miller]

The old desk pulled out of retirement. It has been in the kitchen forever as the junk table.

[Andy Cortez]

I thought Roger set it up as a green screen.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

When I saw in the studio how it looked, I was like, oh, are they like green screened out or masked out? He's like, no, just the wall.

[Greg Miller]

That's crazy. Just effects. So good.

[Andy Cortez]

Star wars back and again.

[Greg Miller]

I like that we went to put in the amount of work to actually make the wall move. You know what I mean? A lesser company would have just done the jpeg, but we've got another mini video while they're moving the video stuff. Wow, I like that. Is there any you want to give me a super chat? You got already from people saying, hey.

[Mike Mahardy]

I have one from Giovanni Diaz who says, usually listen at work, but it feels like this is one I need to watch live. Not sure if I'll cat live, but I got to contribute to the 2000 Super Chats. Congrats. Kind of funny. Thanks, Giovanni.

[Andy Cortez]

Thank you, Giovanni.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Thank you.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you, Giovanni. Thanks. Everybody watching. Let's do a little housekeeping. You are getting a normal games daily before we get into a lot of shenanigans. And of course, there'll be shenanigans mixed in as we go. Housekeeping. It is October, so we had to celebrate our king of Halloween, fantasy commish and game showdown host with the most blessing at AOE Junior with an incredible print designed by Panda Musk. Incredible. You can grab this over on patreon.com kindafunny of course, that's where you can get a physical item each and every month. We've been doing these amazing character posters from Panda Musk. I thought we were done with the King of Halloween thing, though. You know what I mean? And I don't blame you for this. Yeah, I don't blame you. We settled it.

[Gary Whitta]

We settled the beat.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This is the community speaking.

[Gary Whitta]

They see me, they see a king.

[Greg Miller]

Nope, it's Roger. It's Roger writing things and then I have to read them. That's what this is. And I'm not a.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This is beautiful. Thank you so much. Panda Musk.

[Greg Miller]

It is a great poster as always, Panda. But come on, we're an 11 person small business. All about live talk shows today. Kinda Funny Games Daily 2000 is the only episode of content we're doing. Don't worry, it's gonna be worth it. As we already put up here, you got this going on with the panda musk Patreon item. And then of course if you're a kind of funny member, you will get a Greg way today. Which of course is my 15 to 20 minute exclusive show for members only. It will be about post kind of funny Games Daily if I'm it might be a double sized episode tomorrow. I got my mom and her husband over there. I gotta drive that. We're gonna see Ben. You know, there's stuff going on. Couldn't do it on the way to work like I normally do, but it'll be there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What do you mean you're gonna go see Ben?

[Greg Miller]

What?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You and your mom are gonna go.

[Greg Miller]

See like I'm doing it out of order. You know, I see Ben every day. Okay, Usually twice a day sometimes, you know what I mean? Like we're picking him up from school. Guima over there, her birthday present is a great one where she's gonna take him to the ball store Target and let him buy whatever he wants.

[Andy Cortez]

Store.

[Greg Miller]

It's awesome, dude. Ben loves the ball store. All right, you say and I said maybe we get a cake pop. His eyes lit up. This is. This kid lives for the cake pops, you know and I.

[Andrea Rene]

They are a good carrot, let me tell you.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney the Somme Twining. Today we're brought to you by factor. But we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's begin the show with what is and forever will be the Roper Report.

[Andy Cortez]

Everyone.

[Andrea Rene]

Hey, sorry to interrupt.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

If I could just have a second.

[Greg Miller]

Before you get into the news. Hey, Greg. Good to see you guys. Chris Roper here, namesake of the Roper Report.

[Andrea Rene]

I've heard that kind of funny just.

[Greg Miller]

Hit the 2000th episode of Games Daily.

[Andy Cortez]

That is an incredible feat.

[Andrea Rene]

I don't think I can even count that high.

[Greg Miller]

So congratulations to everyone over there for.

[Andy Cortez]

Hitting that amazing milestone.

[Greg Miller]

I was just doing some math and if my calculations are correct, 2000 games dailies also equals 2000 Roper reports.

[Andy Cortez]

Now, I've never asked for any sort.

[Greg Miller]

Of royalties or residuals for use of my name.

[Andy Cortez]

It's.

[Greg Miller]

It's been an honor, it really has. But being that it's the 2000th episode and therefore the 2000th Roper Report, I wonder just this once I could.

[Andy Cortez]

I could do the intro. I. I just want to do the intro once.

[Greg Miller]

And I've been practicing. I even have a pitch pipe. So, you know, if I could just, you know, give this a shot. All right, here we go.

[Gary Whitta]

Time for some news.

[Greg Miller]

Crushed it. Hey, everyone, Come on, come on. Chris Roper immediately welled up when I saw Roper. You know what I mean? I haven't talked to him in person in a long time, let alone to see him on this show, which I think so many people are always like, who's Roper? The amount of people.

[Tim Gettys]

Who is Chris Roper, Greg?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, man. Chris Roper, of course, is one of the podcast beyond founders alongside of me. Right when I started at IGN in 2007, the PlayStation team was Dunham, Roper, me, and Jeff Haynes. And that was your original Podcast beyond segment. Dunham hosted beyond as the lead chair, and then we would go to the Roper Report where he would round up the news. And so we kept that going on beyond. And then when we left, we stole it for P.S. i love you. And then when P.S. i love you retired and this became the Daily show, we kept that, of course, for news. So, yeah, it's outlived and out kicked the coverage so dramatically. I'm sure that I love it. And I've always loved Roper's support that on his social media, he still says there's a reference to being a segment on many podcasts you listen to and stuff. So that's very, very cool. Good job. And that scares me. Now for all the other emotional landmin are hidden in this episode, There are five items on the Roper report.

[Tim Gettys]

A baker's do.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Microphone off a baker.

[Gary Whitta]

Do a good one.

[Greg Miller]

God, it got bigger than donuts.

[Andrea Rene]

I love it.

[Greg Miller]

Look at that. Oh, my God. No one thought about how to shine. I stayed up to 1am making these last night.

[Mike Mahardy]

I hope you guys enjoyed.

[Greg Miller]

No, you didn't.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You want to tell the story?

[Andrea Rene]

Oh, yeah. We were supposed to do this from.

[Greg Miller]

Like, a professional bakery, and they're closed on Mondays.

[Andy Cortez]

And then Joey was like, oh, like.

[Greg Miller]

Let'S just get a bunch of, like.

[Andrea Rene]

Krispy Kreme doughnuts and we'll just draw.

[Greg Miller]

Like a baker's dozen. And I looked at Lienza and I was like, what if this is our entire day?

[Andy Cortez]

So till 1am we made these, so hopefully they're okay.

[Greg Miller]

But Lienza, I'm sorry.

[Gary Whitta]

Enjoy.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, Shout out to Liam. Sorry that had to happen.

[Andrea Rene]

There's enough frosting on there that it'll be delicious.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah, for sure.

[Gary Whitta]

For sure.

[Greg Miller]

So happy 2000 episode everybody. And Roger while you're here. Great job doing this. Great job.

[Andy Cortez]

Shout out to Bless. Shout out to Joey.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, Nick is always just worthless. You just didn't do much for anything for any of this. I'll tell you what, these donuts look.

[Mike Mahardy]

Like they were worth all day.

[Andy Cortez]

You know what I mean? Look at how nice these look.

[Mike Mahardy]

Jesus Christ.

[Greg Miller]

Jackal.

[Andy Cortez]

Maybe for the 4000th episode we could hire a fucking baker.

[Greg Miller]

I don't know. Number one on the roof Report Microsoft insists it's still committed to first party consoles after a rumor that Xbox planned to exit the hardware business hit the Internet. This is the one, the only wiper that's Wesleyan pool [e-mail] Microsoft has issued a statement insisting it remains committed to Xbox consoles after a fresh rumor that it planned to exit the hardware business. The rumor emerged from an alleged insider who claimed Microsoft's Xbox hardware plans had become less sure and that the future of Xbox was software publishing, a common suggestion on social media and on forums. And Andrea social media and forums always correct 100%.

[Andrea Rene]

They're never wrong.

[Greg Miller]

But Microsoft issued a statement over the weekend countering that rumor, telling window Windows Central quote, we are actively investing in our future first party consoles and devices designed, engineered and built by Xbox. For more details, the community can revisit our agreement announcement with amd. The rumor and Microsoft statement came after a bruising week in which the company was heavily criticized for raising the price of Xbox Game Pass ultimate from $19.99 a month to $29.99 a month. Microsoft also ditched the discount on DLC for Game Pass subscribers in favor of increased rewards points. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft's decision to release Call of Duty as a day one Game Pass title has cost it $300 million in lost sales. That's because fans who would have bought Call of Duty under normal circumstances on PC or Xbox opted to play it through the Game Pass subscription instead. Call of Duty Black Ops 7 is set to launch as a day one game pass title this November, but subscribers now won't get 10% off COD points or the Black Cell Battle Pass upgrade. Microsoft's console hardware plans are under intense scrutiny following its seemingly successful multi platform push for its video game and flagging sales of the Xbox Series X and S. But in June, Microsoft announced a partnership with AMD to power the next generation of Xbox, including its first party future Xbox consoles. It was a deal seen as a rubber stamp for the next generation of Xbox. At least Microsoft Failed to detail its plans but did promise quote, next level performance, cutting edge graphics, breakthrough gameplay and unmatched compatibility. It also said everything it's working on will be quote, fully compatible with users existing Xbox game library. Andrea Rene, is Xbox cooked?

[Andrea Rene]

Absolutely not.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, thank you.

[Andrea Rene]

Absolutely not. Greg. We get these stories about Xbox pivoting away from hardware. Every generation there is a new Xbox console. So I'm not surprised these rumors have surfaced once again. But they're not going anywhere because they've invested so heavily, as this insider has also apparently said, in their ecosystem. And I think people like the Rog Ally, right? Like the.

[Greg Miller]

They don't like the price point. They like the handheld. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we'll see obviously when Rog the Rog Xbox Ally and Rog Xbox Ally X release in the coming weeks.

[Andrea Rene]

Too many words to remember. I don't think that Xbox as a brand is in trouble. I think every major corporation is re examining their portfolio right now because we're in a very uncertain and tumultuous financial global situation and we're going to see some shifting. But to say that they're going fully away from hardware I think is just Phooey.

[Tim Gettys]

Timothy the cooks, baby. Man, this is bad. This is real bad. Because here's the thing, I don't think that they're immediately cooked. And I think the biggest takeaway I have from all the stories that came out this week, weekend, including all of the Sam's Club discounts that weren't part of the story here. But did you see this?

[Greg Miller]

I didn't see the Sam's Club. I saw the Costco of course, last week, two weeks ago, being like we're not carrying Xbox.

[Tim Gettys]

There was that. But Sam's Club, like slashing prices of the Xbox hardware. So we're talking about $280 Xbox Series X's that are retailing at Best Buy currently for what was the new price? $650. And that is not a good sign, right? That is a sign of them getting rid of what they have on the shelves. There's other pictures of Nintendo Switch games like covering the Xbox aisles of other stores. Like that is the type of stuff when you combine it all. Is it direct evidence that stores are not and retailers are not going to carry Xbox hardware? Not necessarily. But we all have covered Xbox for the last 2000 episodes. And to be where we're at right now, it's like it's not like I hear that and go well, that's definitely not going to happen. I go, well, you know what that's they kind of put themselves in this position that the consoles already weren't selling. Now with all of this news, they're only going to keep selling less. Like, with the price hike, that's not incentivizing anybody to be like, now's the time to buy an Xbox Series X. So I think combining all that stuff together, it's a very, very evident thing that, yeah, this, we're going downhill. Will Xbox make hardware next generation? I entirely believe so.

[Greg Miller]

Agreed.

[Tim Gettys]

But if nowhere sells it, at what point does it matter?

[Andrea Rene]

I think the thing missing from the conversation that's been happening over the last week, in particular with this giant price hike we got with Game Pass and what's happening with the hardware now is this is all reactive to what's happening on a bigger global scale. Financially. I mean, stagflation is real. We're in it. Prices keep going up, wages not moving a dollar. And so people have less and less money every week to spend on luxury items. And an Xbox is a luxury item. So I think these retailers are seeing the boxes and going, six months from now, what are we going to do with these? Maybe we should just offload them now. And obviously part of the general backlash to the moves that Microsoft Gaming as a brand is making with Game Pass is also very understandable. I mean, I dropped my subscription down to the 999 tier and just bought Dreamlight Valley. The only reason I had Game Pass in the first place. I mean, I already owned it on Steam, but now I had to have it on both consoles.

[Greg Miller]

Sure, fair enough.

[Andrea Rene]

That, but I think that this every. I mean, we're doing this because it's like, oh, we should talk about how Xbox is dying. It's like, they're going to be fine, they're going to be fine. The brand is going to be good. They just, you know, need to weather the storm, like all of us.

[Greg Miller]

Blessing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'd like to answer your question with a question which is what do Xbox players want from Xbox? And is Xbox delivering that slash? Do they have the capability to continue to deliver that? Because I think with the latest news, I guess before the price hikes and all that stuff, right. Like, like I would have said, you know, obviously not everybody players aren't a monolith. But what, what a lot of people I think would say would be the ecosystem where they would say they want Game Pass, they want the ability to play anywhere, they want that compatibility across their console, their PC and all that stuff, cloud, whatever it is. Right. But I think as the prices have gone up, especially of Game Pass and also as we've, you know, stepped further in, into the Xbox, becoming less of a console ecosystem and becoming more of a PC based ecosystem especially, you know, we'll see what we have when we're a generation from now with them. I then start to wonder what's the point? Like, what is the main vision of like what people are getting out of this thing to really benefit them? Because I think up until now my price would have been or accessibility even more so. Accessibility would have been the thing. Hey, if you have a console, if you have a PC, if you have a Samsung Smart tv, if you have a phone or whatever, you can be in the Xbox ecosystem. You can exist in that. Now that we're at where we're at, where it's becoming harder and harder of an argument to say, hey, you should get Xbox Game Pass, that's the best deal in gaming. I do worry about the future, right. I think I now look at that step into the PC side of things and, and today, more so than a week prior, I see it as a step out of the hardware business more so than I see it as a step into the future, right. I see it as a step toward, ah, shit, we just can't hang in this realm more so than a. No, we want to create something that's going to really innovate and revolutionize what we're doing in the hardware side of the industry.

[Andrea Rene]

It's hard to really know what's going on because they change their mind, it feels like. And I heard on the, on the Friday's episode when you guys were talking about it, you had mentioned wanting like a podcast where like Filter, like come in. And I was like, I actually think that would have been bad because they've discovered that there's no winning for them when they do make those public explanations. And yeah, no, they, I feel like they've misstepped quite a bit in some of their forward like facing. Like we're gonna explain why we decided to do what we do because they're really like, I think all of us are going, but that's not like a great decision that you made. And this one has been like so troubling.

[Greg Miller]

I think the biggest thing and what I've gone back and forth on, you know, mulling this all weekend long, right. Is that what really gets hung up on is how they marketed this Game Pass. The best deal in gaming, the best value in gaming. When we think of a value period. What do you think of McDonald's value menu? The value bin at a department store, you're thinking about getting something at a very cheap and disposable cost. And so by going down that lane with Game Pass, it benefited them so well with goodwill of all my Netflix for games, all these different things, blah, blah, blah. And now to get here and have the price tag go up this $10 and become 30 bucks a month, right. I think, and this is eye the beholder, and we've gone around a million times on Greg Way and everything. I still think it's probably the best value in gaming. Again, you want a $70 game buy game Pass for a month and you get it for $30, right? Then we get into a hollowing uniplane. There's a bunch of different permutations to argue it from there, right? But it's this idea that they devalued their brand and they devalued games. And so now they have to have that reckoning of we're changing it and charging more and people are upset about it. But what is that actually going to net out on the books too? And so, yeah, like having Phil and Sarah on a podcast say all that and try to explain business. There's no way we've learned for any of these corporations to explain what they're doing as a business and not have, well, you're fucking evil and you're trying to get more money and. And lots of times they are fucking evil and trying to get more money. Businesses as a whole, like, I don't know what you do here. And that's the problem. Then you get stuff like this where people see these rumors that, okay, they're getting out of the hardware business and okay, well, there's smoke, there's fire. This is true, Tim.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is it's less smokes and fire. It's true. It's more just. No one's surprised because it wouldn't be surprising at this point if Best Buy is like, you know what? We're not gonna sell Xbox consoles anymore, period. And that's not a choice Xbox gets to make. They can. They could be like, yo, we're still investing in hardware. But if they have made so many bad decisions that were at a point that people don't want to support them, the decisions made for them, I think that's kind of the bigger picture feeling I have towards the Xbox and Microsoft brands as a whole right now, where Sarah and Phil, like, they. The decisions they're making, whether they are good or they are bad, the way they're presenting to us, they're almost irrelevant because the people above them in any moment can be like, nah, I know you just said that three days ago, but we're doing this now.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

And I think that that's been the biggest hurdle because at the end of the day, I've said this forever. Game Pass is unbelievable. How is it possible that you're putting out all your first.

[Andrea Rene]

Well, it turns out it's not.

[Tim Gettys]

It's not.

[Andrea Rene]

That's what we've discovered is that Xbox has said so. You know how we said it was the best value? It's because we took on that cost and now we can't afford it anymore because we spend all of our money on AI and we're, you know, compromising other parts of the Microsoft business. So we got to raise the price on everybody. Everyone's like, no, you're still a highly profitable corporation.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

How do you guys feel about the story within a story here? Right. Like they, they put in the excerpt here from Bloomberg where they reported that their decision to release Call of Duty as a day one game pass title has costed over $300 million in lost sales. Because people are playing it through Game Pass.

[Andrea Rene]

We all knew that was going to happen.

[Greg Miller]

I was going to say, no shit, what are we talking about?

[Andrea Rene]

I was writing on the wall for.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Sure, because you read that and immediately go, well, no wonder you're raising the price and having all the day one game pass things be at that $30 tier because you have to make up for all the lost Call of Duty sales.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

I don't.

[Tim Gettys]

They won't.

[Andrea Rene]

I don't know why they agreed to do that in the first place. Like, I remember when that story broke, when they originally announced that they were doing like day one of their, like, major triple A's. And I was like, why? Why would you do that? You know?

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, I mean, I, I stand by. Like, I remember it was me and you on Games Daily. It was to me the most shocking news story we've ever covered here was Game Pass because it. And at the time it was different. It was Crackdown three coming out. But we're now at a point that we are well past Game of the year winner. Forza Horizon 5. Right.

[Andrea Rene]

And.

[Tim Gettys]

And Halo Infinite and, you know, Redfall and all of the other games, like the dominoes that we talked about forever, those were all day one on Game Pass and now it's like, oh, Call of Duty as well. But yeah, Call of Duty is such an important money maker for the video game industry and if you just slashed the potential for that game to make money, the games industry is making billions less or hundreds of millions less, right? Not a good place to be when the industry is in such a war, tornado state and we have less money to spend and all of that. It's like, man, very, very bad signs.

[Greg Miller]

I want to call in Andy Robinson's reporting over at VGC who has this paragraph from their report. Lina Khan, who was the chair of the FTC from 2021 until earlier this year, took to social media after the Game Pass news, quoting a post which noted in March 2023, Microsoft told a court that Game Pass prices would not increase as a result of its Activision Blizzard acquisition. Quote. Microsoft's acquisition of Activision has been followed by significant price hikes and layoffs, harming both gamers and developers. Khan wrote. As we've seen across sectors, increasing market consolidation and increasing prices also go often go hand in hand. As dominant firms become too big to care, they can make things worse for their customers without having to worry about their consequences. Damn. We should listen to the ftc.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Bless should listen to the ftc.

[Greg Miller]

You know what I mean? Eminem had me all wrong. Had me all twisted about him for so long. Yeah, I know, right? But it would. Maybe Eminem was wrong.

[Andrea Rene]

I do want to call out that there's been a couple of people in the chat that have noted that Sarah Bond confirmed that Xbox Game Pass is profitable. But there was a caveat that they are not counting revenue lost from first party game sales in that profitability. And that to me is a huge numbers not being reckoned.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Andrea Rene]

Like I would like to see those line items next to each other because I have a feeling they, they don't line up great.

[Greg Miller]

Andy. Mike, I know we're seeing a lot of super chats in here about kind of Funny Games Daily 2000, bro. We see anybody signed off about Xbox?

[Andy Cortez]

Have a couple here. One person who says, andy, love the jacket. Thanks dude.

[Greg Miller]

That's not about Xbox.

[Andy Cortez]

We also have a super chat here from thwarted Junk who says started off, no, that's not A Games Daily 1. Oh, sorry, I got the wrong one right there. My bad. They're coming in real fast.

[Greg Miller]

There's a lot.

[Andy Cortez]

We're at around 240 by the way. Oh wow. Crazy pace right now. But they keep on like refreshing and like ruining the screen. I think YouTube's kind of breaking. We have Zeo VGM with a 10 super chat who says I'm sticking with my prediction. Within three to four years they'll leave the hardware market and launch a first party only streaming version of Game Pass for PS5 and switch two parentheses, no day ones, back catalog only.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me. Like maybe not that exact version of that, but some iteration of that idea I think is inevitable. And again I, if I had to guess hardware wise, what happens to Xbox? I think Xbox, this is probably the last generation that they actually have a console that is just an Xbox that's not seen more as a PC. And I think that we've seen so much evidence towards getting to the point now that that the Xbox brand is the cloud stuff and is Game Pass and is more PC focused. And with that I think that we already are seeing the handheld market with the Raj Ally X. I think the same thing's going to happen on the more desktop box side, whatever that looks like. I think they're going to partner with other OEMs. It might be ASUS, it might be someone else. And I think that the Xbox Windows experience, the gaming experience, that is just what's going to be in a bunch of different things. And it's going to function more like Android and I think that PlayStation is going to function more like Apple and I think that's just kind of what's going to happen going forward.

[Greg Miller]

I think that's where I'd like to pivot the conversation just a smidge. Is talking about going forward where I'm of the mind like we've talked about in this, that yes, even if Xbox one day I think Xbox gets out of hardware. I'm not crystal balling and soothsaying and blah blah. I do think next generation, they're still here with an Xbox. My question becomes this. The rumor has always been, or at least what we kick around in this show and you see kicked around the Internet, right? Well, the next Xbox will be in line with what we're seeing from their partnership with rag, what we're seeing with amd and it'll be a Xbox that can also boot PC games and have Steam and have the Riot launcher and all that jazz on there, the Steam deck. But a big boy. A big big boy. Right. My question becomes for the panel and I'll start with you Tim, as your piercing eye contact with those second best baby blues. Do you think that that would be enough to change perception and get Xbox going the right direction?

[Tim Gettys]

Absolutely not. But I, I think at this point it's not about that they lost now. It's just like how do they just make money and function and how do they Win as much as they can to themselves. The console wars are over. Like we're here still talking about all this, but like, like they just are like, no, no. And that's not a bad thing.

[Greg Miller]

My intake wasn't about console wars. It was more the fact of like, I don't even think of it anymore as Xbox trying to change their place in all this. Change, goodwill.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, where people are gonna be like.

[Greg Miller]

Oh man, I do love X.

[Tim Gettys]

No, no, no, it's. I mean like we're talking about at best a Sega situation, but on a much, much, much, much, much grander scale unlike we've ever seen. Microsoft, Microsoft, not Xbox. Microsoft owns the majority of game developers in the world at this point, right. They have control over more teams than any other publisher out there. And we're talking about teams of consequence, we're talking about Call of duty, all 15 teams working on those games and working on nothing freaking else, right? Like that I think is so. There's so much there that like the Xbox brand I don't think can just go away because there is so much money being made and I, I think there's so much good happening still and that there is value there. But yeah, in terms of Xbox being like a dominant brand and like them saving face and like goodwill and all that stuff, it's like, no, no, no, they're playing a different game now. Like they lost the game they were playing. They need to figure out what game to play. And unfortunately I think it's going to be a game a lot of us go, no, don't play that game. Yeah, stay away from it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Which sucks because like a few years ago I think a lot of us rode the mind of like, oh damn, they're playing a game that I want to see them win, right? Like what they're doing with game Pass, what they're doing with play anywhere. What they're doing with cloud. Cloud, right. Like this ecosystem driven approach. I think there's so much potential in that because we talk about how console gaming and how AAA prestige titles, right? When I'm looking at PlayStation, how expensive those are to make and how like those numbers strike a little shiver down your spine when you think about like, like, is this actually sustainable? Is this actually a money maker? Is this the thing that you can do long term, I would have thought that the Xbox approach would have been the one where as we're going into the next generation of games, we're talking about Xbox being number one and we're not.

[Greg Miller]

Right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Because a lot of that has, has toppled and that's from a lot of different reasoning, whether it be just the economy and whether it be investments in AI, whether it be the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which put a lot of scrutiny on the Xbox team. Right. Like, it's coming from all different directions as far as the hits that Xbox is taking. And I think why we're in this place that we're in. But, man, I would have liked to see them actually pull them off in a different timeline.

[Greg Miller]

100%.

[Andrea Rene]

I do think it's important to note because as we've been having this conversation and it's sounding a little doom and gloom for Xbox, I was like, what were the last earnings reports numbers? And so I looked it up, and over at gamesindustry Biz, it says that the headline is Xbox content and services revenue up 13% year on year. Microsoft was the top publisher on Xbox and PlayStation in Q4 of 2025. Or not 2025. Excuse me, that can't be right. Of its fiscal year for 2025. Let me clarify that. Which is the three months that ended on June 30th for anybody keeping score. That revenue was $76.4 billion with a net income of 27.2 billion. So they made $27 billion.

[Tim Gettys]

Their next financial thing is the end of October. Very, very excited to see what they have.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 100. That's.

[Tim Gettys]

It's going to be very telling because, yeah, you know, they're going to be there and they're going to be like, yeah, game pass is profitable and, like, money's up. But it's like, to Andrea's point earlier, it's like, that's not the whole story. And so I do think that the money is coming in now. And again, they're putting the money out for it to come in. They just. They acquired Activision for $69 billion, man. Like, that's crazy. And, yeah, they're just going to continue. The money is still coming in, but we gotta just be real. Like, let's talk about the hardware side. Let's be real about the hardware side right now. No matter what's happening, the official price of the series X is $650. It already wasn't selling.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. And it keeps.

[Tim Gettys]

How many is it gonna sell in the next year? The next year from today? How many units is that thing gonna sell?

[Andrea Rene]

It's not. I really am. I. When they. When both Sony and Microsoft raised the console prices, I just thought it was. I was shocked. I was like, you guys can absorb this tariff Cost that people keep pointing to as a reason and the rising cost of literally everything. You guys should be absorbing that in order to maintain the audience. The idea that older technology is going up in cost is just, it's unfathomable to me.

[Tim Gettys]

I mean, I just get the vibe though that the people that really could make that decision though, super high ups, they're the ones looking at me like, hey, you're yalls little experiment is pissing us off.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

You know what I mean? Like no, no, no, no, no. We're not absorbing anything. You know, like that's.

[Greg Miller]

We lost $300 million. We've been in figure it out, which is a year and a half in court for a year and a half, which is nothing.

[Andrea Rene]

Right. $300 million is. It's wild to even say that. Like it's a drop in the bucket for Microsoft, but when their quarterly revenue as a company is, you know, $27 billion, you feel like 300 billion is almost like a rounding error. And that's wild. Yeah, that's insanity.

[Greg Miller]

I mean this is back to the whole problem with where we are right now with corporate greed is that if any of these corporations were able to step up and eat the cost. Hey. And then have that be the message. We're not raising the price of it, we're even lowering it. And that means to our shareholders we're going from a double digit profit to a single digit profit while we weather this storm and hopefully win goodwill and bring you back. We're lowering the price of Game Pass. We're not putting in the Fortnite thing. Sorry. Bless. I know you're excited about that. We're not giving you the Ubisoft classics. I know you were champion.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I wanted to play Child of Light.

[Greg Miller]

You know. We're gonna figure out a way right now and like even put a time on it for the next six months. We're committing to this. We want to get you in the door, we want you to be here. We understand times are tough right now and I know that that's in 2025. A crazy fucking thing to say.

[Andrea Rene]

That's what's so that's what I'm so mad about though, because it's not that crazy. Companies used to do this all the time. This like really bad financial situation that the United States finds herself in. It's not the first time this has happened. I mean the last really bad one where stagflation really impacted our day to day lives was like back in the 70s. But companies just have it in their mind now that they don't have to care about their consumer. And that sucks, man. It really just feels bad.

[Greg Miller]

100 per se.

[Andrea Rene]

But small businesses everywhere are eating the cost that they didn't ask for that they get no benefit for. And I see it all the time. And like some of the companies that I've bought stuff from saying, hey, you know, we don't want to add like a $10 tariff fee. So we're either going to stop. I've seen people just stop selling. They've closed their shops while the tariff situation is ongoing. Or they said, hey, just so you know, if you want, you can add on the cost to help us as a small business, but we're not raising our prices. And it's so silly to me that these giant corporations who have the money are not even doing anything close to that.

[Greg Miller]

Andy, Mike, I want to pull in a super chat. Can you see JPMS and read me that one or is it all.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Is it all fubar on your 2000?

[Andy Cortez]

I don't know which JPM you're talking. Oh, yes, I do see.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, nice job.

[Andy Cortez]

I do see it from JPM says I was ready to buy the Rog Ally X, but with all the Xbox situation going on, I'm not so sure anymore. Anyone else feeling the same way?

[Greg Miller]

Blessing. Where's your temperature? And I know you were never like, I can't wait for it. But I mean like in terms of what you're seeing and what you would recommend here for jpm.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, forgetting that. I mean, listen, I'm a Steam deck ride or die. So you're asking the wrong person because.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm gonna be like, yo, get an oled.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Get a Steam Deck oled. I want a Steam deck oled. But like, I think those are valid feelings. Like how much do you guys know? How much is the Rog Ally X.

[Greg Miller]

X is a thousand. Jesus. Yeah, G. A band this people say say.

[Andrea Rene]

And what's the official way we're supposed to say it?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I say Rog because I talked to.

[Greg Miller]

Somebody who used to work at public of gamers. So technically you should say but rag sounds better.

[Andy Cortez]

I was told say Raj because of Roger.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But I was told by somebody who used to work there that it is Rog you say the letters like out.

[Tim Gettys]

That makes sense.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay. I hear you, Jiff. And you, you know, exactly.

[Greg Miller]

We don't listen to him.

[Andrea Rene]

I mean and then there's at. At and at At.

[Andy Cortez]

So I mean, well, that's made up so stuff here.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's not to this person. I Would say, look at the catalog that's coming up and ask yourself, next year you're going to get a new Forza, you're going to get a new Gears of War, you're going to get a new Fable, and theoretically you're going to get a halo. Do those four games speed to you for $360 a year for Game Pass? Right. Like I, I, I think that's what the math is going to come down to. And then also, yeah, of course having a, a handheld, which I can, I can't, I think in today's gaming landscape, I can't recommend enough having a PC gaming handheld. Like it is totally. Not to I guess over say it, but like it really has revolutionized the way I play video games.

[Greg Miller]

It's changed the way I play games.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's such a nice thing to have PC handheld.

[Andrea Rene]

I actually play PC games.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, same me too.

[Andrea Rene]

Like I was like a console Die Hard.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I play way more PC games now than I did before I ever had my, my Steam Deck deck. That said, whether or not you should get an ROG Ally X or something else. Right.

[Andy Cortez]

Like I said, one terabyte steam deck OLED is 650.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

See that is the superior choice.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That'll be my at this, at this particular moment, like I assume the ROG Allyx is probably what, stronger as far as Eternals?

[Tim Gettys]

Significantly stronger. That's my take on this is wait a couple weeks for the reviews of the people that actually know what they're talking about reviewing this thing. Because the reality of this is the Ally X is going to be amazing. It's going to be worth the money for the tech that's in it. It not worth it to everybody. Like if you look at that and go, I'm not spending $1,000 on a handheld. No one's going to be mad at you. These are expensive.

[Andrea Rene]

I feel like this conversation is PC gaming in a nutshell.

[Tim Gettys]

It is.

[Andrea Rene]

You can spend a lot of money and have a really cool, fast, powerful rig, or you can spend a moderate amount of money and have a very serviceable machine that lets you play games and have a good time.

[Tim Gettys]

The difference is the that there needs to be kind of standardized. We are building for this machine and that has happened with the Steam Deck. It's why Steam Deck is so successful is the devs are tailoring the experience to make sure their games can play on that plat form and they have the verification system. It seems like Xbox is taking that very seriously and they are also trying to do that on The Ally. So I am choosing to believe that it is going to work. I think that the biggest thing of going against the Ally X is going to be if there's some crazy fatal flaw that reviewers catch. Like yeah, but I don't think there's going to be and I think that that is going to be the. They're putting more into this. We already know that the Rog Ally is awesome.

[Greg Miller]

Awesome. Yeah. I love my allies. Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

So it's like it's. This is going to be a great product period. Is it something that you should buy over a Steam Deck? Not necessarily. I think that the Steam Deck is still going to be the one that the majority of developers are looking at and are like we're going to design for this. So does it need the extra power? I don't know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The Steam Deck really does get the job done. Right. Like I think that for me I own both a Rog Ally and I own a Steam Deck and my Rog Ally just collects dust because my Steam Deck deck all it's to what Tim said. Right.

[Andy Cortez]

Like that over. What are you doing?

[Andrea Rene]

You definitely don't need.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I keep reading cuz Kevin asked for it like a long time ago. But like if you want to let me know cuz right now, yeah, Kevin.

[Greg Miller]

Can take my Steam.

[Andrea Rene]

You can arm wrestle Kevin but I.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Think he wants an Rog specifically fair. But either way, right, like I look at both those things and my Steam Deck just has. There's the compatibility. I've already set it up with all the alleged emulation stuff that I got going.

[Greg Miller]

See I think that's the thing for me with the Rog Ally easy to use. I like it more than the Steam Deck because it runs the native PC AAA games I'm trying to play better than my Steam Deck. Ran them with less hurdles and less protons and all this jazz. The. The cumbersome nature and the hurdles I thought I would have to cross on the Rog are the ones I actually had to do on Steam Deck which again were like click this, that doesn't work. Do this Andy, make it work, that kind of thing. Whereas like the Rog doesn't do that for me now. I'm not doing alleged. I'm not doing alleged. Yes, 100% I'm not doing the alleged emulation. I'm not doing anything other than trying to play games and I'm sure I adore my rag that again for the Xbox to this question. Wait for review since we're so close. But I'm still hyped. For it with the idea of it launching into this Xbox ecosystem not eating up as much memory, hopefully running faster and better than what I already have and love. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And I'm sure like the emulation stuff probably I imagine might even work better on the Rog Ally. Like I don't know what the comparison is there but I think for me with Steam Deck it comes down to how it kind of is the console the closest to a console experience you can have on a PC product. Right where I booted up it up. It's full screen Steam mode and everything's just set up the way that I want it to be set up. Which I know on the Asus Rog Ally I could probably get it there but I already have it there with my Steam.

[Greg Miller]

Fair enough.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, totally everything I need it to be. Also, does anybody want a donut later? I can pass these out.

[Andrea Rene]

No, not right. I feel like if I start eating a donut with that much frosting, it's just going to go everywhere.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's fair.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

Messy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

No aces says it's not that much better than your current ally Greg. Sure. But it's got the grips which I find more comfortable. This and this has been like on ongoing conversation I've said of like having the Rog Ally X right now for a year. Falling in love with that. That's a review one they sent us. Obviously if they were to take that away I would, I would throw the thousand dollars at this new one. Yeah. I also believe that it's going to be good.

[Tim Gettys]

The, the new one is significantly better than the one you have. Like significantly better. But the question there is is I think is the better going to be used correctly and optimized and that is a big question.

[Greg Miller]

We will wait and see and we'll keep you posted here on kind of funny games because of your support. Let's get out of this Xbox business and go to Story number Details emerge on Xbox Fox Number two Details emerge on Xbox's canceled Uncharted rival. This is Project Ranger and Andy Robinson over at vgc. A new video has unearthed alleged details on the canceled Xbox exclusive Project Ranger, an uncharted style action adventure game once planned for Xbox One. Project Ranger is said to be the game famously teased via a 30 second trailer during Xbox's E3 2013 press conference in Nevada. Never seen again at the time the title was attached to Black Tusk Studios, which would later be renamed the Coalition to Take Over Stewardship of the Gears of War franchise. A new video by did you'd Know Gaming investigates the fate of the mysterious project, revealing that it was to be Xbox's answer to Sony's Uncharted series. In short, the idea for this game was Uncharted with spies, says researcher Liam Robertson. An action packed third person shooter where the player controlled secret agents on high octane espionage missions in various cities around the world. End quote. Pre production on Ranger began in early 2012, it's claimed, with the Mission Impossible movie cited as a strong influence on the project's direction. The game would feature a single male protagonist who would use Bond style gadgets to distract enemies and hack scenery. The game was also planned to include Kinect functionality, with players able to change their primary weapons, fire mode, or ask for tips from their handler by speaking to the sensor. Thank God that never happened. The E3 teaser, which was made using Unreal Engine, was reportedly based on a Shanghai mission planned for the game in which players would have to infiltrate an building occupied by terrorists. Ultimately, Project Ranger's development was cut short after the opportunity arose for Microsoft to revive a classic series. In late 2013, Microsoft acquired Gears of War from Epic Games, and Black Tusk felt like it was good to take over the blub series. In early 2014, the decision was made officially in a meeting with the studio's wider team that Ranger would be canceled in favor of a new Gears of War. Shortly after the company was renamed the Coalition Blessing. What could have Been Man, I've, I've.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Asked for this before. I've so badly wanted an Uncharted style game, but with a mission possible aesthetic and like that kind of spy espionage story with like big action set pieces. I just want Naughty Dog to make Mission Impossible and not literally. Like I don't want them to like make another ip, but like I want, I don't want them to make like a licensed IP like that. But I do want that style of game made with quality.

[Greg Miller]

I'm.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I got my fingers crossed that this 007 game we got coming up is going to fulfill that for me because. Because we don't have enough of these types of games coming out.

[Greg Miller]

Andrea, do you need a Mission Impossible game?

[Andrea Rene]

I would play it. I think I see an Uncharted rival and I say, well, they already have Indiana Jones and that game did pretty well. Yeah, they were going to have perfect spies. You know, it's, you know, much more like an actual Uncharted rival.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, for sure.

[Andrea Rene]

But I think that this type of game would do well. But right now this sounds like a 2 to $400 million idea to really Execute it well. And people aren't making those right now.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Fair enough.

[Greg Miller]

Timothy, you always love an uncharted style.

[Tim Gettys]

Of course I do.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

I am. I'm so old. I just. I remember this. Like, I remember Mitch Dyer about this. Like, this is crazy. Yeah. The Black TUS Studios. That's nuts. And, yeah, to see just where we're at with all of this, it's like, yeah, this could have been awesome. And I do think that there was a time that this could have hit, but we're so far from that time. And, yeah, it's. It's sad that I think that we're just gonna get less of these type of things than. Than more so. I would love to see it. Never think we will.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No.

[Tim Gettys]

Perfect dark could have been the.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was gonna say.

[Tim Gettys]

Oopsies.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was gonna say. Reading this, I'm like, I get a lot of perfect dark from.

[Andrea Rene]

So sad.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. I just want. I just want more of this genre. It doesn't even need to be the most triple A of AAA things. I just to want. Want more spy espionage.

[Tim Gettys]

I want Mind's Eye.

[Greg Miller]

I was going to say, what about.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know, what? Okay. More aaa. The Mind's Eye.

[Andy Cortez]

You know what I mean?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like, give me that sweet spot.

[Greg Miller]

Give me, like, Bond will give it to you. Who? Bond.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think Bond will. I want Hayes Light Studios to give me one.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, wow.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I feel like they. They got the skill. Like, they got the moment to moment. Like, you know, action set pieces and all that. Right. Like, I think there's something. The thing about Mission Impossible Possible that I love is that Mission Impossible ups the ante for, like, to an extent, to where, like, you're. You're on the edge of your seat, right? Oh, man. This person needs to do this thing while being undercover while this other person's, like, trying to hack into the thing while this. While, like, person number one. Oh, man, there's.

[Greg Miller]

That'd be cool.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The guards are coming by. Like, you need to now hurry up or do whatever. Like, there's a level of tension and a level of, like, just cool happening.

[Greg Miller]

I'm gonna turn off the cert of the. The cameras in 30 seconds. You got to be ready to go.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And, like, you know, I think you.

[Greg Miller]

Should go work at Hazel Hayes Light Hit.

[Andrea Rene]

You know, Were you a Splinter Cell fan?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know, I never got beeped through.

[Greg Miller]

The wall like a goddamn Kool Aid, man.

[Andrea Rene]

It's interesting that you are really into the this genre, but I would recommend you check out that franchise.

[Andy Cortez]

You know what I did Play a.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Little bit of conviction, I want to say. And conviction. Yeah, that I remember. I remember liking that one a lot. You know what it is? It's the Metal Gear Solid fan in me as well. We just haven't had a Metal Gear Solid in so long.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Isn't very soon maybe that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean that's probably gonna be sooner.

[Greg Miller]

Remember everybody, this is the 2000th episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily. It we're trying to get 2000 YouTube super chats over on YouTube.com kind of funny games. They don't have to be big dollar amounts. We just want the overall number. Andy, Mike, how are we doing?

[Mike Mahardy]

How are we doing? Andy, how are we doing?

[Greg Miller]

I'm head down for my life.

[Andy Cortez]

We are. We really are. Roger last updated me at 10:42. So that was 10 minutes ago. We are at 282 super chats and.

[Mike Mahardy]

I'm collecting them, man.

[Andy Cortez]

He's putting them on and he taught.

[Mike Mahardy]

Me how to take photos on the computer, man.

[Greg Miller]

It's crazy stuff. Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

But I'm cute.

[Andy Cortez]

Every super chat and I was like oh you should like check out snipping tool. And he leaned over and he was like how do I do that?

[Andrea Rene]

Oh my goodness.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah man. We're doing it, dude.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You get some quick hits.

[Greg Miller]

Why don't they just. If you logged in then you could break out the chat and just do it like there all soup.

[Andy Cortez]

You know there's so many.

[Greg Miller]

I have them open as well. What are you talking about?

[Andy Cortez]

Really important one from Omar 5 super chat says hi Mike. Nice jacket.

[Mike Mahardy]

Thank you. So you got 450 from Sears.

[Gary Whitta]

Got it.

[Andy Cortez]

You got a good compliment right there. We also had one from the homie, the legendary Radic from CD Project RED who wanted to congratulate us on 2000 episodes.

[Greg Miller]

I love that. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Let's move on to story number three. Funcom is closing Metal Hellsinger developer the Outsiders this is Chris Kerr at Game Developers Developer Metal Hellsinger developer the Outsiders is being shuttered by parent company Funcom. The Outsiders founder and creative director David Goldfarb shared the news on Blue sky and explained the decade old studio will be closing its doors. The news comes days after Funcom confirmed it would be making layoffs. Just months after million seller Dune Awakening became the biggest release in its history. Funcom didn't explain how many people will be impacted by the cuts, but we now know that one internal studio has been torched. The Outsiders is credited with working on Dune Awakening. It's unclear how many people will lose their jobs at the Stockholm studio as a result of the closure. Andrea, you're back. But the news never changes.

[Andrea Rene]

There's a reason why I got out of news, Greg, and this story is exactly it. It's really sad, it's disappointing. We don't want to see people lose their jobs. We don't want to see creative be cut off from their work. But what are you gonna do?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I remember Metal Hellsinger. I didn't play it. Bless. Was this a you or an Andy game?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It was mostly Andy.

[Andy Cortez]

That's a me game, man. Metal Hellsinger was so damn good.

[Greg Miller]

Can you give me the synopsis? This is the one to the beat I'm running around shooting.

[Andy Cortez]

Yes. Troy Baker is kind of your little like side character who was always with you. And it is a rhythm first person shooter game game and it was fantastic. It pretty much just plays like Doom, but different weapons act different ways. And then you are always kind of like, you know, your crosshairs are in the middle and you want to hit those shots on the beat. And it is some of the most hype you've ever experienced when you are waiting to hit that one shot when the beat drops after the next measure. It's really, really awesome. The some of the coolest funnest boss fights I've experienced as well. And yeah, I think it, I think this is a magic or a massive tragedy because I, I, I think Metal Hell Singer was like number seven on my game of the year that year. It's one that I highly recommend to anybody who cares about first person shooters, who cares about Doom, or who cares about rhythm games.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I remember Shout out of course to the folks who made this. They came up to me at SGF and were like big kind of funny fans. They'd already heard Andy talk about it. They wanted to thank us for supporting the game. So it sucks to see them here. Especially on the heels of Dune Awakening, quote unquote, biggest release of the year.

[Tim Gettys]

Tim Wild. I mean like what, what a major success dude Awakening is. And it just sucks that we so often are pairing major success and win stories with these sad stories. And it's just like, God, we gotta solve that problem somehow. And it seems like we're not getting closer to being able to do that. Like Dune Awakening has been such a major win critically and financially for them. So this is definitely a bummer. And it, it really just makes you kind of look and go like, what's going on?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, yeah. I echo everything you guys are talking about and yeah, like I, you know, Dune Awakening is one that seemingly maybe even more successful than was anticipated, at least for my end. Right. Like Dune Awakening I was kind of looking forward to just because I was newly into Dune from watching, you know. What's the name of the actor? Timothy. Oh yeah, watching Timothy Chalamet.

[Tim Gettys]

No, I thought you were doing some Tom Steamboat.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was about to say Tom Holland. I was like, that's not the guy. Who's the guy?

[Greg Miller]

Holland.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But yeah, see Timothy Chalamet do his thing in the movie. I was like, oh, let's go. I want to live in this world. And yeah, Dune Awakening came out and I played that stream with Mike, Andy and Nick and like seeing what that game is doing, I'm like, damn, dude, that's crazy. That like this game seems really good. It lives in this universe and is authentic to this universe. And Nick Scarpino really likes it. Also. Gary Widow really likes it. Right. And like it seems like it's really doing something out.

[Greg Miller]

You can get the olds.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, exactly. Like they're able to get like the, the, the old movies.

[Andrea Rene]

Well, the old are the ones who like Dune, Greg.

[Greg Miller]

Hey, that's true.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That is true.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, it's not, not a bad point. I just loved it when Nick made a comment to Gary Widow of you should come play Dune with us. And then Nick wouldn't play Dune with Gary Whitta for the longest time. And now Gary Whitta is like the Dune overlord. From what I understand, he's running like the biggest business in the world.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Nissan Al Gaib.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, Good work, good use, good use. I like that one. Tim, I got bad news for you. Number four. PlayStation quietly cancels the remaining PlayStation, the concert 2025 tour dates, and you us. This is Andy Robinson at VGC. PlayStation appears to have quietly canceled virtually all its remaining 2025 dates for its PlayStation the concert events in the US PlayStation the concert is a live show featuring music from across PlayStation's 30 year history. History, notably including music composed from the Last of Us.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm gonna stop you real quick. Can you unplug and replug in your microphone?

[Greg Miller]

Reload, reload.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

There you go.

[Greg Miller]

Music from the Last of Us. Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima and God of War Tour kicked off in the UK earlier this year with shows taking place in multiple cities including London and Glasgow. Glasgow. Glasgow. Glasgow. I got there. Everybody calm down. Andy, tell them to calm down.

[Andy Cortez]

Glasgow. Glasgow.

[Greg Miller]

I love Glasgow.

[Gary Whitta]

I love 2000 episodes of nothing Anyway.

[Andy Cortez]

I love Greg trying to pronounce words anyway.

[Greg Miller]

However, the tour's European run seemingly ran into trouble with several events reportedly canceled in countries such as Poland, Sweden and Norway, Italy and others planned for Germany. Germany, Budapest Pushback until the summer. Now it appears ticket buyers for the PlayStation PlayStation. The concerts US dates are set. A similar set for similar disappointment after social media users reported being notified of cancellations for planned 2025 events in Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, Charlotte and more. According to TicketMaster previously announced 2025 dates for New York, Washington, D.C. grand Rapids, Huntsville, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia have all been canceled. Skip that one.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

One city.

[Tim Gettys]

Reading.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, reading. Sorry.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Reading. Okay. I didn't know if it was like a.

[Greg Miller]

Well now for the record, that could be. Is it reading or is it reading? This is what happens when an international person writes it. No one knows what reading we're talking about. And also nobody cares. Reading. Pennsylvania. Reading. Nobody knows. Back me up here.

[Andy Cortez]

Reading.

[Greg Miller]

Andy.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, it's reading. I mean I also just saw a town in New York that. That looks like Chile but is shy Lie.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, whoa.

[Tim Gettys]

Someone with you.

[Andrea Rene]

Yes. This is what I said. I go. I go. That's a fake thing. It's a fake thing. That's not real. Apparently it is real.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

To your offense, Greg. I feel like reading. No offense to Reading. You don't belong between.

[Greg Miller]

That's what I'm saying. Andy Robinson looked at a list of dates and he's like, I guess this is a major city.

[Tim Gettys]

One city's not here.

[Greg Miller]

San Francisco.

[Tim Gettys]

San Francisco. My ticket not canceled yet.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Tim Gettys]

Ticket. Tickets still available.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Tim Gettys]

For the February 16th show, I think. Yeah. So I'm interested. I expect it will be canceled. I am bummed by that, obviously. Yeah, it's. I already talked about my thoughts on, on the show before where I think the arrangements are amazing. I think that the production value is just being put in the wrong places with it. And so far I've been kind of like let down by how they set this up. Is like this is going to be the best video game concert production you've ever seen scene. And it's simply not. And a big part of that was the reliance on pre recorded audio. So there are very limited amount of musicians on the stage and it's mainly just like piped in audio, playing certain instruments and vocals that like you should be performing this on stage.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Andrea Rene]

So the whole point of a concert.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

Is to see musicians perform.

[Tim Gettys]

It is. And there, there are musicians and they are great. Again, great arrangements. And I've watched this entire show on YouTube. YouTube already and it, it's good.

[Greg Miller]

It's.

[Tim Gettys]

And I'm still excited to see it if it still happens, but bummed to see this all happen. It was definitely a huge investment for them. So yeah, I, this sucks to see and I, I, I wonder why and it's probably because it's not selling.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah, I want to talk about that but I do want from the super chats, can you guys give me sort by first names comment on this?

[Andy Cortez]

I sure can. That's the one I was going to read. Greg. I genuinely enjoyed PlayStation the combination concert in London earlier this year. I think that's a shame. Says Sword by first name.

[Greg Miller]

I think it's interesting, you know, going to see video game music. Not for every video game fan of course, but of course video games Live went on for many a year going on and doing that and I think it's interesting to have this PlayStation centric thing when and I know this is little apples and oranges but stick with my reference with PSX Dead where psx I feel like when PSX were happening that was, that was like the pinnacle of PlayStation. We're a community. There's podcast beyond, there's all these other, there's this, there's games, there's things where we love Troy and then they killed that and I feel like PlayStation killed all their faces and they're just this monolith of we are PlayStation the brand. And that's like not something that's easy for people to be like. I with this, I connect with this in a world where I'm looking to belong. I belong to PlayStation anymore. So then to come out and do this, it's of kind, kind of like yeah, I like the music in the Last of Us, but what do I want to go see that in concert? Do I want to do something else my time? Blah blah blah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What's the name of the dude that was in the commercials?

[Greg Miller]

Kevin Marcus.

[Tim Gettys]

Kevin and Marcus Sellers.

[Greg Miller]

Right. Marcus for psp. Remember Kevin Butler.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think we need another. We need a new Kevin Butler.

[Tim Gettys]

Bring him back.

[Greg Miller]

Just set. I was going to say just we settled the lawsuit. Get Kevin Butler back on it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

His lawsuit.

[Greg Miller]

Oh yeah. You don't remember this Mario Kart. Oh, dude, it was great. They used him as he was Kevin Butler on PlayStation Forever. And then he didn't read his contract, I guess and so he took a Firestone ad where he played played Wii.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, Internet blue. Oh, you can't.

[Greg Miller]

Butler. But it seems first cancellation. Yeah, the first cancellation. That's when the world learned the power. I think fandom of PlayStation's in an interesting Spot.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's. Yeah, I feel like I don't. And maybe this is. This is probably very. Most likely my algorithm. Right. Like, I feel like most of the fandom I see on my timeline Z Xbox. Like, I feel like I don't see. I don't see PlayStation.

[Greg Miller]

Is it just them though, selling back their Xboxes? That's what my Reddit feed has been dominated by people coming to the place.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Honestly, it's just people fighting. The entire Xbox community is fighting on my timeline. I don't see anybody from like Nintendo, PlayStation, PC. It's just chaos. That I say in my timeline.

[Andrea Rene]

I think PlayStation as a brand has just dramatically changed how they're representing themselves in marketing and in community spaces. Like you said, they're just not there anymore. I think back to all of the events that PlayStation used to do that we as members of the media would go to, and they've scaled those back dramatically and they are having much smaller events targeted around key AAAs and they're not doing these long marketing cycles leading up to the AAA's. Like, I remember, you know, when we got to summer Game fest and I was really surprised that PlayStation wasn't going to be at play days, but they were doing this red carpet event for death stranding. And then I was like, wait a minute, is death stranding to coming out really soon? It feels like I haven't heard anything or seen any media around that. And I think it just represents an overall shift in what they're doing with the brand. But I mean, they're still quietly putting out some of the best video games that are being made today for. For modern consoles. And I. And I am fully, you know, confident that their business is strong and doing well. It just, like you said, it doesn't have that community and camaraderie and that like, we all love playing games together on our PlayStation, love talking about our PlayStation fandom. And I think that is a tragedy. I think it is sad that that community is not as strong as it once.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What are like the Ghost of Yote activations that are happening? You know, I mean, like, what are. Oh, yeah, yeah, you're right. There is the beer, the.

[Andy Cortez]

The theater stuff to their Alamo Drafthouse where they're shown all those films that inspired the game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's fair. I didn't think. But that feels like such a ritzy, upscale, like, ooh, you got to go.

[Gary Whitta]

To Alamo Drafthouse and all that kind of stuff. It doesn't feel like a bringing community thing together.

[Greg Miller]

It feel when they have the truck.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Hey, film snobs. PlayStation truck. I want pop ups. I want to go see what they pop up where I can go. And I feel like I'm in the. Like I'm in the setting, you know what I mean? I want the grass, I want the hills. I want the aurora borealis in that one scene. Spoilers.

[Greg Miller]

There being a giant ghost of yote activation would be big news. But it's our 2000s episode. I want some big super chats. Andy, Mike, what do you got for me?

[Mike Mahardy]

You ready to start going back and forth for some fun? It's finally our time. Of course. Don't get the super chat throughout this like Matt Piscatella did on 2000. Congratulations. Team Jupiter with the happy 2000. And Spartan 2842 says, thank you KF, for all you do. I started my weight loss journey shortly. Shortly after discovering kind of kind of funny and use kind of funny games daily to mark when I needed to get up and exercise. Here I am almost eight years later, £150 down. Keep it up. Love you guys. Spartan, that's my guy right there.

[Andy Cortez]

That's awesome.

[Mike Mahardy]

Congratulations.

[Andy Cortez]

We got Red Hudson saying that opening montage got me hella emotional. Kind of funny forever 2000. And then the rest of it got cut off because I don't know if Mike was using the snipping tool correctly.

[Greg Miller]

I'm learning.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I'm learning.

[Greg Miller]

There's a lot of stuff.

[Andy Cortez]

Stuff going on. R.L. ramsey says, Congratulations. Kind of funny for 2000 episodes of KFGD. Y' all are a beacon of light each day and I appreciate all that you do. Hashtag kf10. I like that. We're kind of the GDQ. Oh, we get to raise like donation desk. I love this. This is great. Imran is my bridge to coming over here. Then bless when he had a show with the late but great Gabe Patillo. Yeah, says Frolicious. Thank you, Frolicious, for your super chat as well.

[Mike Mahardy]

Nimble Trent writes in and says miles away is forever iconic. Congrats on 2000s. I love Gary.

[Greg Miller]

I think about.

[Andy Cortez]

I think about him all the time. Ed Ferrara, $10 super chat says. Been listening to you guys for the past year and I can't thank you enough for making every day a little easier to get through. Congrats on 2K. I plan to be right here for when you for the next 2000 episodes.

[Mike Mahardy]

Ed also says, by the way, Greg, did Jeff Jarrett tell you I sent my regards? If he did, he didn't. Then you're right. He's the biggest heel in the biz.

[Greg Miller]

He never mentioned you.

[Andy Cortez]

John Van Pelt says, let's not forget co CEO Tim Geddes is throwing a huge show to distract us from him releasing the Mexico files. Release the files, Tim. Go Team Orange.

[Tim Gettys]

You'll never know what happened in Mexico. I'm getting dangerously close to bad things.

[Mike Mahardy]

You know what Fine Paul writes in it says happy kind of funny. Games daily 2k. I still remember the first first episode.

[Andy Cortez]

And we are also nearing the 400 super super chat mark. By the way, we have a super chat here from Real deal J. O' Neill, which is really, really good name says congrats kf. Thanks for being part of our lives and killing it with the News Daily. Hope you all reach thousand super chats. Here's to 2,000 more. Love you guys.

[Greg Miller]

On YouTube alone, there's nearly 4,000 people watching. So right now of just 2,000 of you gave a dollar on a super chat. We could could do it and crush it. Please do it.

[Andrea Rene]

I think you guys missed the many super chats. It said Andrea Renee Goat KFGD host.

[Greg Miller]

There was a lot about Andrea.

[Andrea Rene]

I feel like you just need to read all of them.

[Greg Miller]

They said nice jacket. Yeah. Arturo Sean Robo bartender Andrea is the best.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Joe Farrelli says this one is for Andrea. Like what?

[Greg Miller]

Like.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, like.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like when your favorite aunt comes to visit.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Andrea Rene]

Yes. Coolant Andy.

[Andy Cortez]

Let's see. We have techias with a massive $100 super chat. Extremely generous saying. I just want to say I love you guys. Happy 2000. We have one from Sword by First Name who says cup boards.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Cupboards.

[Greg Miller]

You know what I mean?

[Andy Cortez]

That's how you spelled it.

[Greg Miller]

There's no space.

[Andy Cortez]

By the way, don't come at me chat. This is how Blessing spelled it. Like the shift blame happens so fast right there. Micah Fornier says been here since episode one. I bought shirts for me and my girlfriend. Congrats on 2000. That's right. Kind of funny.com store.

[Tim Gettys]

Wow.

[Andy Cortez]

All of the retro throwback merch and new stuff as well.

[Mike Mahardy]

Some cool merch. Cam writes it and says let's get to 2K. Been supporting Greg since podcast beyond in 09 and I don't plan on going anywhere. Here's to 2000 more.

[Greg Miller]

A lot of $1 super chats coming in as I urged you all to try to make it happen. But Alex J. Sandoval coming through with 100 dol. KFGD is a huge part of my routine. So much so that when I pick up my 6 year old nephew, he says, tio, are you watching Kinda Funny games daily? Thank you all for enriching my love of games and helping me both lose parentheses Ubisoft and gain parentheses Sony money with not financial advice.

[Andy Cortez]

Eric aspires says shout out to Kinda Funny on behalf of my husband Drew, who's been supporting Kinda Funny forever. It's his birthday this week, so please send Drew some love. Happy birthday.

[Greg Miller]

Happy birthday.

[Andrea Rene]

Happy birthday.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Great episode to bring, like the podcast party and stuff I was planning.

[Greg Miller]

No, it's not. It's about us. You're right. It's about us. All right, we'll get to the birthday things.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I want to bring in one from thwarted junk, who wrote in way earlier with $20 and says started watching back in 2016, then fell off, came back in 2023 and haven't missed an episode since. I always thought Barrett was saying epic game does it instead of a baker's dozen until Kevin said it.

[Greg Miller]

Love you guys.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's awesome.

[Andy Cortez]

Yang Fam says, two weeks ago I asked my girlfriend to marry me. She said yes. Birthday, birthday tax as well. KFG, congrats, congrats.

[Greg Miller]

Congratulations. Big fresh 37 super chat says Floradora. Sign of a very old Greg Miller fan. Thank you very much. And then I got one here for Scott for 50 on a super chat. Congrats. KF on 2000. Y' all literally in my ears. B day on my life. I love all of you so much. Comma will be here till end bars.

[Mike Mahardy]

No cap.

[Greg Miller]

It's hard sometimes to get it all all in, you know, but you got it there.

[Andy Cortez]

You got it. Ty says, I love you, middle guy. Thank you.

[Mike Mahardy]

I like that one. I was gonna read that one.

[Andy Cortez]

Thank you, Ty.

[Mike Mahardy]

One shot Thrills writes in, says just started watching after the ten year celebration, but I've enjoyed the show becoming a part of my daily routine.

[Andy Cortez]

Danielle z with a $5 super chat. Thank you for your continued generosity. She says, Happy 2000. Love you all.

[Tim Gettys]

At Eggin. Hart says, I saw myself in the kind of Funny Live three footage in the intro. That's awesome. Very, very cool.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah. What is kind of Funny Live coming back, guys, Got an announcement to make right now.

[Andy Cortez]

No, no, that was a super.

[Andrea Rene]

I asked everybody.

[Andy Cortez]

I was hoping to mark down a little bit earlier. I kind of, you know, just went matrix.

[Mike Mahardy]

Now it's gone.

[Andy Cortez]

We can't get into kernels right now, Mike. But the question was asking when's the next kind of Funny Live event?

[Mike Mahardy]

That's a great question.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

When will the people get to see you and I live.

[Andy Cortez]

I mean, I was hoping just you and Roger or something like.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah. That's a great question.

[Mike Mahardy]

That's a great question.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Tim.

[Greg Miller]

Well, these have been big super chats and we still have a lot more show to go. But if I wanted something smaller, say the tiniest news I need to know about, where would I go? Andrea, why?

[Andrea Rene]

You'd go to our last story, the WE News Channel, where we cover all the small news items you need to know about.

[Greg Miller]

Okay. I was wondering if we'd have it on the set. I should have known better. Number five, the Wii News. Sonic is partnering with the Olympics.

[Tim Gettys]

They're back, baby.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Chris. So.

[Tim Gettys]

Thank you, Bear.

[Andrea Rene]

This is the brand, like collaboration.

[Tim Gettys]

No, no, no, no.

[Greg Miller]

Turn this off, Bear. I'm tired. Well, we're excited to announce our upcoming Olympic Rings licensing collaboration with the International Olympic Committee, celebrating the Olympic brand and Sonic the Hedgehog. Stay tuned for more info in 2026.

[Tim Gettys]

Mario's pissed.

[Andy Cortez]

You know what I mean?

[Tim Gettys]

Nintendo's just like, get this kart racer out of here. You're trying to come for us. You're trying to come for the crown. Mario, could you race with you anymore?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I know there's a meme about how I get so excited for Sonic things, but if we could all be real for a second and acknowledge that this looks ill as hell.

[Tim Gettys]

Let's be real.

[Greg Miller]

Let's be real.

[Andrea Rene]

The merchandising team knocked it out of the park.

[Greg Miller]

I really like.

[Andrea Rene]

These are all very good.

[Greg Miller]

This is really good. Yeah. I'd buy that shirt. I'd buy that shirt for sure. Skate has reached 15 million players, Mike. Wow.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Holy shit.

[Mike Mahardy]

Those big numbers.

[Greg Miller]

Are we caveman and back in tomorrow for season one. Season one, baby. Can't wait. Season one launches tomorrow, everybody. I'm stoked. From Gematsu, the unannounced alien Fireteam Elite 2 has been raided by the ESRB. Seems to be published by Daybreak Game Company this time. Mike, we enjoyed. Hey, now, we enjoyed Fireteam Elite.

[Mike Mahardy]

Let's keep an eye out on that one. I like that.

[Greg Miller]

I don't know why. Aliens.

[Andy Cortez]

I don't know why I thought you meant raided like the FBI raids people. Whoa. Really dangerous stuff right there for PC gamers.

[Greg Miller]

Steam players are upset over another AAA game coming to PC and not really running optimally. Over on Reddit, posts about a hotly anticipated title dominated our Steam, with users such as Excel lover. Excel lover420 stating it ran fine on consoles. Why is it like this? Another user a User kicked in the head by a donkey 69 posted I have an RTX 5080 and it melted on low settings. When asked about a fix, the CEO of the studio said we're slowly working on an update. Sadly, a hot fix is so far away. If I wanted something more immediate, say what's coming to mom and Grop shops today? Where would I go go?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Who wants the answer? The official list of upcoming software across each and every platform as listed by Kinda Funny Games Daily show hosts each and every weekday.

[Greg Miller]

Great job.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Out Today. I do have a special segment for Out Today since Out Today is a segment we previously used to do that's been replaced by Wii News. But I have a fun mini game showdown round based off of Out Today. So I'm going to have to angle my laptop away from Tim Geddes and.

[Greg Miller]

The rest of the he is another cheater today. Since we are oh I'm so real. Since it is showdown. I know that's a show a lot of people don't watch. I would like to point out I am the reigning champion. I led Team Blue to its third straight championship and then I won the Nick Scarpino season. And then I am currently I have two stars.

[Gary Whitta]

Currently.

[Greg Miller]

Currently.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Today we're playing the Out Today game. This is not worth a star by the way. This is just a fun exhibition.

[Greg Miller]

Just fun. This exhibition?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Fun exhibition. The rules are simple. I've compiled old Out Today segments of KFCD where we used to list every single game coming out in a given day. I've slid in one fake game among the list of games. I'm going to go around the table after each list. Your job is to guess which of these games is the fake game. I've hidden in the list. We've got just four rounds. Each correct answer is 10 points. Contestants, are you ready?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Key points by myself by the way. So bear with me here. The first one. This is from June 20, 2017 aka the second ever episode of Kind of Funny Games Daily. I got four games here. One of them is Fake Out Today we got Chess Ultra for PS4 and VR Dead by Daylight for PS4. Next. Machina for PS4 and PC and Lo Fi Girl. The game for Switch.

[Greg Miller]

Let's start with Girl A game. I'm locking it in.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Andrea, what's your answer?

[Andrea Rene]

Oh my gosh. Can you read them again?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. You got Chess Ultra Dead by Daylight next month. Machina and Lo Fi Girl.

[Andrea Rene]

The game I'm gonna go with next.

[Tim Gettys]

Machina Tim Lo Fi Girl.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The correct answer is Lo Fi Girl, the game. That is 10 points for.

[Andrea Rene]

That's for sure. That was a real thing.

[Tim Gettys]

And Greg, I think it is came out then.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't think it's a real thing.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Loi Girls are real.

[Tim Gettys]

There was a Loi Girl game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Was there? Oh, I thought I made that up. Well, there you go. Didn't come out that day though. Next round. This is from August 7, 201818 out today.

[Greg Miller]

Again.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

These are four games. You got Minecraft Story Mode Season 2 for Switch. Super Blackjack Battle 2 Turbo Edition, the Card warriors for Switch. Crossword Defenders for PS4 and PS Vita and Poop Slinger for PS4. Which one of those is the fake game? Let's start off with Tim.

[Tim Gettys]

I'm gonna go with the Super Card Battle. Whatever.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The long one.

[Greg Miller]

One. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Andrea.

[Andrea Rene]

Poop Slinger. That can't possibly be real.

[Greg Miller]

Greg Miller, Minecraft season two. There was no season two.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The correct answer. Crossword Defenders. None of you guys got season two.

[Greg Miller]

Telltale going to business by then.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And there was a game called poop slinger for PS4 that was.

[Andrea Rene]

And lo Fi Girl was also real.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, cool.

[Andrea Rene]

The real game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

When did it come out?

[Andrea Rene]

I don't know. I just saw the Steam thing.

[Greg Miller]

She's not on trial here. It's you.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay, round three. This one is from October 29, 2021. Out today we got Mario Party Superstars for Switch. Holy cow. Milking Simulator for Switch. Ghosts and Apples for Switch. And Adventure Time. The Roguelite for Switch. Let's start off with Greg Miller, Ghosts and Apples. Rex's Ghost and Apples.

[Andrea Rene]

Andrea the Cow one.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Tim.

[Tim Gettys]

Can you read the last three again?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Holy cow. Milking Simulator for Switch. Ghosts and Apples for Switch. Adventure Time. The Roguelike for Switch.

[Tim Gettys]

Ghosts and Apples.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The correct answer. Adventure Time. The Roguelike.

[Andrea Rene]

My goodness.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

For Switch. No, I was about to say I.

[Andy Cortez]

Don'T think Adventure Time ever had a roguelike.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, it did not. Though they did have an Adventure Time game, didn't they?

[Greg Miller]

Yes, a couple.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And that brings us to our fourth and final round about today, the the game. This is from February 4th, 2022. Out today we got Cousins Quest for Steam.

[Gary Whitta]

Frog Ball.

[Greg Miller]

Very, very popular game in Kansas. Usually ends with a cross eyed baby. Got him. Andy. I got up.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Cousin's Quest for Switch or sorry, Cousin's Quest for Steam. You got Frogball Rerolled for Switch. Math Jim for Switch. And Millie and Molly for Switch.

[Andrea Rene]

Is it Math Gym or Math Gem?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Math Gym. So G G Y like I'm going.

[Andrea Rene]

To pump iron at the gym.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Exactly. Math. The gym. Let's start with Tim.

[Tim Gettys]

Math Jim.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Tim says math Jim. Andrea.

[Andrea Rene]

I mean all of these sound fake to me, but that means they're probably all real. I'm gonna go with frog ball. Rerolled.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Greg.

[Greg Miller]

I'm saying frog ball as well.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The correct answer. Cousin's quest.

[Andrea Rene]

Damn it.

[Greg Miller]

Damn.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Meaning that does bring us to the end of the game. Meaning with 10 points each, Greg and Tim are the. The victors. Congratulations.

[Greg Miller]

Great. Congratulations, Tim. Yeah. Would you like to risk it all and do one more?

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Okay. I can't make it up. You have some kind of beauty bullshit in your little thing. What do you got for me?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know what, just, just for that I'm pulling up.

[Andrea Rene]

I mean I could pull up a. A random KFG notes that are in my drive and can you make up.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

A random game on the spot?

[Andrea Rene]

Of course I can.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, okay. I'm letting Andrew.

[Andrea Rene]

Okay, just give me one second here to find an old.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, give me a couple super chats while that happens. Ready?

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, you go first.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, James wood with a two dollar super chat says congrats on 2K. Kind of funny. Can't wait. Can't wait to watch the next 2K. And then we have a 99 cent one which is I think the easiest way that we're going to try to hit the 2000 goal. 99 cent 1 with no message just for. Just Malloy. Just Malloy.

[Mike Mahardy]

John Alexander says my favorite memory is Gary and Jared just talking for 40 plus plus minutes before even getting into the actual news. Here's to another 2,000 plus.

[Greg Miller]

We used to call it View Cancer. You know what I mean?

[Andy Cortez]

Riyadh with a five dollar super chat says just started watching during the pandemic and have been here ever since. From a fellow Bay Area native. Thank you for everything you do. See you all at 4,000.

[Mike Mahardy]

Brandon Mills write in and says I can't stop crying. Love you all. Congrats on the day. A big emotional day today. Congratulations.

[Andy Cortez]

Five dollar super chat from Diegos says Mike, I need to know where does the final. Where does Final Fantasy X rank on your all time list?

[Mike Mahardy]

That's a great list. You know, top 100. You have to keep an eye out. Where does it list?

[Greg Miller]

I don't know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

One day.

[Mike Mahardy]

You know what I mean? I'm playing Digimon now.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, can I give a shout out? Greg, I told you last week that I was going to a board game thing this weekend, right?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

While I was there on Saturday, I was hanging out and one of the dudes there, his name's Patrick, we were chatting and like, video games came up because most people who go to that board, board, game night, they work in video games or whatever. And he was like, you do journalism, right? I'm like, journalism. You know, it's more so like infotainment. Infotainment. You know, like, I'm trying to, like, correct him a little bit. And he's like. He's like. And I told him, I was like, I'm mainly a podcaster. Like, I just talk about video games. And he's like, oh, cool, what's the name of the podcast? I told him kind of funny. And he like, I saw his face change a second. He was like, wait a second. Kind of funny. I listen to kind of funny. And then he pulls out his phone, shows me like an old ass episode of kind of Funny Games Daily that he was listening to.

[Greg Miller]

And.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And he's like, holy shit, I recognize your voice. This man, who I've been playing board games with for maybe like a year, has been listening to this podcast and just did not put it together that it was me.

[Andrea Rene]

That's. I. I don't even. I don't even know how that happens.

[Greg Miller]

Wow, Blessing. Such a common name, you know? You know, video games Blessing. You live in the Bay Area. You couldn't possibly be the Blessing. I listen to the show.

[Andrea Rene]

So he was. Do you think he was just trolling you?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, he was dead serious. Because I. He was. I could see it in his face of like, the wheels clicking. Yeah, because he was like, I recognize your voice now. Yeah, that's you. And I was like, yes, Dud. That's really.

[Tim Gettys]

Even listening to. Hilarious.

[Andy Cortez]

It's just audio form. You just sound like Michael Cerrit.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Exactly. Hey, man. Hey, man. So shout out, Patrick.

[Greg Miller]

Those always crack me up when we have the special occasion. Somebody rolls in, they're like, I've only listened. Nobody looks like how I thought they'd look.

[Andrea Rene]

Interesting. Okay, I'm ready when. When you guys are.

[Tim Gettys]

Let's do it.

[Andrea Rene]

Okay, so this is from April 8th, 2019.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Andrea Rene]

Out to today. Ghost 1.0 on PS4, assault of the robots on PC, crisis core, Final Fantasy Remastered on PS4. Magic Farm 2, fairylands on PC, hotel mogul, Las Vegas on PC, 30 days to survive on PC and Jungle Z.

[Greg Miller]

All right. There's a lot of games. There's a lot of games.

[Andrea Rene]

It was just the first notes I picked and.

[Greg Miller]

I hear you. No, no, I hear you.

[Andrea Rene]

I'm happy to read them again. Yes, Ghost 1.0 on Psycho, Assault of the Robots on PC, Crisis Core, Final Fantasy Remastered on PS4, Magic Farm 2, Fairylands on PC, Hotel Mogul Las Vegas on PC, 30 Days to Survive on PC and Jungle Z on Switch blessing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Am I in this?

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, wait, why? Well, he put his.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'll say Jungle Z, if you win, then you give.

[Greg Miller]

Give it to me.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay. Give what to you?

[Andrea Rene]

Ghost 1.0 on PS4, Assault of the Robots on PC, Crisis Core, Final Fantasy Remastered on PS4, Magic Farm 2, Fairylands on PC, Hotel Mogul, Las Vegas on PC, 30 Days to Survive and Jungle Z on Switch.

[Greg Miller]

Lock him in.

[Tim Gettys]

Hotel Mogo, Las Vegas.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm actually going to change mine to Final Fantasy Crisis.

[Greg Miller]

Score. I'm going to say Crisis Core as well. It must not have come to come to play PlayStation 4. I don't think the two that you locked in your fucking name.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But I don't think it came out that year.

[Greg Miller]

I locked it in.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Crisis Core came out when I was here.

[Andrea Rene]

Crisis Core is correct. That was the made up one.

[Tim Gettys]

What was the year?

[Andrea Rene]

I think that's 2021. It was later.

[Tim Gettys]

What was the year though?

[Andy Cortez]

2019.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

2019 was the year because I was.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like, was there a remaster? Not a.

[Andrea Rene]

Actually, I don't know, I just literally googled Square Enix games and then just picked one and put remastered on People PS4.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

See, I made up. I made up all my games.

[Andrea Rene]

I know that that's remastered on PS4.

[Greg Miller]

That's not.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Well, that's not an official star, by the way. For the record, you know.

[Greg Miller]

No, it's not a star. This is just my trophy for winning the kind of funny games daily 2000s episode game showdown.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Fair enough.

[Greg Miller]

All right.

[Andy Cortez]

Another thing to add to his intro.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, and I'd love it if you could do that because of course, this is it. This is the cinematic universe of game showdown. It ties it all together. And it's just people that go, I gotta catch up, you know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Now I gotta watch games.

[Greg Miller]

Damn. As always, Tim, you suck. We have more to get to. But before then, one super chat check in, boys. How we doing? What's the number? How. Where we at?

[Andy Cortez]

Roger hasn't updated me in about 20 minutes.

[Greg Miller]

You guys are. But I know you guys are useless.

[Andrea Rene]

You know, you can just copy and paste them into a spreadsheet and then you can look at them without them scrolling right hand.

[Andy Cortez]

You let me tell you, spreadsheets, like, you know, they're all over. We don't know how they work. I don't know if we know how they work.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, I've never figured it out.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I just taught Mike about the snipping tool.

[Mike Mahardy]

Yeah, that was sweet.

[Andrea Rene]

How are you adults is what I.

[Greg Miller]

We should have sat y' all down.

[Andy Cortez]

Before this Blaster goblin with a $2 super chat says haven't missed an episode since I found Kind of funny in 2018.

[Mike Mahardy]

40 viz writes happy 2k.

[Andy Cortez]

There's also a super chat I've been looking for that I need if you did it.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Retype it in and like I'll venmo you back. I've been looking forward for a long time.

[Greg Miller]

What did they say? But it was just.

[Andy Cortez]

It was just saying one moment that I'll never forget on Kind of Funny is the studio going dark and hearing the music hit and Greg entering with your WWE bit like the music hits and just how visceral that makes us all feel like. And then it's just like a very, very memorable moment for them that they'll never forget.

[Mike Mahardy]

They'll venmo you back.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I'll venmo you. Just make sure you type it in.

[Mike Mahardy]

Octavio writes in one that's about me. Tim.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Mike Mahardy]

Happy to contribute to the 2K. Also, make sure to watch watch the Rich poor Minecraft video that Mike recommended. It's absolute cinema. 10 out of 10.

[Tim Gettys]

I still need to check it out because I have heard nothing but that ever since you saw I like I didn't believe you, Mike, because you're, you know, you're you. But every single person's like, dude, Mike was right about this.

[Greg Miller]

Wow.

[Andy Cortez]

20 super chat. Thank you for your generosity. Mike Heman, who says congratulations to you all. I used to think that Greg Miller was the most annoying part of GameStop of Game Scoop and not rocking boots and he's. And I still do. I added that. That's a part of it. I was joking there then they said. But I followed his entire journey since and now adore him and love you all. Here's to 2, 000 more. Thank you, Mike.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's growth.

[Greg Miller]

Wow.

[Mike Mahardy]

Kobe writes in and says, Happy 2000, y'.

[Greg Miller]

All.

[Mike Mahardy]

I've been listening since 2016 and one of my core memories with the channel is the Year of Dreams E3 reaction. Y' all have been amazing and have influenced me so much. So much. I now work in the games industry. Congratulations, Kobe.

[Andy Cortez]

Very, very cool. Beautiful DG. DG Ruka with a 10 super chat says I'm barely a new oh, I'm barely a year new to kind of Funny. But y' all have made me laugh and smile so much in such a short time. Congrats to 2K. And here's to the next 2K. Always shocked whenever anybody says, oh, I just started listening in the last year. That's crazy to me.

[Andrea Rene]

Why?

[Andy Cortez]

But it's always blows.

[Greg Miller]

Do you remember the kind of feudy where they were like, where do you get your gaming news? And none of us guessed ourselves we were number three Baton IGN Gamespot. Kind of funny. We just didn't even think about ourselves that way.

[Andy Cortez]

Slay J with a $5 super chat says 2000 episodes already. Congratulations, guys. Let's get that tiny Watto game made now.

[Andrea Rene]

I know a guy.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Jed writes in Shout out to all the hosts, especially Nick Scarpino. He's working really hard today.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, yeah, Remember we.

[Tim Gettys]

Who's he? Annoyed we're all here.

[Andy Cortez]

Posted on April Fool's Day. I remember that. We just showed up and did our best.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Well, speaking of that, I got one from Shad Allen here. He says my favorite KFD moment was Andy reporting live from outside of E3. I petitioned that you start saying that. You start saying Super Chat. Like you said Superman during Superman 2 in review. Andy maybe tried it the other day.

[Andy Cortez]

I like that. I. I was kind of bummed out to see in the montage that my really, really bad flubbed cold open didn't make the montage. Yeah, but that to me, is like a moment that I'll never forget of just today. Just like, what a disaster to start off. I don't know why they asked me. Nose Mike.

[Greg Miller]

I like this one. You. And I don't want you to miss it. Saul's Super Chats. Super Chats and says birthday tax for October 8th. Can I get a greo from Andy? We don't get those enough.

[Tim Gettys]

Still got it.

[Greg Miller]

We love that.

[Andy Cortez]

Trevor Starkey. Hello.

[Tim Gettys]

A name I haven't heard in many years.

[Andy Cortez]

With a 20 super chat says, love and miss you all. I echo the calls to bring back kind of funny live. Congrats on 2000 episodes. All the best to the whole team. Thank you, Trevor. Hope you're doing well, dude.

[Mike Mahardy]

Steve Sailor writes in and says congrats on 2000 episodes. KFGD literally changed my life in more ways than I can include in a Super Chat. Y' all created something special. Love y'.

[Andy Cortez]

All.

[Andrea Rene]

Love you, Steve.

[Greg Miller]

Love you, Steve. Love you, Steve.

[Andy Cortez]

Manny bagel boy Sanchez. $10. Super chat says my favorite games daily Moment is on February 16, 2022. Andy and Bless helped announce my Son to my family on my birthday. Still have the video. That's my birthday too. What the fuck?

[Greg Miller]

Crazy.

[Andy Cortez]

They're the same birthday.

[Tim Gettys]

You and Manny. That's birthday boys.

[Greg Miller]

And final super chat from now comes from Oscar navarro. Congrats on 2k.ps Glad to see Andrea. I miss what's good games.

[Andrea Rene]

Me too.

[Greg Miller]

Of course. Ladies and gentlemen and enbs, we hope you'll never have to miss us. And if you keep supporting us with a kind of funny membership, you won't have to. You can pick up a membership over on patreon.com kindafunny YouTube, YouTube.com kindafunnygames, Apple, Spotify, get all of our shows ad free. Get them, you know, with the Greg stuff that you get to do. The Greg ways we call them 15 to 20 minutes of me. And then of course, just have a good time out there supporting somebody. Get good karma. But right now, you're not using your benefits. So here's a word.

[Tim Gettys]

And we're back. We're doing little bathroom shimmy. Everyone's gonna cycle out and go to the little pee pee room. Bless.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's what they call it now. Change that name.

[Tim Gettys]

Get on it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We can't keep that.

[Tim Gettys]

We're gonna get some more super chats here. Alien5000 says, Been listening since the days of Undertaker bursting through the wall. And even named my son's middle name after Greg. Thanks for being the most consistent thing in my life. Thank you so much.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's crazy how consistent the show has been.

[Greg Miller]

It is.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. For 2,000 episodes, it's been a daily video game news show.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

That's tough. Something that I love about it is I love getting to do it with you so often. You know, just being here, being part of this is so special. But seeing that montage, the amount of memories over the last, like, what, eight years? Yeah. And seeing all of the different guest hosts that we've had, like, I would have never thought we had that many people. And there was a couple guests that we had that, like, I didn't even remember doing the episode with Isla from Easy Allies, like. And I'm like, oh, my God. It's just crazy that, like, we do this so consistently and so often that you just kind of eventually it's just another thing we do. But to see it kind of memorialized that way, it's like, oh, my God, we do something cool here.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, yeah. 1,000%. Want to bring in one from Goldfish Boy 1337. That's elite. Congrats, Team KF Special. Shout out to blessing, the only one who really. Who really cares about us audio listeners. And to Mike the goat. Here's the 8,000 more KHDs. One of my greatest highlights of the day. Listen. I was an audio listener, and so I got to care about my audio listeners.

[Tim Gettys]

Mr. Showtime says the one with Isla was earlier this year.

[Gary Whitta]

No, shut up.

[Tim Gettys]

No, actually, that is true.

[Greg Miller]

That is true. Look, man, that's hilarious. I don't know. No.

[Tim Gettys]

Calm says Cam. Spent my second screen while gaming forever, and I've been there through everything. Love and appreciate you guys. Thank you. That's so awesome. And I do think that's one of the coolest things is, like, you know, we listen to gaming podcasts as well, so it's, like, cool to know that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We'Re that for other people.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like, somebody right now, somebody's playing Hades, too.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

While listening to us. I know that for a fact because I've listened to so many podcasts while playing Hades 2.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And if you're playing Hades 2 right now, lock in. Right. Pick the right upgrades, choose the right paths. Make sure you're using your cast.

[Tim Gettys]

This is the run.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This is the run.

[Tim Gettys]

This is the run.

[Andy Cortez]

I believe in you. Because you know what, Timmy?

[Gary Whitta]

Beat it.

[Tim Gettys]

Over the weekend, we got a gamer here, everybody. Dude, yesterday, my friend Curran came by, and we grabbed just some coffee together, and this couple had this, like, little baby with them, and we had a dog. So, like, the baby and dog were interacting, so we ended up kind of talking to them a bit. He overheard we were talking about Expedition 33.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

And the guy overheard that, and he was like, oh, my God, I need to interrupt. Like, what a game. Like, got super into it. And he was like, yeah, my wife, like, just started. And I was like, oh, that's awesome. Like, we're talking about. She's like, yeah. Like, I need to stop and get back to it, though, because I'm almost done with Hades, too. And I'm like, this is the greatest conversation I've ever accidentally got. And he was like, oh, yeah. Like, I got to get to Hades after. I'm. He's like, I'm about to beat Silk Song.

[Greg Miller]

And I'm like, let's go game it.

[Gary Whitta]

Go.

[Tim Gettys]

You know, it was so funny because K's like, I can't believe that he's. Because he only played Expedition.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

And he's like, every game that Tim talks about, you guys are just bringing up right now.

[Greg Miller]

I'm like, this is great.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

He's like, I'm about to start Yoshi's island. He bust out. Pokemon go.

[Tim Gettys]

Do you need a bathroom?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, I'm fine.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Tim Gettys]

I'm gonna go.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, and a donut, too. Nice thinking.

[Andrea Rene]

You know, these are, like, solid donuts, which I was. I was like, no hole. Yes. I'm very curious what kind of donut it is. Like, there's no hole in the middle. Almost like a fritter. You know what I mean?

[Greg Miller]

Yes.

[Andrea Rene]

I am really concerned, though, that this very blue frosting is gonna.

[Greg Miller]

That's the worst that could happen to our teeth. With Roger's.

[Andrea Rene]

It's gonna turn my mouth, like, fully blue.

[Greg Miller]

Good day for it.

[Andrea Rene]

I mean, I'm wearing blue. The set is very blue blue. Very matchy matchy.

[Greg Miller]

Good. It's a good donut reading.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Some more super chats for you 40 viz. I might have. I've scrolled all the way back to the beginning because I don't want to forget y'.

[Greg Miller]

All.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

40 this just says happy 2k shout out. Velocity Entertainment says, so dang long I've been watching, it feels like forever. Even inspiring my own podcast. Thanks. Thanks for always being consistent, hilarious, and happy 2k. Oct Octavio writes in and says, happy to contribute to the 2K. Also, make sure to watch the Rich poor Minecraft video. Oh, wait, I think we already. We already read this one. We already read this one.

[Greg Miller]

Do you think they're not doing their job? They were doing their job.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, they're doing it.

[Greg Miller]

They were doing too well.

[Tim Gettys]

Here.

[Greg Miller]

My teeth.

[Andrea Rene]

Blue a little bit.

[Greg Miller]

Ah, damn it.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, a little bit.

[Greg Miller]

Not noticeable. Oh, no.

[Andrea Rene]

Maybe on camera. Probably not noticeable in person.

[Greg Miller]

Bear, give me the one digital zoom on my teeth.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't see it.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay, maybe a little bit.

[Greg Miller]

That's just like gunk. Yeah, it's the blue gunk you get in your teeth when you eat a blue donut. Andy. Andy.

[Andy Cortez]

Why is it moving?

[Greg Miller]

No. Andy, come here. Andy. I missed you. I laughed so many times this weekend. Thinking back to, like. Like, we have a lot of fun here, but, like, a genuine belly laugh for both of us. When I came in when the tech wasn't working, I was like, they say kissing won't fix audio lag. You and me both busted up laughing so bad on that screen.

[Andy Cortez]

Only one way to find out.

[Greg Miller]

I disagree, man.

[Andy Cortez]

I've been playing a lot of secret Bunk or Megabunk.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I've been seeing that make the waves online.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, holy. Too much mega bunk.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I want to read one from Jenny, AKA Send Nuggies.

[Greg Miller]

Who says?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay, Real chat. Khd Helped me remember how much I love video games and introduced me to the communities around them. If I can take one thing away from taking in the news, it's how important it is to support the little guys with the heart emoji. And is that a winking?

[Andy Cortez]

Thank you, Send nuggies.

[Greg Miller]

Always a pleasure. Thank you. Send nuggies.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And then Jason Cohen says bless called me out playing Hades 2 right now while listening got four more achievements to 100% on stream. Steam Deck Congrats. Kind of funny. On 10 years and 2000 episodes of KFC. If you're playing Hades 2 right now, I want you to super chat in. Yeah, we're going to get a lot of super chats.

[Greg Miller]

We're about to be rolling. We're hitting 2,000. If everybody did right now, we'd be done. Mike could go home.

[Andy Cortez]

$2 super chat for a birthday tax from Mr. Peepee Poopoo Span for six years.

[Andrea Rene]

Sure, why not.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I also don't know if we shouted this out in the beginning but like we have a lot more segments past the Roper report. I know typically this would be the of the show. We had a lot more show left.

[Greg Miller]

Which decided to get to.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh yeah, that's good because Cameron Kennedy writes in says first time watching pretty good so far. Hopefully give him a good show.

[Greg Miller]

Great.

[Andy Cortez]

Watch the zoom in on Greg's mouth. They probably quickly.

[Andrea Rene]

That's the content that this audience wants.

[Greg Miller]

You can get views from anywhere. All right, do you want to go listen to Jordan Middler this giant Shrek looking bald man or do you want this kind of content? Mike, open your mouth and put it on my mouth. Andy, open your mouth. Put it on Mike's mouth. Let's move on to our next segment. It's a new segment for Games Daily 2000 called the audience picks the biggest KFGD stories. We asked the audience to write in with their picks for the biggest news stories in KFGD history. History. And we've narrowed it down to the top three and ranked them based on what you wrote in super chat question to keep them coming as we march towards 2000. Maybe Roger can give you all an update. You know, since you can't ask.

[Mike Mahardy]

He's yapping outside. I can tell you that as of.

[Andy Cortez]

11:28, 20 minutes ago. 5:27.

[Greg Miller]

Okay. Wow. We're marching.

[Tim Gettys]

We're marching and they're starting to come in in droves. Thanks to all the people playing Hades 2 right now.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Thank you so much for the Hades 2.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm going to leave us I want to leave one as well.

[Greg Miller]

Blessing. I gave you the synopsis at the top here, but you want to give me a little bit more on this segment?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, you pretty much nailed it. We put up a poll probably like a few weeks ago, a month ago for the audience to write in what they think are the biggest KHD stories. And so I looked into them kind of feudi style and I've ranked them and so I've narrowed down to top three. The top three biggest KHD stories. We're going to start for number three.

[Greg Miller]

Number three. GTA 6 trailer is leaked this is from the December 5, 2023 edition of Kinda Funny Games Daily. We're reading Mariko, Tom and mark over at BBC News. The trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 has leaked after going online. As revealed after online leak, a glimpse of the sixth game in the Grand Theft Auto series has finally been revealed. After the trailer for the long awaited Blockbuster was leaked, developer Rockstar Pressed publish 15 hours before a heavily trailed release. After a low quality copy spread online, the 90 second teaser confirmed the game will be set in Miami inspired Vice City and star a female protagonist, Lucia for the first time since the 1990s. But the waiting isn't over as the game isn't due to be released until 2025.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What was it like? Because I think I was in LA when this all happened. So I ended up not being on the GTA 6 trailer. Reaction. What was the energy in the office when this happened?

[Greg Miller]

It fucking sucked.

[Andy Cortez]

Bless. It was the most erratic thing you've ever seen in your life. It was. Was like an. I mentioned that day. It felt like an episode of Succession.

[Greg Miller]

Yep.

[Andy Cortez]

Where like if you just had a handheld camera zooming on everybody. It was Tim on a call and he's like this isn't good. This isn't good.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And then.

[Andy Cortez]

And he, he was like, move that forward. We need that two hours. It felt like an episode of tv. It was insane. And like me and Roger getting on the graphics like it was.

[Greg Miller]

We were all prepped, all hands on deck. We're going to be here, whatever it was. 6am 6am will be in the office. We're going to go live. We'll have the whole thing. And then wait a second, I think it's leaked. And then wait a second. And then Rockstar themselves coming out and tweeting, right, our trailer has leaked. So please watch the real thing on YouTube. Dropping that 310 on December 4th.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh my God.

[Greg Miller]

It was pandemonium out here.

[Tim Gettys]

It was pandemonium. And like it was crazy because the panic came from. We were sponsored. Like, this was a big thing that I sold and was very proud of selling because it was out of the ordinary of like, hey, this trailer dropping is going to be one of the biggest, most viewed things we've ever done. I'm pretty sure it was X Rail. I could be wrong there. And I was convincing my guy. I'm like, you want to sponsor us for this? And so we had the whole thing planned and then it was like, oh, what do we do? Like, do we wait for the official thing to drop or do we react to the leaked trailer that like had the freaking whatever, like gambling.

[Andy Cortez]

It was like a cryptocurrency, whatever the hell.

[Tim Gettys]

It's like, God, what do we do? And then, yeah, like, the energy in the room was so crazy. And then, yeah, the set looked beautiful. Us reacting to it. I mean, again, it's still a huge deal. The game's still not out. Like, obviously next year, hopefully we'll get Grand Theft Auto 6. But like, yeah, I'll never forget that day. I'll never forget that trailer. Everything about that was very special and definitely one of the biggest news stories ever.

[Greg Miller]

And also just crazy that it happened. Yeah. This thing we're all waiting for, we know is going to be such a big deal to leak. We are with this weird meme coin shit on it or whatever. Like, what the fuck? And this is after, right? Like, wasn't the first footage of GTA 6 leaked by. Or am I confusing with another game? But like somebody's kid, like they made a video and it went up or.

[Andrea Rene]

No, I think there was, there was snippets leaked like a, like a year or two prior. And then there was this constant jockeying of everybody doing predictions of every major showcase being like, Ah, GTA 6 is finally coming. Oh, it's the next summer game fest. It's the next opening night live, it's the next Sony showcase. And it was like GTA 6. And I maintain Rockstar does not need anybody else to release a trailer. They have not done that in the past for like the first trailer. They're not going to, to do that. I never predicted it going out this way though. I think for people like us who've been covering Rockstar for as many years as we have, like, I think it all took us by surprise because they are like Fort Knox over there, right? Like, I mean, like, they are locked down tight with their stuff because their, you know, IP is incredibly valuable. And it was just like, I think such a Bummer how it spilled out like this because. Because we're talking about thousands of people who have been working on this game for many years, and this was supposed to be like this big debut moment, and then you get these leaks and it just is always such a wah, wah. And obviously, when we all saw the official trailer, we were blown away and were rightly very hyped to see more from this game. But it was. Yeah, I mean, it was a very, very big news day.

[Greg Miller]

Incredible.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Is this the highest profile video game leak of all time?

[Tim Gettys]

I mean, it must be, right? Like, the trailer leaking hours before is one thing, but I mean, like, the. The hack of GTA 6, I think, is definitely up there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like, well, there's this. There's insomniac.

[Greg Miller]

Right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Which I guess, if I'm using the word high profile, like, GTA 6 is, like the biggest gaming IP. But like the.

[Andrea Rene]

But like, I think what. You also want to distinguish between, like, a leak and, like, a data mine, right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

For sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Right.

[Andrea Rene]

Like some, like, somebody intentionally going in and, like, stealing information versus, like, one person on a team being like, I want to show my friend this cool thing. And then that friend, like, tells another friend. And now it's leaked.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Because, like, in terms of volume, there have been bigger video game leaks in terms of. Yeah, like Insomniac or Assassin's Creed. What was the Assassin's Creed?

[Tim Gettys]

Every Assassin's Creed ever.

[Andy Cortez]

Yes, Everyone pretty much always leaked through.

[Greg Miller]

Products from Canada when they got like, this is the entire marketing plan for.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Years before then. Or whatever. Whatever.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Tomb Raider on the Train.

[Tim Gettys]

The Nvidia leak.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, dude, Real talk.

[Tim Gettys]

Nvidia leak is something that was like, we're still referencing. Where's Final Fantasy 9?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like, Nvidia might be the biggest, I guess, in terms of, like, how many different games it touches.

[Tim Gettys]

That game that had that list had Kingdom Hearts four on it before the game was announced.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And all those games ended up being real.

[Tim Gettys]

It's crazy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Except for the.

[Tim Gettys]

Except for Final Fantasy 9, which we're still waiting for.

[Andrea Rene]

I mean, Walmart, Canada, they always just do.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What about. What was the smash one that everybody was up in arms about? The Grinch. The Grinch.

[Andy Cortez]

Grinch.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Never forget the Grinch leak.

[Tim Gettys]

Never forget it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's like, for me, that's a classic episode of khd. Because I've never had somebody convince me so strongly, like. Like Tim did. Listening to that episode and me being.

[Greg Miller]

Like, it was a thumbnail. I remember with the Grinch on it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was like, man, The Grinch League is real. I believed it because it's him.

[Greg Miller]

There's a super chat from Sid X who says Greg will have a teenager when GT hopefully not a 20 year old. You know what I mean? Like I don't know. As long as GTA take I wouldn't. Let's not hold our breath for men to be in his teens. As voted by you, the kind of funny audience. The second biggest story in our 2000 episodes. Greg Miller is banned from E3. This is June 27th, 2019. They have my tweet up there that just says good morning, hashtag I'm banned from E3. And it's a screenshot of the email. Hello. As part of the E3 terms and conditions for 2019, you had agreed to the following. The E3 badge is non transferable and is the property of the ESA.E3 badge swapping and or sharing is strictly prohibited. Any attendee found using another attendee's badge will have the badge confiscated and will be removed from the premises. The E3 badge must be worn at all times. Security confiscated your badge after stopping someone who had your bad badge on and whose ID did not match. Every year management reviews each person and the reason their badge was confiscated and decides on whether they'll be granted or yeah, granted admission to the show. As a result of this violation, you've been placed on a banned attendee list for 2020.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's still so crazy.

[Andrea Rene]

The explanation makes it worse because it indicates a human being reviewed your specific case and decided you, Greg Miller, were going to be banned and good. I honestly think this must have been a publicity stunt.

[Greg Miller]

No, I wish that was true because like their response and handling was so poor obviously from the jump here, but then from the follow up, like they couldn't have fucked up worse. And then when I called them on it, they were so like. So if you remember, because it happened on games, I think it was an episode you were on, Andrea, because I remember this and like, like I was like not mad but I was just gobsmacked by it. And then the fact that they couldn't have picked a worse guy to say did this because I had the video footage from Gamespot of me on the stage ending E3 when the announcers are like, we're closing the doors in five minutes, you have to be off. And. And so like I just sent them that video and I was like, hey, here's me on this. So there's no way I could have given my badge and had it confiscated. I was like, what I think happened is another fat man with a beard showed up and said they were Greg Miller and showed the very nice people who were work the desk, who are not video game people. They are convention center people. Where's your id? I don't have it, but here's my Twitter profile. And they looked at a guy with glasses and a beard and overbite and being overweight. And we're like, checks out. There's your match. That guy got caught. And then everything went on fine. And when I sent them that long description, they sent back an email like, oh, man, listen, let's just solve this. You're unbanned, no big deal, Nobody. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. You're doing this. No, no. Like, admit you fucked up. Don't be like, oh, well, you know, no big deal. I'm like, no, no.

[Andrea Rene]

I thought we talked about how you always throw your badge in the trash after the show. Because I keep all of my badges. I like, have a video on my. On my TikTok of like, all of my badges. And you were like, maybe someone picked it up out of the trash. But you saying that you were on stage until the very end of the show, like, that doesn't check out then.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, that was the thing is I throw my badge in my hotel trash can. So it had been like a maid went through it, but again, there'd be no show to go to. You'd be trying to get it while they're packing everything up at the T shirt.

[Tim Gettys]

Again, this was in the montage video. But some context. The following year, Greg hosts E3.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes, hilarious.

[Andrea Rene]

Yes, hilarious. Yes.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's so good.

[Andy Cortez]

I don't want us stepping over the best part of this, where Greg is tagging esa, the European Space Agency.

[Andrea Rene]

A common problem.

[Greg Miller]

Sorry, esa. I meant the. At the esa. As you can imagine, I'm in a fragile emotional state right now. Crazy.

[Andy Cortez]

Crazy that the European Space Agency outlived the.

[Greg Miller]

You know, did they ever respond? Click on the other one down there where I apologize. Did the esa, or I'm sorry, did ESA respond to my apology?

[Andy Cortez]

I'll have to look into Europe.

[Greg Miller]

Well, if you click right there on June 27th. Okay, yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Which ESA are we talking about?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, the space agency.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay, okay, okay.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Again, these pa. These people paid me a lot of money to come.

[Gary Whitta]

Apologize.

[Andy Cortez]

The European Space Agency did not give.

[Greg Miller]

They did not really apologize. That's. I can't believe that you all like. I. So talk to me about how we wrote in. Was it like a multiple choice or did enough people write in? Greg is banned.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Enough people wrote in. Yeah. Greg Miller is banned from.

[Greg Miller]

I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Yeah, because that's something like I occasionally comes around in the old thought process, but. Yeah. What a ridiculous thing.

[Andy Cortez]

You have an overbite, huh?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I got the big buck teeth. They go over the front. Isn't that kind of an overbite?

[Andy Cortez]

Noticed that Mike never noticed. Yeah, like him mentioning a guy with glasses.

[Greg Miller]

Do the zoom in again. I'll show Andy on Andy.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, God.

[Andrea Rene]

I feel like everybody has real profile.

[Mike Mahardy]

That's an overbite.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

I feel like everybody's mouth looks like.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, slightly.

[Greg Miller]

That's how it's supposed to look. I. I don't know. Aren't your teeth supposed to come and touch each other?

[Andy Cortez]

I don't know.

[Greg Miller]

I don't think it's like a dramatic overbite. Like Cole the wiener dog. He's got a big, big overbite.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, fucking Cole. Get me started. Gray almieda with a $2 super chat says hopping into Hades2Now. Hashtag team Purple for life. Team Purple.

[Greg Miller]

Team Purple.

[Andy Cortez]

We're going to win this.

[Greg Miller]

One day you'll get a star. No big deal. And then your final number one, the story you thought was the biggest story that's happened in 2000 episodes. Xbox acquires Activision January 18, 2022. The deal is announced on January 18, 2022. We're reading from the Xbox Wire, welcoming the incredible teams and legendary franchises of Activision Blizzard to Microsoft Gaming, creators of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush, Tony Hawk, Diablo, Overwatch, Spyro, Hearthstone, Guitar Hero, Crash Bandicoot, Starcraft and more. Join Team Xbox. Until this transaction closes, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming will continue to operate independently. Once the deal is complete, the Activision Blizzard business will report to me as CEO. Microsoft Gaming. I assume this is Phil Spencer, right Upon close, we will offer as many Activision Blizzard games as we can within Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, both new titles and games from Activision Blizzard's incredible catalog. We also announced today that Game Pass now has more than 25 million subscribers. As always, we look forward to continuing to add more value and more great games to Game Pass. There's a follow up then here. October 13, 2023. The deal closes. Microsoft just bought Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. This is the one, the only W at IGN. That's Wesley. Ian Pool, Tim. Yes, it is. It's official. Microsoft has bought Activision Blizzard for an incredible $69 billion it's the biggest buyout in video game history and in one fell swoop, expands Xbox's first party offering to encompass everything from Call of Duty to World of Warcraft.

[Tim Gettys]

Upon close, we will offer as many Activision Blizzard games as we can with an Xbox Game Pass and PC Game pass. How do you think they're doing there?

[Greg Miller]

Plus. Oh, God.

[Tim Gettys]

You enjoyed playing Transformers War for Cybertron, huh?

[Andy Cortez]

No, no, not yet.

[Tim Gettys]

Maybe one day.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

One day they can.

[Greg Miller]

They can. Their hands are tied.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

You know, licensing and technology is tough for.

[Andrea Rene]

For the licenses that they don't wholly own that. It is actually like quite complicated. But yeah, they could be doing a lot more than.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What?

[Greg Miller]

Like a lot a lot more.

[Andrea Rene]

Like a lot.

[Andy Cortez]

Like a lot more.

[Andrea Rene]

Yes, correct, Correct.

[Tim Gettys]

That's one thing for sure. And yeah, this being the biggest story. Absolutely.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Andrea Rene]

I mean, this is a story for over a year.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah. And like we, we cover things all the time ad nauseam, as you saw earlier, with the layoffs and with just acquisitions as a whole. But there's been other themes. There's been the NFTs. Is that what they are? Yeah, the NFT. Yeah. Thank God.

[Greg Miller]

We beat. We beat them into the ground. We didn't need to worry about them anymore.

[Tim Gettys]

God. Yeah, The NFT stuff, like there's always things that we like trends of games Daily on news stories. But like Xbox acquiring Activision I think is the single most covered story. You know, like this thing like the amount of times that we covered this one event and the court cases and the fallout and the layoffs and the studio closure, the leaks from the court cases.

[Andrea Rene]

Oh my gosh. The documents that came out of the court case. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

When they were uploading, they didn't even have to reveal it. They were doing it. There's like, ah, we put up the wrong thing. We forgot to redex.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

My bad.

[Greg Miller]

Oops.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oops. Well, now you know about the next Doom game and a bunch of other games.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. And again, you know, to your point, it's still ongoing, we're still talking. You know, today's Games Daily was all about Xbox and what happens in the future because of this and the $300 million lost of this. Like, it's crazy to look here now and be able to look at the ripples and where we are now and how it's just continues to happen.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

In retrospect, how do we feel about the way that we have covered it? Right. Between Games Daily and Gamescast, I was streaming yesterday and there was somebody in chat that I was like, oh, yeah, Reddit's talking about how y' all were wrong about the acquisition. I was like, I remember us being skeptical about the acquisition.

[Greg Miller]

I'm wrong about what?

[Andrea Rene]

It's such a juggernaut of a story and a deal. Like, there's so many parts to be right or wrong.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

You know how it is. Whenever you say anything on any of these shows, you can talk for 30 minutes, but that one sentence that pisses somebody off is how you feel. And I would think that if I'm remembering correctly, it was a lot of like, hey, a lot of times video consolidation is bad, but Phil and the team over there are gamers and they try. They have done a lot of gamer first decisions, so hopefully that would carry over here. But it was, you know, hopefully. And as we've talked throughout this episode. Right. Like, it isn't necessarily shaking out the that way as now again, I would say like you did Tim from on high. Screws are being tightened of like, make money off this. Why are we losing money?

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, it all comes down to having a vision that you're able to see through. And I think that the vision was clear. Yeah, we'll just acquire the biggest third party that there is with literally the biggest IP and biggest games in the games industry and profit. And for that all to line up, everything had to go right and so few things went right. So, yeah, with where I now, it is definitely not a surprise. And being able to cover this on the show, like daily and update and things change and see how the. The entire sector of Xbox, whether it's hardware or software, like ecosystems, all that stuff, like how that changes over time. Like, it's very interesting and like there has been so much shift with Xbox specifically. And yeah, they were just unruly. It's just unmanageable at this point.

[Greg Miller]

And.

[Tim Gettys]

And we're seeing the repercussions, I think.

[Greg Miller]

I like Big five before it goes. I'll. I'll admit I'll always remember Blessing saying, just let them buy it so we don't have to cover this anymore.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't remember saying that, but I.

[Greg Miller]

Remember it was again, it was like a throwaway. Like, oh my God, I'm sick of talking about this. Like in the old days when Andrea got so mad when we update pubg numbers, she's like, I get it. It's still the biggest game.

[Gary Whitta]

Stop.

[Andrea Rene]

It was just like the same story over and over again. At least the Xbox stuff had like, interesting stuff that was getting revealed from like the court case.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It was like seasons of TV with Xbox stuff where it's like, okay, it's new, but it's the same kind of thing. I, I also think like the scariest, but also I think something that I really like about covering big news on khd, the scariest thing is covering something that's so unprecedented where it is. People expect us to get things right all the time, right? Or maybe people expect us to be dumb most of the time, but like longtime fans do when Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard, there's only so much we can do to speculate and talk about what's going to happen and talk like that's something that's, that's one of the biggest things to happen in video games, period. And so realistically, we don't know what's going to happen, right? We don't know what this looks like five years down the line. And I think for me, when I look back at the ways we talk about things and the ways that we, I think, grow in our coverage and see new information come in and like take that and apply that to the way we talk about things, I think we do a genuinely phenomenal, phenomenal job at it. I think like the day to day coverage of khd, which is something that we uniquely provide to such like, you know, with such depth. Because we're doing an hour podcast every single day, we get into the weeds in a way that I think few other people can. And I'm, for me, I'll say I'm.

[Greg Miller]

Proud of us the way that we cover the 100. No, you should be blessed. And obviously if people don't know we're talking about this episode, how much work you put into it alongside Roger, obviously on the daily, right, Your job is building games daily. Even when you're not on, on Games Daily, you're building games daily. And I think that's done so well to give the show a narrative backbone where we're able to reference stuff and you're able to put it together and as hosts come in and then have that, okay, cool, I can just react rather than be worried about building it in the last five seconds before I get out here. Right? Like you're able to keep that going. And I think, you know, we've all talked about it and had those, our own little interactions. But when you go to someone else's podcast or you bring someone from another podcast on here and like, oh, okay, we talk about games in a different way than many people. Not everybody by any stretch of the imagination, but I know we've gone and done, done guest Appearances where it's like we're referencing and talking about the. The thing, and I'm like, oh, whoa. They weren't ready for that. They weren't ready for that idea. Yeah. And Those are the three biggest news stories of 2000 episodes, everybody.

[Tim Gettys]

Are you guys surprised? Is there any story that you. You feel. Because, like, my.

[Greg Miller]

The E3, when I never would have thought enough people would unify to vote.

[Andrea Rene]

For the story that I thought was missing was Epic Games versus Apple.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

Because that was also on one of those stories that we just kept covering over and over and over and over again. And, you know, maybe we'll talk more about it later on, but like, how that kind of kicked off with Epic pulling Fortnite from the App store, like from iOS, which was like, what? Why? Why would you do that?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't think there's a story to center this one around, but I think the saga of, like, the loot box. Loot box stuff going on in, I think, 2018. Star Wars. Star Wars Battlefront 2 being like, I think, the big one around it. I remember listening to KFC every single day, and it felt like there was always something new about Loot Boxes and them maybe being, you know, litigated or like the people being up in arms about Star wars and all that shit. That felt like such a big story at that time, one that I was.

[Andy Cortez]

Surprised by, but maybe it was just too slow of a role to.

[Gary Whitta]

For people to think of it as.

[Andy Cortez]

One story was the death of E3 over those two years. Right. Like, that was such a big shift.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

On how people consume, like, big information in the middle the.

[Gary Whitta]

Of.

[Tim Gettys]

Of the summer.

[Gary Whitta]

So, yeah, I was surprised that one didn't make it.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

And I talked about it earlier today, but the Game Pass news like that, legitimately, I. We will see and are feeling now, but we'll forever see the ramifications of those decisions and how that changed the way people perceive the value of a video game. And as games themselves are going up to $70, $80, it's like, oh, man, you the. You can't put the genie back in the bottle.

[Greg Miller]

Yep.

[Tim Gettys]

The same way that Napster and then itunes completely changed the music industry and streaming services have changed the movie industry. Game Pass is changing the gaming industry, and I don't think it's a good thing.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

I got really shocked to not see Snoop Dogg's Amazon Luna video game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, yeah. Well, the poll went up before that.

[Andy Cortez]

That makes sense. Makes a little sense.

[Greg Miller]

Andy, while we have you, why don't you give us an update? Of course. We're trying to get 2, 000 super chats here in our 2000s episode. They can be 99 cents. Don't worry about it. If all 4,000 of you did it right now, we'd be done. We can stop talking about it. We'd send Andy home of course though. Andy, how many have we had so far over on YouTube.com kind of funny games or you can super chat right now.

[Andy Cortez]

Roger updated me 10 minutes ago with massive news. We hit 600.

[Greg Miller]

Huge.

[Andy Cortez]

Thank you everybody. We have a super chat here from somebody named Andy Cortez who says next KFL should be June 30, 2026 to celebrate the 5th anniversary of Amazon prime videos that Tomorrow War.

[Greg Miller]

Tomorrow, yeah. Never forget. I love that we made it. Andrea, have you watched the Tomorrow War yet?

[Andrea Rene]

I have not. I've been rec watching K Pop Demon Hunters over and over and over.

[Greg Miller]

I know that. Well, yes. My child is in the same boat. Yeah. Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Next year though, Tomorrow War. You should get Charlie on that. I think she'd like it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I got the Google sheet open with all the form responses asking people what the biggest cave should story is. And like, while it's dominated by Microsoft buying Activision, there are a few people that write in and says Tim PP do work. Which got a chuckle out of me.

[Greg Miller]

Any other super chats you want to highlight?

[Tim Gettys]

It is a big story. It's not as big as I wish it was.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, Omega Buster asks, can we add a snowback mic PowerPoint to games daily once a week. A lot of work.

[Andrea Rene]

Wait a minute. I was going to say you know how to use PowerPoint but not spreadsheets? That can't be.

[Greg Miller]

Well, I think you should. You should watch one of his PowerPoints before we just say if he knows.

[Tim Gettys]

How to use it.

[Andy Cortez]

Okay, five dollar super Chat here from Jordan Harrison who says congrats. Kind of funny crew. Thanks for all the work you put into 2000 episodes of KFGD. You all are the best.

[Greg Miller]

Heck yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Michael McCarthy writes in and says, Happy 2000 fan since 2020.

[Greg Miller]

Wow.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Thanks, Michael.

[Andy Cortez]

Microtransaction Chris with a $2 super chat asks, Mike, are we getting a marathon Pokemon Za Stream?

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, that's a great question. No, but you will get Nick unleashed in Pokemon. We will release Nick into the world.

[Gary Whitta]

No rules.

[Mike Mahardy]

And he will go have some fun. It'll be a great time.

[Andy Cortez]

We decided we'll just let you play the game. Yeah, you know, it gets very stressful for him. It's not good for his cholesterol.

[Mike Mahardy]

Justin writes in and says, team Purple, Team Texas, Team PC, Team Whatab Burger man.

[Greg Miller]

Come on.

[Mike Mahardy]

You're on the team.

[Andy Cortez]

You're on the team. Welcome in.

[Greg Miller]

So many bad things in the RCS.

[Andy Cortez]

RSC Raptor face with a $2002 super chat. Says, that interview with Greg and Camilo Ludington.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, okay. I remember that because it's an up a Noon reference.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, oh, okay, gotcha. That was so. That wasn't a KFGD reference. Yeah, gotcha. $10 super chat from Jim Tasty says, been a fan of. Of Greg and company since the IGN days. So grateful for everyone on kfgd. Got me through many days. Proud to be a part of this community.

[Mike Mahardy]

Jordan west writes in and says, Here's $5 to cash for Mike's Italian toothpaste for the office after those blue donuts.

[Andy Cortez]

That's a good call.

[Mike Mahardy]

I've switched it up from just the silver to the blue now. Nice Italia, dude.

[Andy Cortez]

You're getting those monthly. Are you subscribing?

[Mike Mahardy]

I'm getting like two a month. Yeah, you got to stay up on it.

[Greg Miller]

You know what I mean?

[Mike Mahardy]

Nothing worse than running out of toothpaste.

[Greg Miller]

You know what I mean?

[Mike Mahardy]

That's the worst feeling. Then I got to go back to Creston. It's like, what am I doing here?

[Andy Cortez]

Are you subscribed to anything on Tik Tok Shop? Like, are you just.

[Mike Mahardy]

No, no, I've only bought a couple of T shirts. Can you be subscribed?

[Andy Cortez]

I probably should have told you that. I probably shouldn't have.

[Greg Miller]

Andrew, are you aware that now when Mike travels, he doesn't pack a toiletry bag? He just buys toiletries at the airport. Airport or hotel.

[Andrea Rene]

You know, the hotel will give you most toiletries for free, right?

[Mike Mahardy]

Check it out. Hey, maybe that's what I do next time.

[Greg Miller]

That's not what he does, though.

[Andrea Rene]

You have to ask at the front desk. The good ones are not in the room, but you can get like, a razor, toothpaste, toothbrush. You can get that from the front desk at most hotels.

[Mike Mahardy]

She's putting me on. Thanks, Andrea.

[Gary Whitta]

You're welcome.

[Andrea Rene]

I'm here to help you be an adult.

[Greg Miller]

All we do, all we love to do, of course, is call out Snowbike Mike right in, like every stupid thing he's ever done. There was a classic, instant classic today, where Mike, when Mike walked in and Andrea was here. Andrea. Oh, I got so many questions. I mean, I want to talk to you so bad. Andrew goes, you have my Number why did you ever text me? Mike's like just Stonewall. Stonewall.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Greg, I got one here I want to ask you about. This is another one from the forum. Somebody wrote in and says when asking what what the biggest story in KG history is PSX being canceled while KFC is live on air and Greg committing to a KF game showcase immediately. Do you remember that?

[Greg Miller]

I do, of course. Yeah. That was a big deal for us. As you all know, as I've said many a time, kind of funny in general, very influenced by professional wrestling. So there's a lot of kayfabe. What do you know? What do you don't know? I had known PSX wasn't happening and so there had been background and I by like maybe a week, I don't know, maybe a couple days that it wasn't gonna happen. And so there have been back channeling with me and Tim of like this isn't happening. And I have an idea that if it's not happening we should jump on this and do a December show showcase for these indies. That that was always the best part of psx. When I think of psx, especially the first one in Vegas, right. I remember so well running around and like that they were giving out those trade the playing cards with games on them. And I remember talking to the team at Drinkbox who were showing Severed on Vita and how they were just getting showered with love for their little Vita game that nobody else would like really care about in a grand sense. Right. And it was that idea of that if that platform for getting indie games to people is going away, I wanted to try to step up and do it. And now obviously there's so many amazing showcases that we limit ourselves to our mixed stuff usually at gdc. And yet.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, and on top of that too, it's like that time was so special because in the same way that now even we still think of that Summer Game Fest week, you know, like the all the different events that are happening around the same time. And before it was even clearer with E3, but there was for a long stretch of time this like second energy of the year in December, the first week of December, we got PSX and we got game Awards and I feel like PSX was kind of hit or miss in terms of the big giant announcements, but they often were there. Like when you think about Last of Us 2 being announced and like some major, major things at, at PSX Uncharted before gameplay, like all that. But it was the indie game, so it was the like the smaller titles I think that specifically on the show floor. So yeah, that was. Losing PSX was a bummer in a lot of ways. But I do think having that PlayStation and then game awards, I don't even remember the order of it but like that was so special and awesome.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I was super happy to be able to do that. And again it was one of those that like I, I, I'm happy we had the Runway. Cuz I would have had the same thought if it happened live. But it would have been that like, well, can we do that? Are we committed doing that? So it was a good moment.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's cool.

[Andy Cortez]

I also remember, remember one of my sort of memories that I it's always just sort of instilled in my brain is sitting by my computer while y' all were on games daily. And more and more news kept coming out about EA maybe or E3 maybe not happening because of COVID Oh yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Like, oh yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

So many like, all right, this publisher is pulling out this public and it's like, oh wow, this thing's starting to kind of feel more real than we thought it was. And that was like maybe, I think a week later. We were already working by home by then.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Because we were like, let's, you know, let's take advantage of that. Let's go home a work or a week early.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

And then everybody was home after that. We'll be back soon.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Covid's actually an interesting one for not popping up there and it's kind of.

[Andrea Rene]

I think we've just blacked it out. I think we're still in like the inertia of the trauma of it all because it started really with PlayStation pulling out of PAX East.

[Greg Miller]

Yep.

[Andrea Rene]

They weren't, that was like, that was the story that kind of like was the first domino. And I just like when I think back to that time personally, I was just, I was just angry and sad and confused and like it can't be real. This can't, this can't be happening.

[Greg Miller]

The game Daily threat I would give would be to Gary because I remember every episode Gary was on he's like, this is gonna be bad. It was like such. Even when we weren't even putting into game news yet. And then yeah, for PSX to happen. I remember then, yeah. When I went and did in February, I went and did DICE Awards and I remember there being like at rehearsal being like, all right, well all these international people aren't coming. And I was like, why not? Because that, oh, okay. Yeah, they're Interesting that they're that worried about it. And then it was PlayStation leaving PAX east and then, yeah, the whole thing falling apart.

[Tim Gettys]

Going back real quick to the number one story we have. The Xbox acquires Activision. I'll never forget Gia waking me up like I was in bed. She wakes me up and she goes, you have to get online. Something's happening.

[Greg Miller]

What?

[Tim Gettys]

And she's like, I don't understand. But like, everyone's freaking out. Like, I think this, this is important. And I look at him like, Xbox is acquiring activists.

[Greg Miller]

I'm like, what the. It's time to move on to our next segment of this jam packed Kinda Funny Games Daily 2000th episode. It's called Former KFGD Host Clip Bless. What are we getting into?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Well, we just have. We have a clip to watch, a fun clip to watch. So, Barrett, go ahead and roll it. What's up everybody and welcome to Kinda Funny Games Daily.

[Greg Miller]

Which is what I would be saying if I were hosting KFGD today. But I'm mostly just here to say KFTD was a hell of a time.

[Tim Gettys]

Calling to you from the magical land of Canada and reminiscing on Kinda Funny's history as we look forward to the 2000th episode of this ridiculous endeavor.

[Greg Miller]

Hey, Kinda Funny, it's your boy, Danny O'Dwyer here, the Irish cream, as Craig often liked to call me.

[Andrea Rene]

What's good, everybody? Andrea Renee here.

Congrats. Kind of funny on two 2000 episodes of Games Daily.

Garcia here, aka Game Honestys. And I just want to say congratulations to 2000 episodes KFGD. Holy cow, what an accomplishment.

[Gary Whitta]

Hello, I'm Gary Wetter and I've been asked to record a short message in recognition of Kinda Funny Games Daily's 2000th episode.

[Andy Cortez]

I've been a fan of everything that.

[Gary Whitta]

Kinda Funny has done over the years, so to actually be invited to be a co host on KFGD was quite the honor.

[Greg Miller]

Had no idea what I was doing.

[Tim Gettys]

I was super nervous.

[Gary Whitta]

But everyone on the team, they were just super welcoming.

[Tim Gettys]

They made it very easy to be.

[Gary Whitta]

A part of this.

[Tim Gettys]

And, you know, I've been forever grateful.

[Gary Whitta]

And thankful to just be a part of the Kinda Funny family. And since that first appearance, I've actually hosted Kinda Funny Games Daily, you know, both remote and in studio. And thank you for the time that you gave me. The opportunity you gave me to spend hosting Kinda Funny Games Daily was some of the best time I had with you guys and it really helped me kind of hone in on a lot of my presenting as well, and helped me get through a tricky period of time where everyone's isolated. I felt more connected than ever to the kind of funny community. And I owe that all to you guys. So I really, really appreciate it.

[Greg Miller]

I was lucky enough to be paired up with the wonderful Andrea Renee for that whole period. I. And when I first started coming over, I don't know why, but I had it in my head that I was being brought in as like the sort of the color commentator. Like, I was there to sort of keep the, you know, give my opinion and keep the conversation rolling and not necessarily be the person who would like, research the show. And it took me a while to realize that I was basically turning up on the, you know, I fly, I drive over from Oakland to San Francisco. It would take like, you know, best part of 45 minutes to get there. And on the way I'd be like, thinking about new stories and all that sort of stuff. But then when I get there, Andrea had obviously done all the work to put together this. This really, you know, well researched and thought out list of news stories to cover. And so I think in retrospect, I.

[Gary Whitta]

Don'T think I was so busy with.

[Greg Miller]

Like noclip stuff and doing this and everything else. In retrospect, I go back and go, I was just super lazy. And Andrea was doing all of the work.

[Andrea Rene]

If you remember, July 11, 2019, very specific date. Did I just rewatch this episode to remind myself how funny it was? I sure did. It's called setting up a Nintendo Switch Lite lifestyle. And if y' all know what I'm talking about, it's that famous whiteboard moment where Greg gets a whiteboard from Kevin to explain to me a listener question, a situation about having a switch light and a regular switch, one as a primary one, as a secondary one in a dock permanently, and one that you take on the go. And there was just a component of the explanation missing and I was just not getting it. And Kevin was losing his mind. Wait, so are you insinuating that you would put the Switch Lite in the dock?

[Gary Whitta]

No.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Why are you saying that?

[Andrea Rene]

We as hosts and producers are putting together this show but allowing space for those moments of hilarity or sincerity, whatever the moment calls for, to just come about naturally. And that's what makes Kinda Funny so special.

[Tim Gettys]

I loved hosting Kinda Funny and having an opportunity to be a part of this community. I love some of the most memorable moments we've had. But as much as I love being behind the desk with Gary making fun of printers or trying to annoy Greg. But I always really, really appreciate it. More than that was the stuff that you never saw. The stuff in the back room of the office would just sit and banter and come up with ideas and laugh. Or the backstage at one of the events where Tim would walk up and give you that patented giant super Tim hug. These are the things that meant so much to me. Kind of Funny was the best job I ever had. And of course, like all luminaries, I took that job and then decided to leave to go work on Stadia. So, you know, great judgment on my part.

[Gary Whitta]

Fifteen years ago, Kind of Funny was barely a glimmer in a young Greg Miller's eye as he toiled thanklessly in the salt mines of ign. Then I catapulted into global recognition by telling him to not touch my knee, giving him the confidence to strike out on his own. You're welcome, Greg. Kind of Funny has grown into a media empire that now straddles the video games industry like a colossus. And in that time, I've grown to become close personal friends with Greg, Tim, Nick, Blessing, and the other ones. Congratulations on 20 fold episodes. Here's to 2,000 more. And maybe, just maybe, I'll host again. Here's to a thousand more episodes of Kind of Fun and Games Daily. Love you guys.

[Andrea Rene]

Have 2000 more episodes.

[Greg Miller]

KFCD.

[Andrea Rene]

Been a great run and congrats on 2000 episodes.

Keep crushing it. Here's to another 2000. Here's to another decade.

[Tim Gettys]

I miss you. I love you.

[Andy Cortez]

Here's to you.

[Gary Whitta]

Anyway, congratulations Kind of funny on the 2000 episode of Games Daily. You could probably stop now, right? You've made your point.

[Greg Miller]

And we're back for a very special episode of Kind of Funny Games Daily as we celebrate our 2000th episode. Remember, of course, what we're trying to do today is get 2000 super chats. Of course, to celebrate, to ring in to honor this milestone. They don't have to be big ones. You can toss in a dollar one right now. Andy is over there. Mike is over there. There, they'll read it. Mike's got a Mike Came out with a little thing of raspberries.

[Andy Cortez]

Lunch.

[Mike Mahardy]

Because I have Omega Buster writing in on the super chats. That said, man, this stream would be next level if we spent an hour watching Roger and Mike order lunch.

[Andy Cortez]

We can put it up on the back.

[Mike Mahardy]

Let's get on this instead.

[Greg Miller]

We're welcoming to the main desk, of course, Andrea, who's been here all Day with us. But the rogue one, Gary Whitta. Hello, Gary. Hello. Hey, Gary, it's been a minute. Great video out there. Great little.

[Gary Whitta]

Thank you. We'll talk about how you cut it almost all. Almost all of my best jokes after the show.

[Greg Miller]

You act like I had anything to do. And of course, the best hair of the business.

[Gary Whitta]

On my own YouTube channel, I will be posting the full, unexpected, uncensored, free speech version. You can try to kill Kim. My jokes are going to get out there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You're going off mike.

[Gary Whitta]

People at home don't see where the crafty let it swear. But I fucking saw.

[Greg Miller]

They don't. Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

Who's going off mike?

Gary.

[Gary Whitta]

What?

[Andrea Rene]

When you turn to the right, you're going off mic.

[Gary Whitta]

I'm a human being. I move my head when I. I talk.

[Greg Miller]

You got to keep up with him, Kevin. That's a. It's a amazing we don't work with Gary more. It's amazing we don't work with. No wonder. What's grinding.

[Andrea Rene]

Sounds like a microphone problem more than a Gary problem.

Move it back slightly and you'll be able to turn your head a little bit more.

[Gary Whitta]

All right. Well, you're the. You're much more pro than I am about being kind of a microphone and.

[Greg Miller]

The best hair in the business. Fran Mirabel iii. Welcome, boys.

[Andrea Rene]

Honestly, such a hard act to follow. I was just going to leave like I couldn't even make it to the.

[Greg Miller]

Hello? Yeah, yeah. Just kidding. How you guys doing? Good.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, yeah, we were just talking about, like, building PCs and stuff.

[Andrea Rene]

Nerding out.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah, of course you are. I see them now, those handhelds. It's great. Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah. You're big on PCs now.

[Greg Miller]

I hear anything that's, you know, it's a Vita 2 and I'm holding it. That's great.

[Andrea Rene]

Don't say I didn't tell you.

[Greg Miller]

So. Yeah. What do you got, Andrew?

[Andrea Rene]

Oh, I was just gonna mention that I saw Gary walk in when we were talking about Dune Awakening. Yes, but he was still top secret. Revealed yet.

[Gary Whitta]

What hadn't been revealed?

[Andrea Rene]

You being here.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, I didn't realize it was a. It was a secret. Okay.

[Greg Miller]

We gotta keep you. We gotta keep you. You know what I mean?

[Andrea Rene]

They just said guess.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean, how could. Well, I was gonna say, how could you not have Kind of Funny's 2000th episode without me? But you do all kinds of stuff without me, so I wouldn't have batted an eyelid either way.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, Gary. What? You're the chief.

[Andy Cortez]

One of them.

[Greg Miller]

You cut him out of stuff all the time. Why are you.

[Mike Mahardy]

Why would they cut up your video, Gary? That's up.

[Gary Whitta]

It's absolutely. I. I put a lot of work into. I put a lot of work into. I set up my Elgato teleprompter for that. Right.

[Greg Miller]

Why are you not cutting to the picture? Picture of Mike eating raspberries out of the container.

[Andrea Rene]

Wash him.

[Greg Miller]

Mike is a menace today. This is even worse than usual.

[Mike Mahardy]

I like this energy, Gary. I'm with you, big dog.

[Gary Whitta]

Get ready. There's a lot. There's a lot. I got a lot of pen up frustration super chats in for Gary.

[Mike Mahardy]

I'll read them.

[Greg Miller]

Did you wash those super those berries?

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, yeah, sure.

[Andrea Rene]

No, Come on, Mike.

[Greg Miller]

What do you think, Mike?

[Andrea Rene]

Raspberries are packed with fiber, so it should be careful.

[Tim Gettys]

Well, that's probably good for me.

[Greg Miller]

It's good for you. Long weekends.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Jesus Christ.

[Andy Cortez]

Everybody be his pants again.

[Greg Miller]

As we continue on our 2000 march here. Yes, of course. Get the Kind of Funny Games Daily 2000 shirt. I saw people popping off. They didn't know that was happening because there's so much packed in this episode. Kind of funny.com story you can pick up your kinda funny games daily 2000 shirt and some throwbacks.

[Andrea Rene]

I can still see the N64 box right now, Greg. I know, right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's from.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, you know. Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

The millenn. The millennial turn of the millennium vibes are very present.

[Greg Miller]

It was just such a great homage to one of the best wrestling games of all time. I'm happy.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean this kind of aesthetic was very popular around the late night. Everything was 2000. That was like a big deal.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, exactly. And speaking of the late 90s, in the early 2000s, we have a special segment called KFGD 2000. In celebration of two episodes, we're gonna talk about the biggest news stories from every year since the year 2000 all the way up to 2017 when kinda funny Games Daily began.

[Andrea Rene]

Also when I started in the industry.

[Greg Miller]

Well, that was one of the things when we were doing the walkthrough in the audience and we talked, blessing was like, I'll leave. And then Fran and Gary come out because the old heads will have some good things to say.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

And I was like, if I can.

[Andrea Rene]

Remember that far back.

[Greg Miller]

Damn, that hurts. I don't like that one bit.

[Andrea Rene]

Before we start this, Greg, please can we make a disclaimer since I already can read the comments in my mind coming in.

[Gary Whitta]

Well, you can read them on that big screen as well.

[Andrea Rene]

Right. No, I mean, like the people who watch it after the fact who aren't live. I feel like the people who are watching live are the kinder, nicer.

[Greg Miller]

Of course. They're the best friends. They're super chatting right now.

[Andrea Rene]

This list was compiled by Roger and Blessing.

[Greg Miller]

I don't.

[Andrea Rene]

Blessing, right.

[Greg Miller]

Roger and Blessing. I would say share the blame.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Share the blame.

[Andrea Rene]

Someone who was barely alive for half a of this list. And I look at some of these stories and go. Probably wouldn't have been my pick.

[Greg Miller]

Slow news year. Slow news year. What are you gonna do? You know what I. Oh, God, here he comes. Gary got a shooting.

[Mike Mahardy]

Gary got a shooting out here.

[Greg Miller]

I like it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

First of all, I was born in 1994.

[Greg Miller]

All right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This list starts at 2000 also.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, you were six years old when this list started, Blessing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, I remember this stuff happening. That's what. But that's why we have you guys on the panel, because.

[Greg Miller]

And this is also super Chat territory.

[Mike Mahardy]

Super chat time. Andy, what do we got for super Chat?

[Greg Miller]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm saying if they don't agree with the year. Super chatting with your own paper.

[Andrea Rene]

This is a lot of work to go and pull all these stories. So.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Most of the work was Wikipedia and a lot of other wikis, and so.

[Andrea Rene]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

I did my research.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I did study. I'm diligent.

[Andy Cortez]

I'm loving Kevin. Trying to line up the perspective of the screen.

[Greg Miller]

I see what he's doing.

[Andy Cortez]

I see what he's doing. I love it, Kevin.

[Greg Miller]

But like it like one of those.

[Andrea Rene]

This is such traditional.

[Greg Miller]

Why, like, Barrett had it a second ago, picture in picture. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

He didn't explain how it works now I rebuilt it.

[Greg Miller]

He didn't explain how it works. You go out there, you ask Barrett.

[Gary Whitta]

I'm not in any way. I'm not in any way an audio video expert. I look at all the equipment that Kevin has in there, and I just. Like, this looks like mission Control. I have no idea what's on, going, going on. But I do suspect that the best time to change and fiddle with your video and audio settings is not when you are going live to air.

[Greg Miller]

There'd be no.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean. I mean, maybe I'm wrong.

[Andrea Rene]

You're not wrong, Gary.

[Greg Miller]

There's no better way to do it. It kind of funny. It's the only way we know how to do it. Some would say. All right, let's dive in then. All right, we're starting at the year 2000. The PlayStation 2 is first released in Japan on March 4, 2000, followed by North America on October 26, in Europe on November20.

[Gary Whitta]

I remember it well.

[Andrea Rene]

Train transformative in other console.

[Greg Miller]

I'll give you the whole snapshot they made you here. Okay. In other news, Microsoft acquired Bungie and Nintendo sells its 100 millionth Game Boy slash Game Boy color handheld game console. That doesn't surprise me. For animals. You remember the PlayStation 2?

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah. Yes I do.

[Greg Miller]

A real system, you know what I mean? Didn't need a handle, didn't meet, didn't need tiny discs. Could play dvd, more movies. All right. Could play great games.

[Andrea Rene]

So you're putting down GameCube?

[Greg Miller]

I am. I'm on what you love. Yes.

[Andrea Rene]

What this brings me back to more than anything is this was the exact feeling and culture in the IGN offices, which was every. It was always like we had the fanboy wars more than ever back then. It's amazing to see how they've transformed to today. But back then it was like Nintendo's for babies. You don't need your little purse. Which they referred to the GameCube as like the purse and all.

[Gary Whitta]

It had the little handle.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, handles, dope.

[Andrea Rene]

The handle was like so weird because I, I don't think they ever fully.

[Greg Miller]

Explained why it's on there.

[Gary Whitta]

But it wasn't that hard to carry without one, you know, like you're gonna.

[Andrea Rene]

Take it over to your friend's place. But no, but for real, like the PlayStation coming out that year, I mean that's the PlayStation 2.

[Greg Miller]

That is. Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

Insane. Yeah, that was like, at the time, I mean it was just transformative is the first word I would think of. What about you guys?

Yeah, I mean it's one of the most innovative, iconic and important consoles ever created.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. I mean for me, obviously I've talked about it a lot but like this was, I feel the moment I became an adult gamer, like, oh, this is the first console I ever, I'm like, I'm going to buy this with my own money at launch, ready to go. It's not a Christmas gift, it's not a birthday gift. You know, I work the summer job soul crushingly at Walmart and on my lunch breaks I would go next door to Best buy and buy DVDs and then read the DVDs and like I, there's the first DVD player our house ever had. So I'm buying Ghostbusters.

[Gary Whitta]

That's right. It was, it was the gateway to.

[Greg Miller]

DVDs for a lot of people reading all these extras. Mall rats. What am I going to. And Like I'd already watched some of these extras at my friend's house but I was like I'm going to do this here and then yeah. To go camp out at Meer, which is a giant supermarket Walmart kind of thing. Camp out in their electronics department for nine hours on my little camping chair reading my EGM cover to cover over over and over again and finally get that gorgeous blue box come home.

[Gary Whitta]

That's right. It was just a, just a plain blue box, remember? I like that. A lot of confidence in that design.

[Greg Miller]

Exactly. Bring it to college. Just be the coolest nerd there was. Gary, you're heavily into PC at this point, right? You're just addicted to this devil.

[Gary Whitta]

No, I, I, I'm, I'm agni, I'm all, I don't, you know, discriminate. I play every, I go where the games are. I'm fortunate enough to have all the systems including a decent PC so I'll play Sometimes, you know, a game comes out and it's on multiple platforms you've got to figure out like.

[Greg Miller]

But I'm talking about would you be most for two. Were you?

[Gary Whitta]

Well, I would so 2000 was my last year on as editor in chief of PC Gamer. That was the year that I left I see from 96 to 2000. So yeah the late 90s PC gaming is still I think one of the most fertile nostalgia gardens that you can, if you, if you like retro stuff and you like to think about the good old of gaming for a certain generation of us that mid-90s PCs and those games are still brilliant. I love, love every. I don't want to go play them anymore. They look now. Yeah, they look, they look pretty great.

[Greg Miller]

Did PS2 do anything for you? Did you pay?

[Gary Whitta]

No. So that, no, at that point it was kind of stupid. There's like I, I was, when I was enter a PC game we had Next Generation magazine right next door and those were the, those were the console guys and we had the PS3. We had this like fake rivalry and we like joke about console and stuff but like When Super Mario 64 came in, you better believe we were all over there going what the shit? You know, like it was really cool. But then they all came over when we had Half Life too.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

So. Oh no, the original Half Life. So yeah, I didn't, I didn't, I had a GameCube, I didn't have a place. I did have a PlayStation 2 but I didn't really play it very much. I was a Dreamcast guy. Don't forget the Dreamcast was barely a.

[Greg Miller]

Year old at that Dreamcast. We're coming up on you. Don't worry about it.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's. That to me, is still. That's where my love and affection is, the Dreamcast frame.

[Greg Miller]

Were you at IGN at launch of PlayStation 2?

[Andrea Rene]

No, that was in March, you said.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, so.

[Andrea Rene]

No, it wasn't.

[Greg Miller]

Well, no. October would have been a US Launch. God.

[Andrea Rene]

I guess I was.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

Which it was.

[Greg Miller]

Do you remember that? Because it's another jump of, like, November 24th.

[Andrea Rene]

Because remember when they used to launch the stuff, like, right at Black Friday.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Well, no, North America was October 26th. Never forget.

[Andrea Rene]

Oh, okay.

[Greg Miller]

October 26th, 2000. Andy, I got my plan. PlayStation 2, October 26th, 2001. Rush the Field when Mizzou beat Kansas. No big deal. Oh, wow. Got on the poster and everything.

[Andrea Rene]

But in short, I guess I was there. That was like my third month there. And you know how it is, starting at IGN and like. Yeah, it was so, like, such a blur. It was overwhelming. It was also in the middle of, like, the dot com, you know, burst with, yeah. Oh, my God now. Yeah. But, like, the offices were insane. It was like Wolf of Wall street in there. I'm not kidding. Like, it was just like everybody was running around, like. Because the sales side was the other side.

[Greg Miller]

That was of Wall Street. I thought you just meant, like, the debauchery that you guys would have been doing in your area.

[Andrea Rene]

Well, that was happening to not to not. I'm telling you, it was nuts back then. But that being said, it was such chaos. And I remember we moved offices, too, that somehow I'm like, I don't remember that moment. And I remember all the other console launches. I'm like, how did I not remember this so well?

[Greg Miller]

It's a weird one, even for me, of being at IGN through so many pivotal moments. But, like, I remember the console launches varying so drastically where I remember the Wii U, obviously no one cared about it. And Charles went out on a run and then like, ran by saw. Like there was a line of four people just bought one on the.

[Gary Whitta]

Hell yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Wait, wait, Wii U, PlayStation 4, though. I remember. Remember we did that giant unboxing Fran, where everybody got theirs delivered. So like, suddenly there was like, 29Amazon packages of PlayStation 4 as we unboxed them all in the launcher.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah. But of course, even, like, GameCube launched the next year, you know, I mean, granted, that's what I was covering. I guess that's probably what it is also I was so like myopic on like GameCube, Nintendo. Everything was like. That's all I was focused on.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. But I cut you off.

[Gary Whitta]

Well, I was gonna say the point I was gonna make was really go nowhere. But I love a good console launch and I feel like, you know, as the market kind of contracts and console generations last longer, they're becoming fewer and farther between, which I guess is a shame, but you know.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, they also, I mean, now it's such a, I would say impersonal, personal, private thing. Right. As we go to. Okay, well, the PlayStation 5's here and most people, I think, order it offline and you get it and it's a little bit better than your last one. Right. And then it's now we have the iterations with pros and stuff like that too, where it's like, oh, okay. I guess like it is new bells and whistles.

[Gary Whitta]

I gotta miss. I don't. I actually did stand in line for about three hours for a Switch 2 because it was apparent that they were going to be hard to find and I really wanted to switch to. I was willing to go stand in line for about three hours at Best Buy and it was fine. It was actually very. Well, it was like the least shit show line I've ever been involved in.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

But prior to. I used to do the midlight launches. I, I, the original we. I recall standing in line. Me and Bill Roper camped out overnight at the, at the Marin Best Buy to get, get the Wii.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

And then I, I've done a couple of other launches as well, but I, I can't do that anymore. Like, I don't, I don't. You don't miss that, do you?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, God, no. No, no, no, I don't. I, I much rather come to my door. I, I hate that we're still Sony.

[Gary Whitta]

Special Sony White glove service.

[Greg Miller]

Yo, I'm gonna go to this Amazon link. This link and like they all bork and break. How is that still happening? Trying to get a switch to the dramatic. It's in the card.

[Tim Gettys]

It's gone.

[Greg Miller]

What the.

[Gary Whitta]

I'm sorry.

[Andrea Rene]

That part is.

[Gary Whitta]

I hate the staples and all that.

[Andrea Rene]

I do miss the excitement of being surrounded by the, the community.

[Greg Miller]

Of course.

[Gary Whitta]

But not. But not replacement. Well, but like, it's like figuratively. But no, you don't actually want those people.

[Andrea Rene]

No, I don't actually.

You don't want to be near other nerds.

[Gary Whitta]

I can go online and get a sense of community. I actually want to be in the same space as People.

[Andrea Rene]

It'S like the aura is as broad enough, you can sense it, but you don't have to get close enough to smell them. So yes.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, I mean that, that is, that is the issue. Fortunately, most of these lines are, you know, in the open air, but I do miss it.

[Greg Miller]

Before we move on to 2001, I want to give a shout out to 8bit Louise with $100 super chat. Thank you for all the laughs and unforgettable moments. Here's for 2,000 more episodes. I love you all.

[Andy Cortez]

And we're at 727 super chats.

[Greg Miller]

If you all super chatted with $1 right, right now, we'd be done.

[Gary Whitta]

Is that the cheapest you can do a Super Chat?

[Greg Miller]

No, you can do 99 cents.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I don't. Maybe you can do one cent. Try give me a 4001 to Gary.

[Andrea Rene]

There's no way.

[Gary Whitta]

Are interesting and. And do you. At what point. What's the rule? At what point do you have to read them out?

[Greg Miller]

We do whatever we want. People understand that.

[Gary Whitta]

I know some channels. Well, if you paid $20 for a super Chat like you would expect to.

[Andrea Rene]

Have it read out, right?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. See you got. You got whiny little bit babies like Kebabs. I've super chatted like four times, Greg. Shove it. Kebabs. We're trying.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, Kebabs.

Kebabs might be one of the most read people on KFG.

[Greg Miller]

Exactly.

[Andrea Rene]

Over all of the 2,000.

[Greg Miller]

Exactly.

[Andrea Rene]

So I feel like you've got your time, Kebabs.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you very much, Andrea. I'm heated. I'm tilted.

[Andrea Rene]

Are you happy?

[Greg Miller]

We're going to 2001.

[Gary Whitta]

That's a 99 cent super chat right there.

[Andy Cortez]

I'll be legit though. Kebabs. I like. I haven't seen your name. That's how. That's how crazy the support is is right now.

[Greg Miller]

And a lot of 99 cent and $1 coming in.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, we love shouting out the. You know, the. Obviously the Die Hards that have been here forever but I have not even seen your name. That's how many. I probably scrolled by it in a, you know, in a frenzy.

[Greg Miller]

2001. The one they've listed here. Don't get mad at me, is Sega goes third party Nintendo Ties announced. This is IGN hardware player and giant publisher. Sega made the announcement today that everyone in the industry was expecting it to make. The company in an official release said it plans to gradually remove itself from the industry as a hardware competitor and instead focus its efforts as a multiplatform third party publisher, specifically, Sega, announced its support for Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's game Boy advance handheld. The firm also confirmed that in an effort to accelerate the transition from hardware manufacturer to third party publisher, it would drop the price of its Dreamcast console to $99, effective February. February 4, 2001, incidentally, the same price that Nintendo 64 retails for now. In other news, three major video game systems were released in 2001. The GameCube and the Game Boy advance by Nintendo and the Xbox by Microsoft. Fran, Sega going third party. Yeah, you remember that day?

[Andrea Rene]

What's that?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, I remember that day.

[Andrea Rene]

Absolutely. I remember that day. It's funny, I remember so much about the Dreamcast too, because I was so hyped about it.

[Greg Miller]

I'm sure Hillary wouldn't shut up about it.

[Andrea Rene]

Hillary, of course, would not shut up about it. He wasn't it. But Hillary came later though, right? Probably, yeah. But anyway, it was, I mean, it was crazy because it, it maybe was one of those first big moments of failure from a hardware vendor, right. That it just like it almost. Right. We had the SEGA Channel, Dreamcast Channel on IGN and all that. Like, you know, in the same way, imagine you have someone specializing in coverage here and it's like, we're not doing that anymore. Actually, I know you guys were talking about Xbox earlier today, so maybe some bare parallels here, but anyway, no, I remember it being kind of crazy, but then also immediately it was sort of like, okay, when are we getting the Dreamcast ports on GameCube and Xbox and PlayStation 2? And it, by the way, it was pretty freaking fast.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, as I recall. Yeah, I mean, I was of course, a Sega kid. I saw Ghostbusters on the SEGA Master System, did no research because I was kindergarten, pre kindergarten. My mom and dad bought the game on my.

[Gary Whitta]

I had that on Commodore 64. That was rough.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, well, no, but the Master System was the best version.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, it was really the same game though, right?

[Greg Miller]

They had additions and things that the other ones did. So it actually was the good one anyways, though. Then it was like, well, Sega Genesis came out, Sonic was cool. There was an adapter to put into your Genesis to play your Master System stuff. So suddenly backwards compatibility. I didn't know I had a game library. And I was there through the Saturn and it was the Saturn that salted the earth for me. That when Dreamcast came out and was awesome and I'd go to Target, I play Crazy Taxi. After high school, it was that thing of like I will not buy this piece of shit because of what you did to Saturn.

[Gary Whitta]

Was there Xbox Satin? Was there Xbox One?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Alienated a lot of people and just that was it for me. And so this was a sad one to a degree of like this is done for you. And I was like, they're never coming back.

[Gary Whitta]

We don't have to get into it now. Maybe I'll just do offline and go watch a YouTube video. I don't really know what went wrong with the set as a perfectly capable machine. So what was wrong with it? Why didn't people.

[Andrea Rene]

Timing, I think was a big part of it.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

Like it was trapped between. Right. The PlayStation. PlayStation and the PlayStation 2 and that. What, what year?

Nintendo 64 and yeah, 64, of course.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

999 or no, that was, that was Dreamcast, wasn't it?

[Andrea Rene]

But it was like later, like when was it like 97 or 98?

[Greg Miller]

Well, if you remember the big, the big deal was Dreamcast was 99.

[Gary Whitta]

So 90.

[Greg Miller]

94 in Japan. 95. Okay.

[Gary Whitta]

There you go.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. About five years is usually it had a. It had a. Then it.

[Andrea Rene]

Well, basically the answer is probably PlayStation.

[Greg Miller]

Right? It.

[Andrea Rene]

PlayStation is the answer. It completely ate their lunch, right?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, exactly.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah. So that was, that was, that was two questions about the Dream car because I could talk about Dreamcast all day. I love it. I tell you what. One, my particular memory, one thing I always think of, of course I remember crazy, Crazy Taxi was like I melted that disc. I fucking love that game. Still so good today. But I remember the first time that a video game looked truly next gen to me. Like whatever that means to you. The first was when I was at an event. It was a Dream Dreamcast event and they had NFL 2K running on one of them. It was the very first 2k game and it was on Dreamcast. And I remember from across from going, is that, is that on tv? And I went over and then, oh no, that's a game. And now you get to a point, you look at like EAFC and stuff like that on NBA 2K now. Yeah, it's like you have to look watch for like five minutes to figure out if it's TV or a video game. We've come that far. But that was the first time I fellowshit. That's a real leap. Yeah, like that looks really good.

[Greg Miller]

I mean we talked about it in past passing there, but like SEGA was ahead of the curve for so long and possibly too far because I remember the SEGA Channel, which was, you get the cartridge, you plug it into your Genesis and then you have the telephone line to your wall and you have this through your cable company, a bunch of different Sega games you could play like Netflix, like we talk about now with Game Pass. Then of course Dreamcast being an online system and it was go, you know, play head to head and do dynasties with your friends.

[Gary Whitta]

And it's like, yeah, it's a shame. I think had it not been coming off the back of the, you know, I got a lot of the ill will from the Saturn and then the bad timing because less than a year later Sony would come over and run it over with a truck with PlayStation 2. I think if, if they'd just been lucky, if the timing or whatever had been more fortunate, I think Dreamcast on its own merits could have done very well.

[Greg Miller]

It was a good machine, 100%.

[Gary Whitta]

And people are still like, there's no fondness for the Saturn.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Gary Whitta]

But people have, still have a lot. Dreamcast.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah. Michael2001 Xbox release or Microsoft released the Xbox special.

[Andrea Rene]

To me, you were alive then.

[Mike Mahardy]

I was alive and kicking fan. I was gaming all the time. You know, it's funny, we brought up PlayStation 2 and I could go right down the list of all the PlayStation 2 games that meant so much to me. And the same goes for Xbox, right? I think about links back in the day just I loved a good golf game on the Xbox.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, that was the first one where you could all take your shots at the time. Same, same time that was on multiplayer. That was a huge deal.

[Andy Cortez]

I was going to say links the time sweeper.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, that's different. We had Voodoo Vince. We had blinks, of course. We had Conquers Bad Fur Day Live and Reloaded brought it back. That was a big deal to me.

[Andy Cortez]

I just remember some of my good friends mentioning plasma grenades. You throw these things and they stick on you. I'm like, what are they talking about? And then finally got to see Halo and ended up being one of the coolest gifts ever where I was addicted to Halo, going to my friend's house all the time time playing it. And then I was going to go that summer vacation to go babysit my cousins in Austin. And I was like, I'm going to go earn money. My, my uncle and, and are going to pay me. Then I'm going to come back and buy an Xbox so I could play Halo. And my parents said, andy, we surprised you with. And they, they bought me one already, the clear green one.

[Mike Mahardy]

That was a special Halo edition right there.

[Andy Cortez]

Best gift ever.

[Mike Mahardy]

You had that big Duke controller. The introduction of the Internet really was at the forefront then with XP Live.

[Andy Cortez]

Everybody making their own SE before that.

[Andrea Rene]

Well, the LAN parties of Halo, I think are one of the true iconic things of that era of gaming that I remember being in college and having everyone in the dorms and being like, oh, we're like getting together to play Halo. And I was like, what's Halo? Because I didn't actually play Halo until Reach.

[Mike Mahardy]

Even the split screen co op was still a big deal. Split screen four player playing wizard on Halo 1 hang em high. That was some special times back.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Playing one of you one against my brother and we would get a poster board and.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh yeah, you have to. Yeah. Isolate the two screens.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, split the screen.

[Gary Whitta]

We used to do that. We used to do that with Doom and Quake.

[Andy Cortez]

I would stand on the urinal bed later so I could see the top of the. Of my perspective and he'd be underneath watching only.

[Gary Whitta]

That's hilarious.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

I was gonna say relevant to both of things. We just brought up one. I don't know if you guys remember. I remember buying the Dreamcast being so excited, surprisingly, because of Tony hawk's Pro Skater 2 maybe. Or was it one? But I was like, it looks so freaking good and had the VGA output. That's how much of a visual nerd I was.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

But I was like stoked. And then I found out how bad the Dreamcast controller was. Your virtual memory card to this day, because of that freaking controller. But secondly, I was going to say you nailed it, Andrea. The Xbox. I remember being so stoked because we hooked it up at our apartment lan. And I remember like rushing home that night and plugging in Land, like not having giant PC setups. You know, like, we're just all going to game together tonight. It was. It was so exciting. Like to me, that was Xbox launch.

[Gary Whitta]

I. So two things real quick. The one thing, I actually like, the Dreamcast controller. I thought the VMU was actually very cool. Yeah. I never understood why the cable that connected to the console came at the bottom of the controller. That made zero sense to me. Because then it has to loop under the controller. Like it's obvious. It should go on the top on the Xbox. I have a good story about one. Not really a good story, but a story. I reviewed the official. Sorry, Halo. The first Halo. When it launched, I. After PC Gamer, I briefly was editor in chief of Next Generation. I nursed that magazine into its grave. It was already kind of moribund when I got There it's like just, you know, try and make, try and make the patient comfortable kind of thing. So I. And they said, you know, Halo and official official Xbox magazine was launching. They had the right to do the official Xbox magazine. They asked me to go up there and do it because I guess I was a co. Console man at that point. I was on Next Gen. I was like, you send in the wrong guy. Like I'm a PC guy. Like I'm gonna like whatever they've done with the controller, like to, you know, to map those. I was one of those people he used to go over to Next Gen Live. Yeah, you can't play that on. You can't play those kind of games on the controller. You need a mouse and keyboard.

[Greg Miller]

Yep, yep.

[Gary Whitta]

And so like that's. I'm gonna have a hard time with it. You send them wrong up. They sent me up there and they set me up. They, you know, did the thing, went up to Redmond. They put you in a room with the system and stuff. Gave me the big Duke controller, which I always liked. I don't even have big hands, but I liked the Duke. Yeah, I never had a problem with it.

[Mike Mahardy]

Black and white buttons over there.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah. I felt like holding a big hamburger. I liked. And so I sat down a little bit kind of on my arms folded like you can't do these kind of games on consoles. And like an hour later after doing that first mission, I was like, oh shit. They. They cracked it. Like it was. I'm sure other people will say that there have been twin stick, you know, first person shooters on place on. On PlayStation, whatever that were good before that, but. Yeah, but like for me, Halo is the one that like really made it mainstream.

[Greg Miller]

Accepted rule that Halo.

[Gary Whitta]

Halo is the one that showed how it could be done.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, I agree. I think really, really well. I wasn't missing the mouse after like an hour. And now I play all those games on a controller, even on PC.

[Andrea Rene]

Shout out to Gold Knife for doing it first.

[Greg Miller]

But yes, okay, yeah, but like again, but gold.

[Andrea Rene]

I'm not saying.

[Greg Miller]

Frequently overlooked because it still is a bonkers control scheme where it's like Halo makes.

[Andrea Rene]

But they did it first.

[Greg Miller]

Everything in the. I'm using the C button.

[Andrea Rene]

The C buttons work.

[Greg Miller]

But.

[Andrea Rene]

But meaning.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, and also don't forget, that was still one stick. The two sticks, which is now the default, that Halo, really Halo, when it does that, someone's going to say, someone's going to say like SOCOM or Kill Zone or one of these. But I tried all those. And none of them ever felt like.

[Greg Miller]

They had Halo nails this. Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

But I'm just saying.

[Greg Miller]

Golden, I'm saying I think so. Golden, I think falls into the category Gary and I weren't throwing away of like, other people did this and made it work and playable. But Halo's the one that every. Went on it. Oh, this is what it's supposed to.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, it was revolutionary.

[Gary Whitta]

They did a. They. I mean, they. Again, whether through luck or skill or whatever, I don't know, but they. Probably the last time that a game launched with a console that was like. Like a major system mover, right? Like this. Like it was a reason to buy the car. Like Halo was the reason why you got that console at launch. And I still remember that, you know, the first time he sat down with it and I was in that room. Oh, and you go, oh, this is so epic. And the music is so fucking good. And you land on that. You land on the Halo for the first time and you see it like arcing up and you go, oh, this is so fucking cool. Like, I just. I remember having. There's so many great moments in the first couple of hours of that game.

[Greg Miller]

Let's move on to 2002. Microsoft purchases rare for $375 million. We just talked about 69 billion for. You know, it's like you're crazy to come to these numbers.

[Gary Whitta]

That was a good purchase. In retrospect, you. Then they got their money.

[Greg Miller]

Well, yeah, for Microsoft. Yeah, I think so. For Rare and their legacy. No, I think that that was such a. Hey, we're going to bring you over here to make Xbox avatars. Remember, that was the big thing. They had so many of them working on.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, my God.

[Greg Miller]

They made so. Like that 64 generation is so defined by Rare. And then to come over here and go, oh, okay, this is what their legacy will be. Beyond that.

[Gary Whitta]

We got Viva Pinata out of it.

[Greg Miller]

We did. And Viva Pinata is great. Where's another one?

[Gary Whitta]

Well, there was the other one.

[Greg Miller]

It's still, you know, I mean, but.

[Andrea Rene]

Well, you don't think Cities is ctv Got it.

I think that's. It took that long.

[Gary Whitta]

I should play CFDs, but I hear it's toxic. There's a lot of toxic people in there, is what I.

[Greg Miller]

What I heard you're one of them.

[Mike Mahardy]

If you go, miguel, you like getting a little toxic.

[Greg Miller]

They have.

[Gary Whitta]

No, you do.

[Andrea Rene]

They've always had a grief.

[Gary Whitta]

Don't even start with that game.

[Andrea Rene]

But there's. You can play now, by the way, that you can just get together with friends and not worry about that. A little slip.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Sea of Thieves is awesome. When they did the Pirates of the Caribbean stuff, I jumped in there and Mike, Mike went and it was great. But to your point when I then when Mike wasn't on and I went and played by myself. Gary. Yeah, it sucked to be.

[Gary Whitta]

I remember when a bunch of you guys get attacked, a bunch of you guys were playing and I thought like on paper this is the sort of thing that I should enjoy. So like I'm gonna finally sit down and try it. Like after months of saying no. And I tried to install it and for whatever reason there was like a problem on the install and I was. And I was already like on a knife edge. You know what? Fuck it. I'm not, I'm not. I said I would play, but I'm not going to go to any. And so I never played it. So I may, I may have missed out on a huge Sea of Thieves thing.

[Andrea Rene]

But back to the acquisition way back then because Sea of Thieves was so far from that. But what I remember thinking at first was, dang, you know, Nintendo's gonna lose all these great, you know. Banjo Pazui. Yeah, golden eye missing another key one in there. Mickey Speedway.

[Mike Mahardy]

No battle totes conquers bad fur.

[Andrea Rene]

But they had tons of great stuff before RC Pro. Yeah, actually that's right.

[Gary Whitta]

You want to go all the way back. Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

And that was before they were even like working hand in hand. And you got second part.

[Gary Whitta]

You want to get really old school because I'm a Brit. You remember the Rare used to be a company called ultimate play the game.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

And they did. And they did mostly games for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. And you know, because it was like a little company in. In. In, you know, in the middle of nowhere in England. Ashby de la Zooch Tim and Chris Stampo started Ultimate playing the game. And then they turn. They were like during like the 8 bit spectrum days. They were like the, like they were. They were like the developer. Like when ultimate brought our game, everybody paid attention. It came in this beautiful packaging. There was nothing else like it. And they had a mystique around them and then they became rare. And I don't know, I kind of felt like something got lost even in that moment. Like the whatever the ultimate sheen that it had back in the eight bit days. Like they did. They did amazing stuff on, on Nintendo and some on Xbox as well. But I kind of feel like I don't know because I have a very, very long history going Back with like pre Rare.

[Andrea Rene]

Rare.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

So I maybe judge them on a different metric.

[Andrea Rene]

Conker's bad for a day was what I was thinking of obviously otherwise. But anyway they were crushing it. And anyway my first reaction was like oh man. Like you know, a little bit that competitiveness we talked about, like oh, we're going to lose this to the Xbox, you know, the Xbox. But then like I. I'm. Maybe I'm wrong but. But I'm like didn't they just didn't find their footing until when Sea of Thieves like so like what happened? I guess a lot of people left. I mean we know the Timesplitters gang, right? Yeah, some ex GoldenEye folks and people moved around but they lost the Nintendo kind of production.

[Gary Whitta]

It was a feel that it was going to be like their insomniac or their Naughty dog.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Gary Whitta]

But it never really got to that level.

[Andrea Rene]

But that was probably like a Microsoft problem more than it was a Rare problem of like they needed retain a bunch of the right talent. But also, you know, if you look at what Rare did the best, it was like they took Mario and then they made it like awesome in its own way with Banjo Kazooie, you know. And they were just very good at like doing stuff like that. Like taking Nintendo's ideas frankly and then putting their spin on it.

[Gary Whitta]

They're super talented. And if you ever, if you looked at Rare Replay when it came out a while back, but that all that museum creation stuff's actually really well done and that for people who are are interested, that actually does go back and include all the ultimate stuff like Saber Wolf and Night Lord Attic Attack. Like all those games that were like Rare before. Rare is rare. They're all in there. Rare replays really worth checking.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah. Shout out Rare's 40th anniversary this year. So congratulations to them. We still do love you.

[Greg Miller]

We'll move on. Good stuff to 2003. Valve releases their game distribution software Steam out of beta.

[Gary Whitta]

How'd that work out?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, you want to talk about a game changer right there.

[Gary Whitta]

I would, I would fucking love to see their books. Do you know how much money they make or the scene?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Every single game that is sold on Steam, they get a piece of it.

[Andrea Rene]

They're like, why? Why are we bothering to make games anymore?

[Greg Miller]

We don't have why they stopped. They're like, we don't need.

[Andrea Rene]

I mean then why do Nintendo and PlayStation do it?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You could.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean honestly, this is going to sound like a crazy thing but like the video games industry the president of video games. Come out tomorrow and say, you know what? I'm tired of listening to all your horseshit on the message boards. You complain about everything. We're done. We're taking that ball and going home. No more video games. Not making it. Many more games. Have fun with the ones we've already made. But there's no more. Honestly, I'd be fine.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

My backlog would sustain me for the rest of my life.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. 100.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yep.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Steam, what an incredible move.

[Gary Whitta]

Brilliant.

[Andrea Rene]

Remember that? Either is like. I mean, I do remember because in.

The beginning it wasn't transformative. I mean, that took. That was like a slow burn to get to where. Yeah, they were. Because it was really like, as a publishing platform. Platform. You couldn't as a developer, just, like, go without a relationship with one of the platforms and get your games published. I mean, the certification process alone was wildly different back then than it is today.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean, they innovated a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff we take for granted today that we wouldn't have without Steam, actually.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah. I mean, Garrett, maybe you remember the specifics now. I think more about it. It's like, oh, yeah, wait, so if I was just like, playing Battlefield 1942. Right. Like, I would normally go to the store and buy the disks. Right. And install it. But you weren't downloading it then. That was. That's what Steam was bringing to the table. Is that accurate that it was like, downloadable?

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, I mean, I think it was. It was a huge step forward in the. For better or worse. Some people would disagree. I really don't care about the physical side. You know, we. I live in a digital world now. I don't want to get a game out of a. Where's that?

[Andrea Rene]

It's just. That was the game changer.

[Gary Whitta]

But yeah. And we woke up one day. One was like, Andrew says it crept up and he woke up one morning. Like, Steam just dominated everything. And it became almost like, you know, EA and Epic have tried to set up their own stores. None of those have really got any traction. How often do you go to Origin or Epic games store? Not unless you have to.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Gary Whitta]

Because the game's exclusive or giving stuff.

[Greg Miller]

Does a great job of trying to compete by giving away games all the time. Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah. It's, you know, and obviously now not just a. Not just a storefront, but. But like an OS that runs games on. On a PC handheld. Better than Windows. Significantly better than Windows.

[Andrea Rene]

The friend system is also very great. The way that they have integrated mods. I mean like Steam has done a really excellent job of updating their platform. Now of course they've had, you know, some missteps here and there, but it really is, I think one of the like top 10 most we take.

[Gary Whitta]

We, we, we so take it for granted. But like remote play stuff, Steam Link, all of that stuff that they, you know, brought in is. I still, I used to use Steam Link all the time. It's great, baby.

[Andrea Rene]

I don't know when that started but. But yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Wow. That's a whole other shit show.

[Andrea Rene]

Well, it is. I would have a lot to say but meaning that's what I wanted to point out because like There was no eShop. There was no like I'm just gonna download, you know, Metal Gear Solid. Yeah, didn't. That's not how it worked. But they were at 2003. Yeah, like I'm struggling to even remember happening.

[Gary Whitta]

Wow, that's interesting. Maybe, maybe it's because PC gamers have had. Because Steam, you know, there was a digital storefront in a serious way long before consoles got one. Now they all have one. But Steam was really the first one. Maybe it's because PC gamers have lived with it for longer. But like you don't hear really anyone on the PC side bemoaning the death of physical games, right? There are no physical games on PC. They're gone.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Gary Whitta]

Go look at the boxes with the Tomb Raider came in like the big pyramid box. You used to go. They used to have a special sessions. All the boxes were whack key again. PC gaming in the 90s we were going the PC game again library. It was like the size of the warehouse from like Razor Lost Art. And there was like eight games in there because that's all we had room for these boxes. Ridiculous.

[Andrea Rene]

What I remember about PC the maybe the 90s PC games is how they were like a big cardboard box that it had like a foldable didn't normally have.

[Greg Miller]

You could open up like this, but.

[Andrea Rene]

Then it would have like a cellophane like clear thing that showed the inside of the box. Like it's so ridiculous thinking back back on all that.

[Gary Whitta]

So it's interesting. There's a big conversation on the, you know right now. I think digital is now the lion's share of it. But you know, physical games are still very much a thing and people on the console side, oh, I don't like the slippery slope the way it's going. Digital will dominate again on the PC side. That, that war has been fought on one it's been over for a long time. I can't remember the last time I saw a physical PC game. I just built a PC recently. The idea of like putting a CD or a Blu Ray drive in that thing is like, what, what am I going to do with that? What would I even use?

[Andrea Rene]

Decent, like external ones?

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, that's why I got like a 50 Blu Ray Drive when if I wanted to like burn my D or rip my DVDs, then, you know, I plug that in. But like the idea of like a PC tower with a. Yeah, with a, with a, with a slot in it seems very quaint now.

[Andrea Rene]

I don't think anyone's done that for probably a decade.

[Gary Whitta]

No, but I mean, is so people doom and gloom about the death of physical games. Well, you don't have to, like, imagine the future we're living in. You can see what it's like. Is it that bad? I don't know. Again, some people might think so, but. But like, I don't feel like I miss anything from not going to the shelf and getting a box off the shelf and putting a disc in a drive or in many cases, 18 fucking discs.

[Greg Miller]

I am the biggest fucking digital guy. Like, I love digital and I've wanted it forever. However, I understand the counterarguments, Gary, of like, oh, they're taking the game offline, they're removing my license. You know, servers are being shut down.

[Andrea Rene]

In this episode to get into the video.

[Greg Miller]

I know, I know, I know. I'm just, I'm just, just trying to.

[Andrea Rene]

Bring stuff, digital ownership and licensing and all that, because that's a whole nother thing.

[Greg Miller]

And not to mention, is PlayStation 6 going to be backwards compatible? You'd say yes, but maybe it won't be.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, I love downloading stuff 95% of the time. Like, it works fine. But I do like them being in control of that license and being able to be like, sorry, we never promised it was going to always work for you. Like, that is super.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, of course, of course.

[Andrea Rene]

But I was thinking like, pt, imagine that you bought a game at the time that came with a PT demo.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

And like, meaning the point is we should be able to play that PT demo whenever we want.

[Andy Cortez]

Want.

[Gary Whitta]

I'm in the back of the day. Don't delete that. You won't be able to get it back.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, great example where like, that's what that causes.

[Greg Miller]

Franimal. In 2004, the Nintendo DS launches as the first major console of the seventh generation. In other news, Nintendo officially announces its Revolution later named the Wii console.

[Andy Cortez]

But before we hop into the year 2004, Fran Mirabella. I just want to shout out a massive milestone.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

900 super chat. So close to the thousand thousand mark. And I want to shout out to Kebabs who I was able to find one of them.

[Mike Mahardy]

You found one of the kebabs?

[Tim Gettys]

I got one.

[Andy Cortez]

My favorite moment is this is Snakes as the sponsor.

[Mike Mahardy]

Oh, that's good.

[Greg Miller]

That was fun.

[Andy Cortez]

And then Also one from AK98 who said birthday tax for my wife, Riley. Game showdown is one of our favorite things to watch together.

[Greg Miller]

Well, I'm gonna keep winning it for you.

[Mike Mahardy]

The baker's dozen is made from a baker's dozen. Thirteen. That's what Kebabs wrote.

[Andy Cortez]

I was there for some super chats. We'll go back to.

[Greg Miller]

Launch.

[Andrea Rene]

So did you say 2004?

[Greg Miller]

The DS launches as the first major console of the seventh generation.

[Andrea Rene]

A clamshell.

[Greg Miller]

And then. Then, yeah, Nintendo officially announces Revolution later names that we.

[Andrea Rene]

And was that the announcement at Tokyo Game show then? Because what's really interesting, both of those things and it's still crazy me to even say. I mean I was one of the first people to play both of those things. Revolution was one of them at Tokyo Game Show. That's what I remember. Like codename Revolution. Revolution. They secretly, you know, brought us in this back room and we're like, you know, they did the Japanese like here, go stand here. And then they hand you gingerly like this remote control, you know, and you're like, what the frick is going on? And you know, PR is whispering, you know, it's a blue ocean. We're gonna do the. And I'm like, you're crazy right now. Nintendo. And God, that was the one time that I kind of was doubting Nintendo that like they really proved me wrong on that one. Well, for like two and a half, three years till it ran out of Steam. But. But yeah, I mean both of those things were so huge for gaming. I think Revolution could be a much. Or we could be a much different discussion. Seeing kind of like it just was a trend and a fad. Where DS though, two screen gaming, there's absolutely.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

I mean I look back on it as it was pretty huge year for Nintendo getting away from like trying to figure out how to compete with PlayStation 2.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

And basically it's how we arrived at the Switch.

[Gary Whitta]

Think it might also be.

[Greg Miller]

Of course.

[Gary Whitta]

Absolutely. I think it might be also the beginning of Nintendo's kind of divergence from the track that everyone else is on.

[Greg Miller]

Right. Cube was competing with Xbox, PlayStation, we as the first one.

[Gary Whitta]

I always think of Nintendo, I think Nintendo is interesting because, you know, Xbox and PlayStation, the games are pretty much exactly the same. They're the only ones doing anything different. And I think that's where it began because like you said, GameCube and 64 were basically just boxes that you put a cartridge or a disc and it was a. In the same thing. And there was little innovations in the controllers and things like that. Game Boy in itself like was a huge deal back in the day, but I think like it was the first time putting. Because the DS was a massive success. Right. 3Ds, even more so. The first time that. I think it was the first time that Nintendo demonstrated perhaps even to themselves that you could do something really wacky like two screens. What's going on here? One's on the touchscreen. That's bizarre. No one, no one ever thought of that. And it could still not just be like a niche like gimmick, but like a massive success. And it was. And I think think that probably drove them to the 3Ds and as you said, the Wii, the Wii U and now the Switch.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, yeah. I mean it's fun. If you look at the Wii U and I think everybody gets this, you're like, this is such a failed combination of like wanting to be the Switch, but the tech and the price of the tech wasn't there. But they were also using the two screen kind of DS method in console form. They just like it was a failure in the sense there was a lot.

[Gary Whitta]

Of experimentation that was actually happening like in consumer products, products like this. Because the Wii U was really interesting.

[Andrea Rene]

Oh, you should hold that to when we actually talk about when it comes out. Because you know what was a massive success from 2004 that was missing from this? This is half life two was released.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, Nobody cares till the orange box.

[Gary Whitta]

What a game.

[Greg Miller]

Orange box. Okay, Orange box.

[Andrea Rene]

I wouldn't say nobody cares until the orange box.

Two is crazy.

Well, it's funny because it used to be crazy. Over the course of my career and writing video game news, I have probably done a hundred stories on Half Life 2 and I started writing video game news, you know, probably eight years, no, not even like six years before, you know, the or after the game came out. It was just like, it was just like, it just followed me persistently. It was just like so much Half Life 2 rumors.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean there's, there's a list, probably 20, 50 games at least. Like one of the but it is one of the true S tier legendary games of all time. There's no question if I can bring.

[Greg Miller]

It in to weave it into what we're talking about before Steam, right, I pulled the PC gamers, the 19 year evolution of Steam, right? Of course, they go 2003 in the beginning talking about what it is and is it. But then 2004, colon, we all install Steam for Half Life 2. The release of Half Life 2 is arguably the reason Steam is what it is today.

[Gary Whitta]

That's interesting.

[Greg Miller]

And the game's dominance of the storefront reflects that. Valve didn't want you to forget to play the universally acclaimed shooter. You had to sign up for Steam even if you bought the box at a store. It was a landmark moment in the transition from the old model of digital ownership.

[Gary Whitta]

Talk about vertical integration, right? They took their Mega Game and they forced you to use their store and gave it that launch to the new.

[Greg Miller]

One where game licenses are tied to online accounts. But yeah, to Andrea's point, like, we have more coming up here. 2005, Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Windows Wii were officially unveiled during or just prior to E3. However, only the Xbox 360 was released in 2005.

[Andrea Rene]

Xbox 360, the greatest Xbox generation ever.

[Gary Whitta]

And I still think one of the best consoles regardless of platform three Red Rings.

[Andrea Rene]

I mean it completely changed online multiplayer. That console. What they were doing from a technological standpoint, point, sure, yeah. Had not been done before. The way that you could get into parties and play with friends online and do chat like, I mean that was, that was all brand new.

[Gary Whitta]

You want to talk about.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

Things that ushered in innovation was crazy.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, it was huge. I, I think, yeah, I think they tried lobbying. I still remember to this day fucking JLRD standing up there and talking about Velocity Girls going to sell you her merch in the Xbox Store and all that bullshit that never happened. But like, no, I mean it's. I mean, Xbox Live Arcade.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

You know, Xbox, Xbox Live in itself, like all of that shit was. I mean again, we take all this for granted now, but these are the, these are the systems that ushered all of that stuff in.

[Andrea Rene]

When was PlayStation 3's launch comparatively?

[Greg Miller]

It was a year later. It was. So Xbox360 was November of 2005 and then 2006 was PlayStation 3.

[Gary Whitta]

Now you want to talk about.

[Greg Miller]

And we.

[Andrea Rene]

And that's what launches.

[Gary Whitta]

Fucking Ridge Racer. Giant. Giant enemy crab.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Damage US$599.

[Andrea Rene]

And what was the the fireworks game.

[Greg Miller]

You know what I'm talking about for PlayStation 3. Oh.

[Gary Whitta]

So, yeah, yeah, yeah. There was no for two. No, it was two. What was the game where the fire. Was that too? What was it called? Fantabulous or something?

[Andrea Rene]

Was that too.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, Fantabulous. Better.

[Andrea Rene]

But. But yeah, like going back to it. The Xbox being so freaking powerful.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

In that moment where, you know, we're at the tail end of the life cycle.

[Gary Whitta]

It was the first, like. That's HD console, right? First 720p.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, that's right. Oh, my God.

[Greg Miller]

Correct. Why I'm Dreamcast, of course. But in terms of where we're going, the first Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo one to be out of the box. I have Ethernet port or Internet port. Whether it was ethernet. Was it Ethernet 360 to start.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah. Out of the box.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, and no Xbox had it. I'm totally wrong. Xbox, the big. The big black Xbox had a 4, 2 or it did a modem. Yeah, I'm wrong about that.

[Andrea Rene]

Which is actually kind of wild because. Yeah, like on GameCube, you had to like plug it in and buy that.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, same with PlayStation.

[Mike Mahardy]

Screw it into the back.

[Andrea Rene]

I remember all DVD.

[Greg Miller]

And so to combine it in 2000, 2006 here, of course, then you would see the release of the PlayStation 3, the release of the Wii. They put. As Andrea calls out, the Los Angeles attorney office sues Rockstar Games to take two interactive.

[Andrea Rene]

That is the lead story of that year.

[Greg Miller]

It's just not hot, hot coffee. It was, I think, just in the.

[Gary Whitta]

Way of hot coffee. Holy.

[Greg Miller]

Hey, there's a sex mini game in GTA that was out that got published that you have to do all these things to get.

[Andrea Rene]

But it was in the file.

[Greg Miller]

It's a fun little one.

[Andrea Rene]

I think as somebody who had to grow up and I household where Leisure Suit Larry existed, I was like, okay, dumb.

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

C.J. just grinding on ladies in bed. Who cares? Let him have his freak.

[Andrea Rene]

You know, it was scandalous though, that.

[Greg Miller]

Of course.

[Andrea Rene]

But it was also like, yeah, you hacked it or, you know, got into the files on a. I mean, it was just.

[Greg Miller]

It still got them pulled from shelves. It still got him that AO rating for a hot sec. Like, it was a big deal on that front. But I would argue, yeah, the launch of these consoles, let alone again, the success. Success of the Wii. How impossible it was to get the Wii for. So.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, my God. I'm actually glad I did that camp out because, yeah, you could not find one for like, I want to say.

[Greg Miller]

A Year, more than that. Yeah, I remember I, I, I lined up my, my mom had come and played it at Thanksgiving and then I had to get another. I got mine in a line, then I went, got hers in line. And I remember me brudvig and I think Jeff Haynes being at Sarah Monte for lunch one day. Or no, Jeff wasn't there. It was me, Brigg and somebody else and, and Jeff game is SP. Yeah, probably GameStop got the new shipment of Wiis and immediately people were buying. And I called, we called the Office, like, does anyone need them? Does anyone need them?

[Andrea Rene]

And it was like in the Office show. It's happening.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Somebody has their Wii available yet.

[Andrea Rene]

Interesting landmark for 2005. I was just thinking of, because I was in Hollywood for the Wii launch and I had to work it. Oh, 2006, we're coming up to that.

[Greg Miller]

Well, no, we've combined them. We combined 2005. 2006. Yeah, yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

But yeah, I had to work the launch. But it also made me think that 2005, that was, was the year that, well, where's PSP in this mix? But anyway, we started.

[Greg Miller]

Fuck you, Gary. You shut your face.

[Gary Whitta]

I'll kill you.

[Andrea Rene]

The video team officially started, right? And they said, hey, do you want to get off of IGN Insider and start the video team? But then from there on it, man, I had to work behind the camera at all these launch events. So I got to go to all the launch events, PlayStation included. But I was always like, behind the camera.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

What a piece of. How many movies did you buy on umd, Greg?

[Greg Miller]

Ghostbusters for sure. In my, in my quest to own every version of Ghostbusters. My God, you remember, for me, it was. I graduated college and was getting ready to start my first job, and I had like, I think a week off in between. And so my gift to myself was I bought a PSP Hot Shots, Golf, Open Tea, Luminesce, and Ghostbusters on umd. Luminous.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean, Luminesce was good. It had that, had that good soundtrack.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah, we're about to shake your body, shake your bounty.

[Andrea Rene]

That's what I shot. The PlayStation PSP launch. And I used luminous music, but I did to, to score the video that we did.

[Greg Miller]

2007, Saw Bungie announced its split with Microsoft to become an independent studio. In other news, Justin tv, a website designed specifically for streaming video games, is launched.

[Andrea Rene]

Just one of the most landmark pieces of news ever, because it's this little site called Twitch tv.

[Greg Miller]

No big deal.

[Gary Whitta]

Who was Justin?

[Andrea Rene]

I don't Know what's Justin's last name?

[Gary Whitta]

But I don't know Justin tv.

[Andrea Rene]

No, no, he streamed it. I mean he. No, I'm forgetting.

[Gary Whitta]

Do you think he's like sitting on an island in like Bermuda or something now? He's got to be, right?

[Andrea Rene]

I think he consults now is what it is. Okay, but that is crazy to think back because Twitch didn't come around until.

I don't know when it became 12, 2011 or 12. Yeah, something like that.

But Justin TV, that was pretty huge back then. I mean there was plenty of live streaming out there, but I think they were the first ones to really commercialize it.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, it was even. It just wasn't even understood.

[Gary Whitta]

I remember when. I remember when Rumble was just Adolf tv not familiar. You know on Rumble.

[Andrea Rene]

I do know Rumble, where I get.

[Gary Whitta]

All my political news.

[Greg Miller]

I don't know where the joke is. I don't know. I don't understand the joke.

[Andrea Rene]

Gary, is the news site Rumble?

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah. You're not familiar with Rumble?

[Andrea Rene]

I've definitely Rumble, where all the Rumble.

[Gary Whitta]

Is like when you get back. When you get banned from Twitch, you go to kick. When you get banned from kick, you go to.

[Greg Miller]

You can get banned from kick. Yeah, you can't.

[Gary Whitta]

Believe it or not. It is possible. Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

Yes.

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

Number.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, I'm sorry.

[Greg Miller]

2008. The key story for 2008 was the increased competition between the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. This is via NPD. Starting in January, the PlayStation 3 outsold the Xbox 360 by about 40,000 units. However, Microsoft said they misjudged demand and struggled to produce supply until late February. For the entire year, the PlayStation 3 outsold the 365 out of of the 12 months, with two more months within 5K of each other. However, the 360 scored the pivotal holiday months in November and December. Overall, the PS3 experienced substantial growth from 2007. The Wii and Nintendo DS were the top two sellers. We still suffering from supply issues, shifted record breaking units month after month.

[Gary Whitta]

You think there was a point either in reality or just in perception because it feels like in retrospect it kind of feels this way that like where Xbox 3 360. Because Xbox 360 was a terrific generation for Microsoft. Right? There's probably the best Xbox for its time. And then PlayStation 3 kind of stumbled a bit. Right? They struggled with games.

[Greg Miller]

No, games didn't work. It was a weapon.

[Gary Whitta]

Was there ever a point where it kind of felt like they were actually at parity? Do you Think because the guy obviously the, the, the narrative overall is like Sony's always been ahead, like, like and currently like way ahead. But for that point almost looked like they were kind of neck and connect for a bit.

[Andrea Rene]

I don't know about the actual sales, but I would say from a PS3.

[Greg Miller]

Ends up out, I mean even if.

[Gary Whitta]

It'S just like mind share, like the narrative was very favorable to Microsoft.

[Greg Miller]

I was going to say. I think the bigger thing is that Xbox360 won the mindshare where like you'd go to the airport and they're like, take your console out of your bag and they showed a 360. And I know that's a goofy thing.

[Gary Whitta]

No, but that's the kind of stuff.

[Greg Miller]

It was the excitement of that of Xbox Live, of a headset packed in, of talking to your friends and friends, listen, blue blades. Like there was a juice there that even with PS3 catching up and surpassing in the end, I don't think you were ever able to get out from behind that shadow. And then the Halos and all these other things that were happening a bit maybe.

[Andrea Rene]

But we have to remember, I mean, again, could be misremembering, but Japan market was something. It was very like Microsoft.

[Gary Whitta]

They've always struggled there.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

So like you might think that way here in the Western audience. 100 and that's how we saw it. But it was like, oh, but the reality was everybody was just buying PlayStation 3 and Final Fantasy in Japan and Dragon Quest, of course.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

So the 360 was MTV. It was Elijah Wood. Like, it had this pretty mindshare. You know, that's what I think of. And I, I think that that's why.

[Gary Whitta]

Their marketing machine was in overdrive.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, I think that's why we think of them as like dominating that, you know, the rock.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, but they did dominate that.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, for sure.

[Andrea Rene]

I mean they absolutely did.

[Gary Whitta]

They did. And again, they capitalize on the fact that Sony had kind of a dud generation with PS3. I mean there are some memorable games appear, but I remember not having a great launch lineup.

[Greg Miller]

It's the launch lineup that does them.

[Andrea Rene]

The end of the PS cycle was a banger though.

[Greg Miller]

And that. And honestly, that was the time to hit. Right. They hit that and then PlayStation 4 is the result of we fucked up these PlayStation 3 things. We're not gonna fuck that up again. And that's when Xbox went, we're gonna fuck this up royally with the Xbox One.

[Andrea Rene]

And like Microsoft finally hit its stride where it had some crazy Good exclusives, right? Like years. Yeah. I was thinking Mass Effect as well.

[Greg Miller]

Mass effect. Yeah. No, 100%. Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

A pretty damn good lineup that you're like, oh, yeah, I'm getting Xbox. And that's what it was taking me again back to like the console wars in the office. You must remember this, right?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, I. Well, Vers. The P3 Xbox.

[Andrea Rene]

I'm not misremembering well because again, I came from the Nintendo clements over there.

[Greg Miller]

Clement's giving Folklore A9. I'm talking about this uncharted game.

[Andrea Rene]

Yes.

[Greg Miller]

Hillary saying shut the up. We got Halo and gear. Exactly.

[Andrea Rene]

But like literally people would get in, say like. Yeah, let's just say Mass Effect. You. They would. Xbox editors would look over and like, sort of sticker at the fellow editors of like, you wish you were playing this. And it was. It was just so competitive back then.

[Greg Miller]

Achievements. Like there was stuff going on.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh my God, I got achievements.

[Andrea Rene]

Avatar customization from the 360 era was gold. I'm so sad when they got rid of.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, the blades. Remember the blades. That aesthetic was so good.

[Greg Miller]

PlayStation 3 was its own thing with the cell processor and Xbox was basically a low end PC. So of course every PlayStation 3 port ran like something was wrong. The blacks didn't work.

[Gary Whitta]

I may be mistaken here. I'm sure someone will correct me, but I think it was also the first console that was able to do wireless gaming. It had that little WI fi adapter you could plug in the back. The little dongle.

[Greg Miller]

Little guy. Yeah, I remember that being a big.

[Andrea Rene]

Which Xbox.

[Greg Miller]

Xbox 360, 360 plugged in there.

[Andrea Rene]

That didn't come till later in the generation though.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, but they did. They eventually got up to like WI fi n or whatever it was, you know, like if. If that was the speed you had today, you'd kill yourself. But right back in the day, it's just amazing that there's no wires.

[Greg Miller]

It's.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh my God. How is this. How is this thing working?

[Greg Miller]

2009, Batman, Arkham Asylum attains the Guinness world Record for most critically acclaimed superhero game ever. In other news, Demon Souls spawned a whole new genre that would. That would put fromsoftware on the map for years to come. The souls, like was born, which is 100% true. But that's like a smoldering. That's a little flame. That's not. I don't think that's bloodborne. Right. Is where we explode.

[Andrea Rene]

No, I added that as like a nugget because I think some of us. You put it yeah, so I put that. I put the AR in the parentheses.

[Gary Whitta]

Wasn't Dark Souls where it exploded.

[Andrea Rene]

But to me, the bigger story, I mean, obviously Arkham Asylum, like, we'll talk about that in just a second. But I added the Call of duty. Modern Warfare 2 kickstarted Call of Duty's dominance as the biggest entertainment franchise in the world. Because, like, From Modern Warfare 2 on, I mean, they've just been like knocking down the NPD charts ever since.

But I also relate that with now, it made me remember why I'm like, screw this, I'm not playing Xbox online. Like Call of Duty, it was so toxic. Like, it just. It's funny that that lasted days.

[Gary Whitta]

And how is it today?

[Andrea Rene]

I mean, it's still pretty bad. I'm just saying that Xbox Live, it's funny. Don't you think it became pretty iconic around Call of Duty of being like super duper toxic?

I mean.

Yeah, I didn't want my mic.

I feel like that's like a. It still. It still is.

Yeah.

Like, it hasn't changed.

Easier to control now, though.

[Gary Whitta]

Can I. Can I tell you my. My favorite Xbox 360 story of like my time as an Xbox 360 gamer? There's actually Leah, my wife's actually got footage of this that you'll never see just for us.

[Greg Miller]

You're gonna tell us about it, but you won't show it.

[Gary Whitta]

So we had the 360. I think Leah and I started dating in 2005. So it was when we were like first going out and we got 360 and we got the vision cam.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Gary Whitta]

With the vision cam, the little camera that you plugged in, it was a shitty. I was like, maybe like 240p. I can't remember. It was bad.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

But again, it was like, oh, wow camera.

[Greg Miller]

It was like the size of a postage.

[Gary Whitta]

And now there's. Now there's a camera built into like literally everything you buy. And we just again take it for grind. But back then, this was the first time. So I had this little vision cam and I had the little microphone thing. And what I would do is I'd get super stoned. This is before it was legal. So we had to go to Dolores park and buy our stuff from the. From the cookie man that would sell the. The cookies. And they were disgusting. Right. Because it's like, ah, you have to like walk from down. Now you go to walk into the store and buy like artisanal Belgian chocolate. Chocolate that will take you to another planet.

[Greg Miller]

But as a reminder Everyone at kinda funny does sign a dare pledge. Mike. I did say you sign the dare pledge.

[Andy Cortez]

They know the drugs.

[Greg Miller]

Which means when you go to Vegas, you buy the weed, but you throw it away for some reason.

[Gary Whitta]

Send any you don't want over to me. I would get super stoned on these disgusting cookies that we bought from the cookie man.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

In Dolores Park. And then I got. I don't remember how I got it, but I got this hand puppet. It was a Jesus hand puppet and it looked like a little Jesus also from Dolores Park. It was like a guy had like a sash and the hair and the beard. I guess it kind of without. If you took the thing off, he just looked like a caveman. But you put this thing on. Oh, it's Jesus. And so I would like hide and I would like hide on the camera and like puppet the thing for the camera. Saw the puppet.

[Andrea Rene]

Gary, did you like one of those cookies before we started.

[Gary Whitta]

I would go on. Hello, dude. Hello, I am. Yes, I will bless your game with my Jesus powers. It was all very stupid and. But people don't Forget. It's like 2 o' clock in the morning. Everyone else playing Uno stone as fuck stoned as I'm telling you. Xbox360UNO with the vision Cam. If you take. Take all the. The penises out of it.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

And it was a brilliant experience.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah. I was cracking myself up.

[Greg Miller]

Speaking of brilliant experiences. 2010 PlayStation Move and Microsoft Connect both launch or connect both launch worldwide. Sorry, what launched PlayStation Move and Microsoft Kinect.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah. How long have you got?

[Andrea Rene]

I still vividly remember that the best. That press conference with the Kinect and then showing all the games and how. I mean like it really seemed like magical technology. And the problem was it just did not work that way in people's houses.

[Gary Whitta]

You cannot.

[Andrea Rene]

Kudo.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Bam. When he did that with his foot.

[Gary Whitta]

You will never achieve any. You will never achieve success in innovation. The kind of like the kind that Nintendo enjoys by looking at what someone else is working. Already done in this case with the Nintendo Wii and the Wii controllers, the Wiimotes and go. That's a good innovation. We should innovate like that as well.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

And then basically copy it and come up with an inferior version. Like the move again dead on arrival. Right. They tried to resurrect it with a psvr maybe don't try to resurrect with something else. It's also dead on arrival. And then the connects which again, I've said it before, one of the worst, biggest boondoggles in the history of the video game industry. It killed the Xbox One. They forced it into every box, jacking up the price. No one knew what it was. It didn't work. They lied and faked about how well it worked. Remember the Star wars demo where the character fucking jumps before the guy on stage did? Because it was all scripted and fake. We all saw. We also. It did not work.

[Greg Miller]

The nitro rifle has something to say. What's up, Andy Kritz?

[Andy Cortez]

What about my friend Milo? We're gonna talk. Boy named Milo.

[Gary Whitta]

Blessed Peter. I love him. I still love him so much. I remember the moment. I remember the moment I knew it was dead. I went to a kid's birthday party and there was a bunch of kids and they had a connect there and they were trying to play one of the Kinect games and after about five minutes one of the kids said, can we just play something with a controller? That's it, it's over.

[Greg Miller]

Bad news bears. Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

I remember trying to. No disrespect to John. I'm trying to navigate the menus on Dance Central. You look like fucking Trump dancing going like this. You look like. Like an idiot. Like why is it not doing anything? How is this easier than this? It's not. It's terrible. It's what happens when you try to copy someone else's innovation but you don't know how to innovate. So Kinect killed the Xbox One. It's a real shame. Xbox is still in a hole because of it. Phil Spencer rightly said. I think it was one of the. One of the smartest things I've heard. Yeah. The worst generation to lose because is when started people started building their digital libraries and getting to the. Well I'm in the ecosystem now. All my games are here. I can't move over there. They. They fucking Don Mattrick can never be pilloried enough. But like how that cuz again coming out of parity. 360 resurgent PS3 in the. In the mud.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

And then they. They could have like gone for the kill and instead they chose to fucking kill themselves.

[Andrea Rene]

And by the way it was. There was like the first version of Kinect was that right. And then Xbox one had the 2010.

[Greg Miller]

They launched that Kinect for the 360. We are getting a bit to 2013 Xbox One launches. But it's. It's all part of the same conversation.

[Andrea Rene]

I was just trying to remember that.

[Gary Whitta]

Was honestly if you want to make the connect and try to copy Nintendo, fine, make it an accessory. But Again, they were on the shelves at the same time PS4 and Xbox One. And that thing was $100 more expensive for a thing that you didn't want or understand how to use. And if you even tried to use it, it didn't work. It just 2011.

[Andrea Rene]

He's definitely mad about 2013.

[Gary Whitta]

I know, I know.

[Greg Miller]

We're not there yet.

[Andrea Rene]

I'll have more to say than. But the last comment I'd say there is. There's a lot of history of companies having ideas that are good that don't work. That doesn't mean there weren't a few good ideas in there. It's the only thing I would say.

[Andy Cortez]

And as we get.

[Andrea Rene]

I don't think they should have done it then, but there was some earnest good thoughts in there.

[Andy Cortez]

As we get to 2011, Greg, I want to shout out Michael SBY, who super chatted six different times for $2 each saying 2000 on the road to get 2000. We are inching closer and closer to 1000, and I believe we're about 16 away. But I also want to shout out Chris rod with a $100 super chat.

[Gary Whitta]

I'll tell you what I'll do.

[Andy Cortez]

Saying, congrats.

[Greg Miller]

Gary's got something to say.

[Gary Whitta]

Just for fun.

[Greg Miller]

Big money.

[Gary Whitta]

Because now you'll like this.

[Greg Miller]

I know.

[Gary Whitta]

Because I'm in a good mood today. I will now treat everything I say for the rest of the show as a super chat. Every time. Write this down, Mike. Every time I say something, I'll give you $5 at the end.

[Andy Cortez]

Wow.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, okay. Every time.

[Andy Cortez]

How long are these sentences going to be?

[Gary Whitta]

I'm just. I'm just going to keep my mouth shut.

[Andrea Rene]

That was the last word from Gary.

Be able to contain himself.

[Andy Cortez]

I also want to thank Michael major with a $50 super chat saying, congrats. I've watched every single one of them. Here's to 2,000 more. So much love from everybody. We got Grim, Ian, David, Larry. A lot of people aren't even leaving messages because they just are leaving, like, number.

[Mike Mahardy]

Gary, you wouldn't believe this. Super Chat. Phil wrote me and says more. Mike, Talk About Labubu for 200 milliseconds, I'm telling you Labubu.

[Andrea Rene]

Wait, should I start a timer?

[Mike Mahardy]

I got this sweet Labubu named Serenity. I love Labubu.

[Greg Miller]

Gary.

[Mike Mahardy]

It's got a Call of Duty outfit, too.

[Tim Gettys]

You would love this.

[Andrea Rene]

Okay, I got. I got you. Are you going to do it now?

[Mike Mahardy]

No, I tried to break.

[Andrea Rene]

I was really. I really want you to talk About Labubu, though.

Freaking Labu.

[Greg Miller]

2011 of 2020, the Nintendo 3DS launched. 2012, the Wii U launches. So right in this primetime Nintendo stuff here.

[Andrea Rene]

I remember the 3DS and being at that Nintendo press conference because that was getting to the end of when Nintendo was doing in person press conferences because they stopped doing them long before everybody else did. And remember the presentation where they had like the three DS open and they were showing Zelda on it like for the first time you could see the difference between turning the slider on and turning the slider off. And I. It just like you didn't fully understand it until we got to the show floor and you actually got to hold it and you were like, whoa, how.

[Greg Miller]

Are you doing this without glasses? The big takeaway.

[Andrea Rene]

It was really cool. Great console, Fran.

[Greg Miller]

Mr. Nintendo.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, I. It was. There's a perfect example of something that I was like. I. I did not like it overall. But Luigi's Mansion, I think it was maybe in particular. I remember being like, well, this is. This is pretty neat.

[Greg Miller]

I turned mine off and left it off all the time. I hated that. Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

I just remember doing it and it first of all being hard to find the spot. And then actually after a while I was like, this is like hiring my eyes.

Use a lot more of the battery and that too.

And you're like, screw it. It's not worth it. It just wasn't worth it at all.

[Greg Miller]

Why are you doing. Why are you doing this self imposed bit?

[Andrea Rene]

Are you guys watching Rumble right now.

Without glasses for the first time? Was trippy af.

[Mike Mahardy]

That's trippy af. No doubt, no doubt.

[Andy Cortez]

That wallet.

[Greg Miller]

Garrett.

[Andy Cortez]

I also have a super chat here. I wanted to read from Kevin Lindsay, just throwing back to 2008, who said mass Effect causes debates on Fox News over. Over simulated alien sex.

[Greg Miller]

I remember that. I'm glad Fox News is really straighten themselves out and don't report on dumb.

[Andy Cortez]

And then Jackie Lor with a two dollar super chat says bring back the fat five. I remember that. That's a good time.

[Greg Miller]

I do remember that. That was good. Meanwhile, the Wii U. That thing sucked.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Great games, terrible hardware.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, the Wii U was bad. I'm willing to spend money on this one.

[Greg Miller]

Spend money.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, it was, it was, it was.

[Greg Miller]

There's a whole segment about you talking after this. So we're only doing it here.

[Andrea Rene]

That was the next year. Wii U.

[Gary Whitta]

Okay, got it. All right, well, I'll save it then. I want my money back. That didn't count. I want a refund you can do that.

[Andrea Rene]

What year we.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, that was 2012. Wii U launches.

[Andrea Rene]

Oh, no, 20. Oh, I thought we were talking about 3Ds in 2011.

[Greg Miller]

I put them together. I said 2011 was 3Ds. 2012 was Wii U.

[Andrea Rene]

He gave us a Nintendo sandwich on the one.

[Greg Miller]

And now I'm gonna go to 2013.

[Andrea Rene]

I at least want to. That was one of the most horrible console launch last setup experience ever had. I don't know why, maybe it was just bad luck. But I just remember trying to get it set up and like downloading stuff or something and it just like was awful. It took me like 90 minutes to two hours. It was terrible. And then my second thought was, how am I gonna get this cable long enough to run to the bathroom? Why? You know, that's the only real way to play the Wii.

Uh, I feel like I never wanted that. Do you guys remember that Zelda tech demo we got in the behind closed doors in the Nintendo booth for the Wii U? And that game just like never existed and never came out. It was like this gorgeous, beautiful Zelda game that was 3D. And was it not GameCube?

Well, there was.

But no, I'm talking about the Wii U tech demo that was only playable on the show floor at E3.

We gotta look this one up.

[Greg Miller]

I don't remember.

[Andrea Rene]

Okay, I'll see if I can find it.

There was a crazy Zelda tech demo.

[Greg Miller]

That never came out.

[Andrea Rene]

Out for that.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

And I just kept waiting for that game to come out and it never did.

[Andy Cortez]

I only think of the one before Wind Waker.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, but it wasn't based on just like a previous Zelda.

Well, I think it was based on Twilight Princess.

Yeah, maybe that's why. But it was like different.

Yeah, well, because I think before Breath of the Wild, you know, at least on, on what's good games, we had speculated, Brittany and I, that maybe, oh, they were going to resurrect that tech demo and that would be what the new Zelda was going to look like. But then we got Breath of the Wild, which was a very different kind of arc style.

Okay, yeah. Wii U, what a failure.

[Greg Miller]

Great games though. And I'm glad so many of them made it a Switch. The one thing I remember, I mean.

[Gary Whitta]

I remember many things about the Wii U. Certainly like not enjoying it very much, but I remember and it's funny because Nintendo has gone the exact opposite way now. Like a lot of people will rightly praise the Switch 2 for like when you hold it in your hand it feels like a really well built piece of hardware. Like solid. It's got just enough heft to it.

[Greg Miller]

How do they learn what a hardware?

[Gary Whitta]

So you know, you know where I'm going. When you picked up that Wii U handheld, it just felt like a cheap, cheap, shiny piece of price.

[Greg Miller]

Everybody said you couldn't like it would.

[Gary Whitta]

It would drop the connection to the. To the. To the console like. Like 10, 15ft away. Like you had almost no leash on that thing. And there was just like. The games were just not great, right?

[Greg Miller]

No, the games were great. Well, I mean, some were the traditional Nintendo.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, this is the Nintendo had it. What have you found?

[Greg Miller]

It's the tech.

[Andrea Rene]

The tech demo.

[Gary Whitta]

Interesting.

[Andrea Rene]

I'll show it to you, but we.

[Andy Cortez]

Can maybe bring it up.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, can you just send it to.

[Andrea Rene]

Assets, look up the Zelda HD experience. We you. Thank you to chat for that.

I don't think he knows how to do that. I don't think he knows how to.

[Greg Miller]

Do that to me. And I'll put it in Assets.

[Andrea Rene]

I mean text it to Greg.

[Gary Whitta]

Zelda.

[Greg Miller]

What is it?

[Andrea Rene]

We.

[Gary Whitta]

You.

[Andrea Rene]

I'll send it to you. I didn't like. He's asking me to send him a clip. That's fine.

[Greg Miller]

I mean the clip that you're showing everyone on the dance, bro, do you.

[Andrea Rene]

Want me to slack it to you right now?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like.

[Greg Miller]

He'S on Slack. 2013, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One launch worldwide as well as the. Oh, yeah, in other starts. The year of Luigi.

[Gary Whitta]

It was the year of Luigi.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

We're about due for another one, aren't we? Yeah, we might actually be already having it.

[Andrea Rene]

Greg, I blacked out for a second.

[Greg Miller]

What did you say? PlayStation 4, Xbox One launch 2013. Yeah, we already talked about a lot. Getting a lot. What was the we've talked about Xbox One fucking area?

[Andrea Rene]

You know, two launch games were one.

[Gary Whitta]

Right, but which one?

[Andrea Rene]

Either. I mean, Rise Full of Roman game.

Yeah, Remember that one?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, for PlayStation 4 house. Mark Resogun.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh God, Rezogun was so good.

[Andrea Rene]

Look at him today.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, I loved Resident.

[Greg Miller]

Shadow, Killzone, Shadow Fall. Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

Kill Zone.

[Gary Whitta]

What else did I. Oh God, it's white.

[Greg Miller]

We're like, we don't care. We still care. We're done.

[Gary Whitta]

This is actually. I. I got my generations mixed up. I was gonna say, you remember when they launched the HD DVD add on for 3, 6. What a mess that was. But Xbox One, as I recall, I, you know, I remember like on it kind. I remember when like they came out and did the whole presentation and they ended up with people saying, like, where are the games? You haven't shown any games. Because they were. They were patching up more Call of Duty.

[Greg Miller]

Call of Duty tv.

[Gary Whitta]

Tv, yeah. They were pitching it more as. Remember, it had the Ethernet, it had the cable.

[Andrea Rene]

Literally, you could plug your cable entertainment machine. That was the marketing.

[Gary Whitta]

I feel like on paper, in theory, that seemed like a good idea. It's all just going to be one box. That's why they call it Xbox One. Like, whatever you do, whether you play games or watch TV or whatever, like, you just do it on this one box. And like, that seems good, right? Who wants like 15 different boxes? But, like, again, it was primarily a console, a game console. That's what people, over the course of, like the previous generations have been conditioned to expect. And then they came out and talked about it as a thing that you watch TV on.

[Greg Miller]

Yep.

[Gary Whitta]

And I think you know it. I think they ever really recovered.

[Mike Mahardy]

Remember when they absolutely crushed the Snap feature, though? And it's never been seen again where you could play video games while watching.

[Greg Miller]

Something that was cool.

[Mike Mahardy]

It was the coolest around.

[Andrea Rene]

So none of you probably remember this. I actually reviewed the Xbox One and did the video review and everything. I spent all this time, the amount.

[Greg Miller]

Tim shares, the gif of you doing the hula dance there.

[Andrea Rene]

Also that was also reviewing Ubisoft.

[Greg Miller]

Oh.

[Andrea Rene]

The Kinect fitness game, which were actually decent. But anyway, I remember reviewing it and yes, like Xbox Snap, when it heard you and worked was pretty.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, that's right. You said it.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Yes.

[Andrea Rene]

You'd be playing. You're like, Xbox Snap, hbo. I mean, you couldn't do that on hbo, but it would even connect it to your freaking cable. Like, the idea was not terrible to screen like. Like watching, like, sports while you play Call of Duty. That's a great idea.

[Gary Whitta]

I'll give you paper. I'll give you two more as well from that generation because Microsoft, of the masses of coming up with great ideas and then like squandering them. 1 versus 100. Fantastic. You don't remember that.

[Andrea Rene]

Yes.

[Gary Whitta]

And what was the other thing? That was cool. Fuck. Now, I had two things.

[Andrea Rene]

Why you think of it? I also.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, Netflix viewing parties.

[Mike Mahardy]

Viewing party.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Mike Mahardy]

Remember 60?

[Greg Miller]

Yep.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, so good.

[Andy Cortez]

Avatars would be down there.

[Gary Whitta]

Well, you had your little Mystery Science Theater guys down at the bottom.

[Andrea Rene]

It was.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, but they're pretty much fun.

[Andrea Rene]

So this goes back to what I was saying before. It's like. Yeah, like, Kinect overall was a failure. There's still some good ideas. In there. One of the ones that I like the best. And it's on practically on our phones now. You know, we're used to like saying some basic commands, but like, xbox on was actually a great concept because I always remembered. But it just didn't work. Work every time. No, but the idea of like walking in, throwing my bag down and being like, xbox on. And the TV flipped on, Xbox on. And by the time I grabbed the controller, we're about ready to go, but it. It was like, slow. It didn't always work, but it did. And it brings me to, like, why don't we actually have that today?

[Andy Cortez]

I use the shit out of it.

[Andrea Rene]

Bring it back.

[Andy Cortez]

Because I was so busy in art school working until five in the morning on projects and stuff, it was constantly. Xbox switched to Netflix, Xbox switch to tv. And my TV was already set to Adult Swim at that time or whatever. So I just had Rick and Morty playing or whatever. I use that connect all the time. Volume up, volume down. It was, I was like the, like the golden example of what they hoped. Everybody was like, yeah, there was a lot of. There was a lot of grief.

[Gary Whitta]

No, I remember like, all kinds of, like, someone would be home, like playing Call of Duty, and the roommate would come in and go, Xbox off. And like, just with them.

[Greg Miller]

Classic.

[Andrea Rene]

So you. I don't know if you guys talked about it earlier, it's relevant to the news story about Xbox today, but I might get, I think, get ready for some of this to come back with, hey, copilot. And so that's where people.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, you stayed away from it because it killed him here. Well, this is why PlayStation wins this generation out the gate and never looks back, is that we are about games. This is a machine for games. Games, games, games and Xbox. Like, we want to be the hub. And they were like, no. Yeah. And it's that thing where you're never going to be able to compete with what Echo is doing, what Siri is doing. These systems that are divine designed for that.

[Andrea Rene]

But now that's what's changing is that you've got, you know, chat, GPT5 plugged in CO, and all of a sudden that is going to be your sidecar on the next Xbox. And so when people think about the next Xbox consoles, that is why they're going to take hundreds of millions dollars of hits on selling Call of Duties because it's coming out of the AI fund, because they know Copilot is going to be on the next Xbox.

[Gary Whitta]

So anyway, I mean, we've all Got a lot of thoughts about AI. Mostly negative and rightly so. One thing that I was thinking, because I think Microsoft is supposed to be working on something like this is a future where if I'm stuck on a level and can't figure out how to get out of a room and say, hey, Xbox, how do I get out of this room? And it will, and it will guide me and it will say, oh yeah, I see where you are. Turn left. Or whatever that I think that is coming. And that will be super useful.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I've heard about it. That's why I got game cards on PlayStation. I want to hear a special segment with Gary. We need to get through the next four years. Hold on.

[Gary Whitta]

Okay, sorry. I'll shut up.

[Greg Miller]

2014.

[Gary Whitta]

Too much money.

[Greg Miller]

A lot of big acquisitions happened. Amazon purchased the online video game streaming service Twitch for $970 million. Facebook acquired the virtual reality company and product Oculus. Microsoft also. Microsoft also Studios. I think it's Microsoft Studios also acquired Minecraft developer Mojang for $2.5 billion.

[Andrea Rene]

That to me was like a historic moment. That Minecraft, Minecraft story. I remember that number coming out and us all being like, that is an unfathomable amount of money and yet still good value. I mean, a humongous value. You know, I think we were all like bending over backwards trying to figure out how is Microsoft going to make that money back? And here we are, you know, 10 years later and they're like, yeah, but.

Then they blew it all on Activision.

[Greg Miller]

So. But I think again, this is like one of those turning points of. And I guess not 100% sure, right? As we are talking about rare Mojang.

[Gary Whitta]

I've been saying Mojang it is Mojang.

[Greg Miller]

There was one Xbox presentation where they came out and our friends at Mojang and we all went, oh, oh no. Anyways. But I feel like that's such a turning point in terms of these giant acquisitions starting to happen. Yeah. 2015 Satoru Iwata, president and CEO of Nintendo, died at the age of 55. This Kyle at Game Informer Nintendo's president and CEO. Nintendo Direct Nintendo's president and CEO I think Nintendo Direct Host is probably what it's supposed to be. Oh, there it is. Iwata has passed away unexpectedly passed away. Nintendo issued a brief notice on its website regarding Iwata's death. The notice reads, Nintendo co. Ltd. Deeply regrets to announce the pres. That President Satoru Iwata passed away on July 11, 2015 due to a bile duct growth this is a heartbreaking surprise as Iwata was more than just a high ranking Nintendo executive. He was a personality and representative for the company and has a long history of programming and hands on game development for many of Nintendo's biggest games. Our condolences go out to all of his friends and family as well as his many fans. Nintendo won't be the same without him. And I think 100% it never was. Yeah, I mean, and that's not to say Nintendo's good, bad or otherwise, but Iwata was so synonymous with Nintendo directs and what that was in his friendship with Reggie and what that whole system was like to lose him even is. I've never been the Nintendo guy.

[Gary Whitta]

Can you imagine me?

[Greg Miller]

Oh no, I don't think about that either. Any of them. When you start thinking about flags at half miles, how many, you know, Kojima games are left. But you digress.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, I was going to say one thing that was really important about that moment. First of all, yeah, he was this amazing guy that came out of development that broke through. Like you were saying that he kind of bridged that between. If you remember, it was Yamauchi, like really old school Nintendo leadership. But Miyamoto was more like the face. But Iwata was, to your point, able to break through. But secondly, the thing that we kind of lost there was there normally was that leadership handoff right in. Well, Iwata would still be there, but there would have been the next moment when Iwata chose the successor. And so we've. Since then. That's not how it's really quite happened. I feel like it's kind of gotten tossed around a bit since then. And we can see quite frankly with Switch to things have changed quite a bit.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Andrea adds deservedly so. 2015 also sees the release of Witcher 3, Grand Theft Auto 55 and Fallout 4. She's here.

[Gary Whitta]

Three big games, but only one of those is like all time legendary. I would say.

[Andrea Rene]

Gonna get your wig out.

No, this is a fight. This is. We're charging you for this one. One of those three.

[Gary Whitta]

I got. I got the. I've got the money.

[Andrea Rene]

Definitely two. I think followed is debatable, but I.

[Greg Miller]

Have a vivid memory Lesson comes in GTA 5.

[Andrea Rene]

Todd Howard being on stage. I think at what the time was the Codex Theater, you know, where they have the Oscars every year. Bethesda did their press conference like in Hollywood. It was this big thing, them renting out this giant theater for us all to go to. And it had been, I mean the Next thing in Fallout had been rumored for years at that point. And then they kind of like Shadow dropped it. They announced it and then said it's coming this November.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

And that had never really been done up until that point that they released. Announced a major trend AAA franchise installment from one of the biggest publishers and said just like four months later you're gonna be able to buy it. Like, that was. It was wild.

[Gary Whitta]

It's not your contention that Witcher 3 could be placed in the same category of awesome, like legendaryness as GTA 5.

[Andrea Rene]

Yes.

[Gary Whitta]

Almost nothing can be well again.

[Greg Miller]

GTA 5, 2013.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean, I would.

[Andrea Rene]

Is on an island, right? Like. Like they are. They stand alone in a number of ways. But like, as one of like the biggest games, Witcher 3.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, that's one. Yeah, that's.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You just said it.

[Gary Whitta]

It stands alone. You can't put anything else with it, like maybe one or two other games like Super Mario. But there's Minecraft, there's a handle. But. But pull the numbers for which are three.

[Andrea Rene]

From a sales perspective.

[Gary Whitta]

Yes.

[Andrea Rene]

From a content perspective, we can do a whole nother.

[Gary Whitta]

I would also. I would also say Mindshare. I mean, look at the number of people that are freaking out around, like, when GTA 6 hits. That is going to be the biggest day in the history of gaming. When Witcher 4 hits. It will not be anything close to that.

[Andrea Rene]

Well, I don't agree. I don't disagree with that for a.

[Greg Miller]

What?

[Andrea Rene]

You know, I'm just saying.

[Gary Whitta]

I'm just saying that the three games.

[Greg Miller]

You mentioned, 2016, Pokemon Go launched and took over the world. The closest we've ever been to world peace.

[Gary Whitta]

Wait, what did Pokemon Go.

[Greg Miller]

Pokemon Go. I remember walking out of the old spare bedroom because this is kind of funny, being super independent. Right. And you'd get out there on the street and people in my weird sleepy neighborhood in the sunset out there chasing charmanders, like, what the is happening?

[Gary Whitta]

You can see people like, old congregating. Oh, that must be a gym.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.

[Andrea Rene]

I was in Dolores park for a Pokemon Go event that I was covering for Gamer Next Door Weekly. And there was 4,000 people in Dolores Park.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

And it was like a. It was a crawl through San Francisco of people going and playing Pokemon Go together.

Yeah, whatever.

[Gary Whitta]

I was actually creating, like, street safety issues at one point.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

In New York, everyone, like rushing across Central park to try and get. Or like, people were like, being encouraged to go hang out in Central park in the middle of the night to find a Fucking Charmander stick to you get knifed. It's super effective.

[Andrea Rene]

I have to wonder, was that actually like the biggest phone gaming moment that happened by far? Like, what was a big phone game at that point?

[Greg Miller]

I mean, nothing like this.

[Andrea Rene]

Angry Birds.

[Gary Whitta]

No, I think, yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

Candy Crush, Angry Birds versus.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, but those are all games that you just play in your own. These games actually, like, it was weird because it was the first game that was like noticeable out in the real world.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, normal people were playing when I'd walk past. I don't think. I don't think any of the examples we come up are gonna touch what this was. And then of course, 2017 kind of funny launches. Kind of funny games ago, everybody, if you can.

[Gary Whitta]

Do you have an app? Do you still have. You must have it, right? Like your very first show somewhere. What does that.

[Greg Miller]

Oh yeah, I don't get any of that. I don't get rid of any of them. I got them all.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean, like, what is. What is it? I mean, if you ever gone back and looked at that, like.

[Greg Miller]

No, but I can post it in this next break if you want me.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, I have a look.

[Greg Miller]

But you're on the hot seat for the next seat.

[Gary Whitta]

That's right. Whatever.

[Greg Miller]

Because guess what, everybody, we have another clip to show you. But before we do, we have a super chat question. We want you to write in with topics for Gary Whitta for a special segment called what grinds Gary's Gears.

[Gary Whitta]

I found out that I was doing this five minutes ago.

[Greg Miller]

That's the best work for you. Ask him about loot boxes, gaming CEOs or anything that might piss him off with your super chats over on YouTube.com kinda funny games. Do it while you watch this news writers clip segment.

[Gary Whitta]

2000 episodes of kind of funny Games Daily. Jeff Grubb from Giant Bomb.

[Greg Miller]

You guys are incredible.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Congratulations.

[Gary Whitta]

I am steeped in video game news.

[Greg Miller]

And yet I still try to listen every day.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And there's a reason for that.

[Greg Miller]

You guys get it. You get that we come to y' all for. To commiserate to, to commise, connect to goof around.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And then when something is making all.

[Greg Miller]

Of us as gamers angry, you know how to put a voice to that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And make us feel like we have.

[Gary Whitta]

Someone on our side.

[Andy Cortez]

So I just want to say I.

[Greg Miller]

Will be here for the next 2000, y'. All. Yeah, look forward to it. You guys are doing a great job. Keep it up. 2,000 episodes, five stories a day at.

[Gary Whitta]

About £150 per story. So what does that is 1.5 million.

[Greg Miller]

It's pounds, but let's call it dollars.

[Gary Whitta]

Because they're our friends. So $1.5 million. You owe us Kind of Funny Games.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Pay up, Miller. My favorite moment of Kind of Funny Games Daily was the episode that I got to host with the wonderful Mr.

[Tim Gettys]

Midas while I was in the midst.

[Greg Miller]

Of a massive bout of food poisoning. Chris, your favorite moment.

[Gary Whitta]

It's not so much a single moment as multiple moments. I like every time Blessing tries to pronounce my name and gets it wrong every time. And he's. I think schooly Scullion is the one he kind of. He settles on is it is Scullion. Tim gets it right 100 of the time.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Well, we were going to end this.

[Gary Whitta]

With thank you for all the support, but it's really been us propping you.

[Tim Gettys]

Up for all this time like we.

[Gary Whitta]

Do with every other gaming podcast. We will continue to provide you award.

[Tim Gettys]

Winning games journalism and wish you well.

[Andy Cortez]

On 2000 more episodes.

[Gary Whitta]

Love you all. See you next time.

[Andrea Rene]

Hi, Kinda Funny, it's me, Rebecca Valentine. Hey, congrats on 2018 episodes of Games Daily. That's freaking incredible. You guys are really awesome. One of the things that I've come to appreciate about Kind of Funny Games Daily is the way that it's taken a lot of my more businessy industry insider kind of pieces and helped make them a little more digestible for just, you know, regular everyday gamers. And you guys do that with my pieces. You do that with a whole lot of other really great writers who write about industry topics and it's just really awesome that you do that. You asked me to share one of my favorite pieces and I actually wanted to share this one. I wrote this one a couple years ago and I actually feel like not very many people picked it up, but it's genuinely one of my favorite things that I've ever written. It's about this game called Spintires and the weird back and forth argument over who actually owned this little driving simulation game. It's really detailed, it took some very bizarre twists and turns and I really, really enjoyed reporting on it just because of the multitude of skills that I had to use to sort of get to the bottom of what was really happening here. So that's an article from me, but you guys are freaking incredible and I appreciate everything about you. I love listening to Games Daily and I hope you guys have an amazing 2000, 2000 episode and 2000 and many more episodes to come by.

Up Kinda Funny Wesley here from Game informer congrats on 2000 episodes of kinda Funny Games Daily. That is incredible. And I'm so thankful to have been a small part of that show each time my stories are read on the air and it means the world that Kinda Funny supports journalists like us all around the world by reading our stories and making sure our news and our.

[Gary Whitta]

Reports and our features are out there.

[Andrea Rene]

For people to hear about on the show. I remember the first time you, Greg, read one of my stories on the air. He didn't actually mention my name because he wasn't reading the author bylines at that point. And so I messaged him and said, yo, you should absolutely be reading the bylines. Selfishly, because I just wanted to hear my name on the show, but also because it's a good thing to do. And he started doing that, but not without calling me Wesley LeBlanc, that every single time he read one of my stories. And I loved it and it made me laugh every time. Fast forward a few years later and now I'm a game informer and my stories still get read on the air sometimes and it makes my day every single time. And I love it. 2000 episodes. That's truly nuts. I've been on the show twice. Once when I got laid off a.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Couple years ago from games.

[Gary Whitta]

Former not so fun.

[Andrea Rene]

The second time was with Blessing earlier this year to help bring back Game Informer's new era of our magazine. It's been with Blessing both times and I've loved that. But it is kind of concerning with me that Greg continues to avoid hosting the show with me. I know he's scared. I know he's terrified of my knowledge and I would absolutely school him on Kinda Funny Games Showdown and end Blue Team streak. It is what it is. It's not up for debate. It's not a question. Everybody knows that. I get why he doesn't host with me, but one day we'll make it happen. Congrats on 2000 kinda funny games Daily.

[Andy Cortez]

Hey, what's up Kinda Funny crew? Nooble here.

[Gary Whitta]

I want to congratulate you guys on 2000 episodes of kinda Funny Games Daily.

[Andy Cortez]

You guys are doing an amazing job covering the industry and personally I have to thank you because without you I.

[Gary Whitta]

Wouldn'T probably do that stuff anymore.

[Andy Cortez]

I do on my account. So thank you so much.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

My favorite kind of funny moment is.

[Andy Cortez]

The whole ongoing bit with the Mike and Sarah Bond Father's Day story. And Mike, you're probably the funnest, the funniest person on the Internet I know.

[Gary Whitta]

So Please never change.

[Greg Miller]

Dude.

[Andy Cortez]

I wish you guys all the best, and I hope we will see at least another thousand episodes of kind of Funny Games daily.

[Greg Miller]

Mike. That's my guy right there's the funniest.

[Mike Mahardy]

That's my guy right there. Shout out, big bug.

[Gary Whitta]

What up?

[Andy Cortez]

I mean, what's his name?

[Greg Miller]

What's his name?

[Mike Mahardy]

Now it's telling me.

[Greg Miller]

What's his name? What's his name?

[Mike Mahardy]

Noble.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay, come on now.

[Mike Mahardy]

We're tight, we're tight.

[Greg Miller]

Come on, keep them coming. Right now, we are gathering your Super Chats questions for Gary Whitta to make him grind his gears. What's gonna piss Gary off? Get it straight from the source, Gary.

[Gary Whitta]

I'll give you one to start with. You know what pisses me off? Assuming that I can just be poked with a fucking stick and rant on demand. I rant when I feel the need. It's an organic thing. You can't just, like, go and rant. Do something, say something, be angry.

[Andrea Rene]

I feel like you say that, but you pull rants out of thin air, Gary.

[Gary Whitta]

Well, again, out of thin air, not because I was poked with a stick.

[Greg Miller]

Arturo Tron, Robo bartender. Super chats says Gary. People mad at Bad Bunny headlining the Super Bowl. Thoughts?

[Gary Whitta]

Ridiculous. I mean, last night, last I heard, he was one of the most popular musical artists in the world.

[Mike Mahardy]

Let him know.

[Gary Whitta]

Gary, what exactly is the problem again?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, he speaks Spanish.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, no, can't have that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Puerto Rican.

[Andrea Rene]

No, United States speak Spanish. Right.

[Gary Whitta]

Always reminds me of that lining Contact when they're like, well, why didn't the aliens just speak English? And she's like, well, maybe because, like, 90 of the world's speaks other languages. Yeah, Contact.

[Greg Miller]

What a good movie we don't talk about.

[Andy Cortez]

Doesn't have anything to do with a Gary Ran thing. But I want to thank Ken g with a $50 super chat and Karen lner with another $50 super chat. In addition to flip the USB twice. He says, longtime fan since IGN days. Just want to say thanks for all the vids and good vibes. Got my first KFGD shirt and it's arriving today. Here's to another 2K.

[Greg Miller]

Hell yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Thank you, everybody.

[Mike Mahardy]

Gary, isn't it crazy that we went through 10 years plus of news and they didn't bring up one World of Warcraft once? I mean, 2000.

[Gary Whitta]

That's crazy.

[Mike Mahardy]

The biggest game in video game history.

[Gary Whitta]

And that game dominated my life.

[Andrea Rene]

That was missed.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Typically, I tried not to add video game releases because that that would have made the segment last too Long because every Pokemon Go in game releases will Fredo Super Chat.

[Greg Miller]

That was a trend, you know, I.

[Gary Whitta]

Mean Gary, World of Warcraft is, was and remains a big deal.

[Greg Miller]

Big, huge deal. You put it up World of Warcraft gear.

[Gary Whitta]

Well, I, I mean I had, Look.

[Greg Miller]

I'm not, this isn't, I'm not trying, I'm not arguing. This is.

[Gary Whitta]

I, I had, I had, I had my, I had my time with World of Warcraft during the first few years. I played from, I played from the beta. I leveled maxed out level 39 Paladin in the beta all the way up to cataclysm. I think was where, I'm sorry, where I stopped.

[Greg Miller]

Did you ever say beta?

[Gary Whitta]

Oh yeah, I used to say beta. I used to say root.

[Greg Miller]

I never said, I never shut your.

[Gary Whitta]

Used to say beta. I never, I never used to say root because routers only became a thing after I came to America. I've been to America almost 30 years, so certain things, I've only ever learned the American way to say. But I used to say, yeah, I still say tomato. Okay, sometimes I say tomato.

[Greg Miller]

Sorry. Back to your World of Warcraft. You had your thing, you did your run, you're great.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, so yeah, I was in a hardcore raiding guild. We, you know, we did everything there was to do in that game. I still have some of the, my fondness, fondest memories ever. And every now and again I've, I've toyed with the idea of going back. But you know, again, I've said before, nostalgia ain't working what it used to be. You try to recreate something. I felt that this game made me feel a certain way. Like to me it never works. It always just kind of like it's not how I remember it. Leave it alone. If you have great memories of a game from like 20 years ago, leave them crystallized in amber. You don't have to go back and poke at them.

[Greg Miller]

Wilfredo super chats and says, gary, talk about modern video game story writing. So say again, Talk about modern video game story writing.

[Andrea Rene]

I think, come on, you can do a better question than that.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean, I mean you're not going to get out of me that way.

[Andrea Rene]

No, what I said, I mean when I say better, I mean like that's the like the biggest umbrella question. Like what's like the more granular way to ask somebody.

[Greg Miller]

Gary, as an accomplished writer and a winner of two baftas, how do you currently feel about video game story writing?

[Gary Whitta]

I think it's in the best shape it's ever Been.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you very.

[Gary Whitta]

I. I remember when you know, sorry Mario, but the princess is in another castle. That was like, that was, that was the extent of video game storytelling. And now, you know, some of the storytelling in video games is, is, can stand alongside any other medium. It's incredible. Amazing time to be.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Can I bring in one from KH Cloud who writes in and says, Gary, what are your favorite things about microtransactions and live service games?

[Gary Whitta]

I'm sorry, say again?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What are your favorite things about microtransactions and live service games?

[Gary Whitta]

My favorite. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to you all. I'm just, I'm just going to be saying nice, positive, happy things about every.

[Mike Mahardy]

Ultimate team is so lit.

[Gary Whitta]

Listen, my, my, my, my two most played games of the last 12 months and arguably.

[Greg Miller]

Ever.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Are they Dune Awakening and Rematch?

[Greg Miller]

No, Helldivers.

[Gary Whitta]

Rematches are Distant Helldivers 2, which I currently have more than 2500 hours in, and Dune Awakening, which I didn't think I was going to get into, but these jabronis convinced me to play and then immediately fucked off. But now me and Adam fucking run that server. We're the, with the Spice Barons. We're like the fucking Harkonnen, swimming around in all that shit and go, give me more spice. My Arrakis. I'm that guy. Yeah. Yeah. So no, it's gone. I still haven't played for about a week, but like, man, I was like, hard. I have been and continue to be hardcore into Dune Awakening. I've said this to a few people a few times now. Even Adam, who didn't want to play it, fucking loves it now. I think people are sleeping on that game. It's a, like, it's a. It's probably that since I've been looking to scratch the MMOH since World of Warcraft, I can't go back to World of War because again, that's its own thing. And I've tried other games. This is the first one that came along. I was like, man, I, you know, I said it all the time. Like, for me, the really best live service games are not. Or just games in general are not a game that you play, but a place that you go. Like when I play Mass Effect, I'm fucking in that world. If they released a Mass Effect mmo, you would never see me again. Same Z. I love that shit. And Dune Awakening, it does such a good job of it actually got me more into. I read the book years ago and I enjoyed the movies but like, that game got me into, like, the Dune Law and the World of Dune more than anything else that's. That's come along. I'm so. It's so fascinating. I could tell you. I could, like, tell you all about, like, the water conversation conservation on Arrakis. And you get into it like, it's a really, really fun game. The combat loop is really. The combat's really fun. It's fun to build and customize your base. It's a beautiful world. The graphics are. Are phenomenal. I kind of feel like people are sleeping on. This game will not even be mentioned when it comes to Game of the Year, which is a really good game.

[Greg Miller]

I think what really is going to happen is when it comes to console.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, that's next year. And I think, I think.

[Greg Miller]

I think it'll get it.

[Gary Whitta]

I think it will get its roses.

[Andy Cortez]

Then I have 140 hours in Dune Awakening, my most played game this year.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

But on the flip side of that, I'm like, okay, let's be honest. So 90 hours is probably just me building seven different bases where I would, like, always re. The building in that game is just so freaking fun. But, Gary, we need aliens to shoot at. I, like, I couldn't do it. I couldn't just shoot dudes anymore.

[Gary Whitta]

No.

[Andy Cortez]

I need, like, big raid bosses. I need. And that's not part of the Dune world, but.

[Gary Whitta]

No, it's not.

[Andy Cortez]

You know, like, I mean, there's the.

[Gary Whitta]

Worms, but the whole point is you can't kill them.

[Andy Cortez]

I need something more than just like a guy with.

[Gary Whitta]

Do you think they'll ever do, like, a raid boss where you can, like, fight a worm or something?

[Greg Miller]

It would be awesome.

[Gary Whitta]

I'll tell you this. And it's not just me. A lot of people have said this. The only time that I've. Because the cost, if it gets you is so severe. The only time that I played a video game in, like, the last 10 years where I've genuinely felt fear is in that game. When you're in the middle of a desert and the worm starts trembling, it's like, there's a worm in your area. You better get out of there. There have been times when you're trying to, like, get back in the ornithopter and take off before the worm comes. And it's like. Because the thing is, if the worm.

[Andy Cortez]

Eats you, it's over.

[Greg Miller]

It's.

[Gary Whitta]

You don't get any of your back. Like, there's no. There's no bag for you to go recover worm's got it now. I've been eaten by a worm twice. And it set me all the way back to the beginning. Since then, you know, once you get in the air with an ornithopsy, you're fine. But like, again, sometimes you've got a land in a spice field and you're. And you're walking around trying to be really careful and, like, you'll hear that.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, here you go.

[Gary Whitta]

Well, there's a worm. And like, literally, it's. The effects on it are really good. When the big sandworm comes out, it's like, oh, that's epic and terrifying. And those are the little worms. Then you go to the deep desert and they're 50 times bigger.

[Andy Cortez]

I don't know. Was a bigger worm.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, you got no idea. You haven't seen the shy hallud yet, my friend. This thing is huge.

[Andy Cortez]

The desert takes the desert take.

[Gary Whitta]

Let me say. So basically, like, you go out to the deep desert, right, where they have these massive spice fields. And the spice field is probably like 10 times the size of this studio in terms of, like, real space. When the big worm comes up, it eats the entire field in one bite. Like, it's.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, my God, it's mental.

[Andy Cortez]

Big worm.

[Gary Whitta]

It's real. But honestly, that sense of, like, danger and again, just that sense of like being in a time and place. Like, I feel like I'm on Arrakis. I am this character. I'm doing this shit. It's really, really good. It's my take. My recommendation.

[Andrea Rene]

You've like so hard. Because I'm a die hard Dune fan and I had the pleasure of seeing multiple Funcom presentations.

[Greg Miller]

He walked by a TV and heard Dune awakening. Here comes Nick.

[Andrea Rene]

Before. Before. Nick says, I think maybe some people don't realize that Funcom worked really closely with the movies art team.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, yeah. I mean, it looks just like the world of the movie.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah. To make it really cohesive, which.

[Andy Cortez]

All of the aesthetic is from the dairy logo.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

All of the aesthetic is from the villain of me. The first time you go to Arrakeen, it's like, that's the arakeen from the movie. Right. All of the. Said they. They did a really good job with all of that stuff. Andrew, if you want to play, come to our server.

[Andrea Rene]

I'm so worried that I don't. What are we gonna do?

[Gary Whitta]

Me and Andrea will. Sorry. Me and Adam will boost up because we're. We're kings on that server.

[Greg Miller]

So that's my.

[Gary Whitta]

We come home at the end of the day, we Swim around in spice like fucking Scrooge McDuck. That's how we are.

[Greg Miller]

Before it launched, I was super into everything I was hearing. Then I missed launch weekend, and then all I heard was, Nick be like, oh, man, we can't help Gary. It'll hold us back. But if I. If I. If what? If I came to your server, you'd be able to help me.

[Gary Whitta]

Hold on. So, first of all, Nick is the only one that actually stuck around, and he's still playing with us. We see him in the game all the time. Everyone else, yesterday, everyone else fucked up immediately.

[Greg Miller]

Nick, Nick.

[Gary Whitta]

Nick went and paid our taxes.

[Andy Cortez]

He went to the city and paid my gears.

[Gary Whitta]

He paid our taxes to the Padisha Emperor.

[Andy Cortez]

Let me tell you what grinds my gears.

[Greg Miller]

You get your best friend Gary into.

[Andy Cortez]

A game, and then Gary gets his.

[Greg Miller]

Best friend Adam into a game, and then one week goes by, you go.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

On vacation with your lovely wife.

[Greg Miller]

Spain to Spain, enjoying life.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You leave, they're both grinding the sand bike. You come back, and they are totalitarian spike ice barons who don't want anything.

[Andy Cortez]

To do with you anymore.

[Gary Whitta]

It's been a great character.

[Greg Miller]

Now they've got a base.

[Andy Cortez]

Be seen with your pedestrians.

[Gary Whitta]

It's been a great. It's been a great character arc. So I. I didn't want to. I didn't want to play by myself, but I remember when I. When I came in, at that point, Nick was the only one playing. And, like, at the beginning of the game, it is a lot like rust, right? Like, it's. It's a challenge just to stay alive because it's, like, sweltering Iraqis, right? It's super hot. There's no water anywhere. Like, you're constantly, like. Like, literally, like, licking like, dew off of a leaf to try and, like, get some. Get some hydration anywhere you go. You've got no transport. You go into a desert, you're getting by a worm. Everything kills you everywhere. All the time on Arrakis until you start to, like, get a little bit of a foothold. And when I was still in that, like, wearing the rags that you start with and everything, Nick's like, I'll come over and help you out. And he kind of didn't even know this was in the game. He comes in on this ornithop and, like, jumps out with all this badass gear and starts, like, grappling around, like, oh, like, is that what I'm gonna be able to do eventually? Nick was a badass, but then you get to pass it on, because when Adam came, I came in. I did this. I think now I'm Nick and I'm giving you all the free. But Adam, like, was resistant for the longest time. He's like, don't get me into. He's like, you don't understand, like, what I'm like with these games. Yeah. They're in obsession with me.

[Andrea Rene]

That's what. That's where I'm at. And that's why I've been abstaining, because I'm like, I don't know if I can fall down the hole now.

[Gary Whitta]

He's annoying because, like, he's a min maxer. He's like, well, why have you refined that? It would have been more efficient to refine it this way or whatever. Like, you haven't done your daily chores, like, off.

[Greg Miller]

But, like, because of that, to be.

[Gary Whitta]

Fair, because of, like, Adam started after me and leapfrogged me almost immediately because he was like, again, I play the game, but I'm playing in a very inefficient way. Whereas Adam is like, every second is like, this is the most efficient thing I can be doing in this moment. Like, he doesn't care about the. The nice things, like the traffic. I have any of the mission. I have all the decorations and bases. I have all the little ornaments and things. And my house looks nice. His is just like a shed. Like a box.

[Greg Miller]

Looks like an Amazon box.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah. It's sad, right? It is sad. It's miserable. Every time I have to go there and fabricate some, it's miserable. I can't wait to get back. But like, that. We now want to pay it forward to other big Khalif. We got Khalif into it. You show up, it will take you probably, I would say maybe 100 hours in the game to get, like, full, fully loaded up with ornithopter and all the. All the tier 5 gear. You can have that in an hour if you team up with.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, my God, I'm doing it.

[Andrea Rene]

I'm in. Gary, I'm in.

[Andy Cortez]

All right, you do it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Here's. Here's what I'll say.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Because I have flash forward to me. Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I still love this game, but there's.

[Greg Miller]

Nothing much to do. And that's a big problem with the game.

[Gary Whitta]

Once you hit the end game, end.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Game is kind of just not there.

[Andy Cortez]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

And it's unfortunate.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Some of it has to do with.

[Andrea Rene]

The fact that it's coming.

[Greg Miller]

They can't iterate a ton because of the ip.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Some of this other stuff.

[Andy Cortez]

I Have faith.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm still hanging in there. I'm still paying everyone's taxes. But I fly in the other day and I look cos base is gone.

[Greg Miller]

Kaja played for like five seconds that it is gone.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Adam's base is in disrepair.

[Greg Miller]

It's falling apart.

[Gary Whitta]

I know. I was. I was refueling it the other day because he's let it go.

[Greg Miller]

He's done.

[Gary Whitta]

He's done.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I look.

[Gary Whitta]

No, he's coming back.

[Andy Cortez]

Is he?

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, he said. Yeah, I spoke to him today.

[Andy Cortez]

All right, so here's what I'll say.

[Greg Miller]

For both of you.

[Andy Cortez]

We have.

[Greg Miller]

Have real estate in the Beverly Hills. It's not really the Beverly Hills, more like Brentwood.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

If you guys want to play, we can carve out a spot for you.

[Greg Miller]

And I can start. I can start putting those down for you guys.

[Gary Whitta]

The end game is fun. Remember that first firefight that we were in in the deep desert?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, my God. When you.

[Gary Whitta]

So the end game real quick.

[Greg Miller]

I like this super chat from Downey Downerson. Hey, what the are you guys talking about?

[Andrea Rene]

Dune Awakening. Everybody talking about Dune.

[Gary Whitta]

It's one of those games where you. What? This is always the hallmark of a great game is that, like, afterwards you've got, like, fishing stories to tell about what happened. So we finally got to the point we can go to the deep desert, right, which is a separate area from the rest of the game. And it's PvP and it's very dangerous, and the worms are 10 times larger and everything, but that's where all the spice is. And you need. Nothing works without spice. At the end of the game, you got to have it, but it's really dangerous to get. So you have to build a sand crawler, right? Basically a harvest that you build that and you have one person driving that. And so I basically drive the sand crawler because you can't fuck that up.

[Greg Miller]

And let me tell you.

[Gary Whitta]

And then. And then you've got Adam.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

If you want to hear an old.

[Greg Miller]

Bickering couple fighting over comms, watch Adam launch Gary's spice crawler and have how Gary starts freaking out because he falls down.

[Gary Whitta]

So there's a lot you have to like, you have to. You have to play that. You can't do the end game yourself. You have to play with other people. So, like, one person's in the sandcrawler. You've got Adam in the. In the carrier, like, the carry, all the above me hovering, like, anytime there's like, any worm sign, he. It's his job to, like, grab me and pick Me up or we're gonna look, the crawler's gonna get eaten and I'm gonna lose all my. In the mind you.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's PvP.

[Greg Miller]

So at any point.

[Gary Whitta]

PvP. So it's like. So we.

[Greg Miller]

We.

[Gary Whitta]

We can only go now with an answer. Like, Adam, you want to get some spice here? We need an escort. Like, we need a couple of, like, tough guys. So we get like, Nick and some of Adam's friends, like, get loaded up with the weapons.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

They contracted me.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, we paid you very unfair rate.

[Gary Whitta]

No generous rate.

[Tim Gettys]

It was muscle.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. They just put me out there.

[Gary Whitta]

So we got. We. We fitted. We fitted up his ornithopter with some rocket pause. It's like because you. You go out there and these spice fields are highly contested. So like another. Another ornithopters show up with their carrier. It's like, oh, sorry, this space is already taken. But you don't know are these guys going to be cool or are they going to start some and you've got like, Nick's up there. Like, you were like, super. Like I said, no itchy trigger fingers. Like, you fire the first shot and there's no going back.

[Greg Miller]

For us to stay frosty.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

But we did not stay frosty.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. This guy looked at Gary the wrong.

[Mike Mahardy]

Way and Gary lit this dude up.

[Greg Miller]

And then the dude.

[Andy Cortez]

The dude strategically just proved to us.

[Greg Miller]

Very quickly that he had been there before.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, he was better than us.

[Greg Miller]

It was our first, like, aerial, all three of us. Yeah. Yeah, we know. I see Wesley trying to get us back on track. I have two questions for my own thing. Do you guys play with controller?

[Gary Whitta]

Yes, you can.

[Greg Miller]

And has anybody tried it on Steam deck? I see it's verified. How's that going? It's all right.

[Gary Whitta]

On Steam. Steam deck. It's not very performant. I would. If I was going to play on Steam Deck, I'd probably stream it from Steam link on whatever your main PC is. We can stop talking about. I just love Nick. What a great. Why more people talking about this game? It's such a good game.

[Greg Miller]

Let's do that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I gotta go see a thing tonight, but after that, let's start.

[Gary Whitta]

I'm ready to jump back here.

[Greg Miller]

All right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Perfect cube blessing because you were playing.

[Greg Miller]

For like five seconds.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was playing for five seconds. I could be down to come back.

[Greg Miller]

Hot damn. It's on Nvidia GeForce now too. Hell yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, that would be.

[Gary Whitta]

Be. I think right there. The night. The nice thing playing it on controller, which is it works Totally. Well is a. I mean it's totally primed for that console release. I think they knew they had to make the console that this had to work with a controller because they wanted to do these console versions. Yeah. It's gonna be good.

[Greg Miller]

So fun.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Dune Awakening has eaten up the entire entirety of what grinds.

[Greg Miller]

That was great. Sorry.

[Gary Whitta]

Well again I didn't really want to.

[Greg Miller]

Again, I didn't really want to do it.

[Gary Whitta]

So Gary, want to keep it, keep it positive. Well, you need. We need positive.

[Andrea Rene]

What grinds your gears is not enough people are playing Dune Awakening.

[Gary Whitta]

Well yeah. And that's. I mean there are plenty of people playing it, but the way that the servers are structured, it's. You can only have so many people on each one. Well, we.

[Andrea Rene]

Look, take it back blessing.

[Gary Whitta]

If you've got like a little crew of like three or four people playing together, seriously, I'll give you the. I'll give you the name of our siege and you can come join us.

[Andrea Rene]

I'm in.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Now it's time for kindafunny.com you're wrong. Rewrite it and let us know what we got wrong as you got it wrong so we can correct it for those watching later on YouTube and listen later on podcast services around the globe. Surprisingly, we only got three things wrong in this almost four hour episode of khtd. Husky Denham writes in and says it was the fcc, the Federal Commerce Commission that wouldn't let Eminem be. You're wrong to claim that it was the ftc. The Federal Trade Commission.

[Gary Whitta]

Isn't the fcc, the Communications Commission.

[Andrea Rene]

That's correct.

[Gary Whitta]

So everybody's wrong except me.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay, as usual, Kebabs writes in and says the cable comes out of the bottom of the Dreamcast controller because the top is where you put the vmu, which I don't think is technically wrong. It's just the reason why that just.

[Gary Whitta]

Kind of seems like why have you done it this way? Why didn't you do it this way? And someone just says well cuz we did it that way. Like it's not. It doesn't explain to me why you made a bad decision.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And then Kebabs also writes in and says the PS2 could output 1080i with a few games including graphics. Gran Turismo 2. Also worth noting that the PS3 was the first console to launch with HDMI out as standard.

[Gary Whitta]

Xbox 360 could do 1080i since the.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

360 launched with analog out for the first few years. And that is it for year Wrong. Greg, do you want to close out with a reader mail?

[Greg Miller]

Oh man, I would like to, but I am booting Dune Awakening on Nvidia.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, he's coming in.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you. We of course ask everybody to super chat in to be part of it. We used to do reader mail. Now we have a letter from a listener. Do you want me to go to the bottom to see who it is? Or is that a reveal?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's real. It can be a reveal.

[Greg Miller]

What's up? Kind of funny. Games Daily Crew. Wow. Can you believe it? 2000 episodes of games Daily. Feels like just yesterday I was watching the first episode debuting after whatever Nick was doing on the morning show Parentheses and Andrea berating him to wrap up Fun clips already. It's no exaggeration to say that KFG d established my name name in the community. While I had met Greg and Tim at PSX 2015 meet and greet, I wasn't engaged in the chat so nobody knew who I was. KFG changed all that. Particularly. You're wrong. In the year long battle I waged with Greg to pronounce my username correctly. I see I've met so many cool and amazing KFBFs over the years thanks to the show, but I specifically wanted to shout out the ladies in the chat, send Nuggies, pages, inked Violet, Mattexposure, Danielle Z, Missenvy, lolifox and more. It's always a delight seeing them in the chat. The coolest of any community. A mix of a gaming podcast and the midday news is a genius idea. And the show means so much to me as a bastion of insightful takes sprinkled with goofs and just telling it how it is. It really is an industry leader and I'm so thankful to be a small part of it. I Hope that episode 2000 is just the beginning. Thank you so much for what you do and keep being awesome, everyone.

[Gary Whitta]

You know the best part about that? Very nice. Kebabs.

[Andrea Rene]

Kebabs.

[Greg Miller]

Kebabs.

[Gary Whitta]

You know the best part of that?

[Greg Miller]

What's that?

[Gary Whitta]

YouTube went to an ad in the middle of it.

[Greg Miller]

Pay the money. Is it that hard?

[Gary Whitta]

That's right.

[Greg Miller]

YouTube.

[Gary Whitta]

YouTube Premium. It's the best subscription you'll ever buy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You love YouTube Premium.

[Andrea Rene]

100%. Yeah, I never think twice about that one.

[Gary Whitta]

It's the. If I had to give up every subscription except one, it would be YouTube.

[Andrea Rene]

I'm never. I'm never giving up 100.

[Gary Whitta]

I don't know why people complain about about it. It's brilliant.

[Greg Miller]

Ladies, gentlemen, NMBS that's another episode of Kind of Funny Games Daily. In the books. 2000 episodes. Mike, are there any super chats to get out of? What was the update? Did we ever get a final update from Rog?

[Mike Mahardy]

No, Roger never wrote me. Roger, I still love you. Just write me one day.

[Greg Miller]

But we have a lot of Roger, let us know.

[Gary Whitta]

Two grand there.

[Andrea Rene]

I think it's a different currency.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, no, I mean, it's a dollar sign, so I don't know what that would be.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's like MX then a dollar sign. I think it's Mexican money.

[Greg Miller]

Mexican.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, mx. Okay, all right, fair enough. So, yeah, I thought EMEX was like the name of the person or something.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, back to you, Mike.

[Mike Mahardy]

A lot of great super chats congratulating all of the team on 2000 episodes of Kind of Funny Games Daily. So many to read. A couple of them encouraging you, like Brett, who write in and says, I would love to watch you all continue to play Dune Awakening. So guess what?

[Gary Whitta]

I'll stream it. I've been thinking about streaming it because it's a fun game to. To stream. Stream and watch. Yeah, let's do it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Go hit some.

[Gary Whitta]

Go hit some testing stations.

[Mike Mahardy]

Teach them.

[Gary Whitta]

I'll text you the. The name of our service.

[Andrea Rene]

So, you know, and I did want to say 2,000 pesos is 108.32.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, wow.

[Andrea Rene]

No, I never said it was not nothing. No, I'm saying it's an amazing. It's amazing.

[Gary Whitta]

No, I'm just saying even with the conversion, that's a decent amount of cash.

[Andrea Rene]

Yeah, yeah, it is. Thank you.

[Greg Miller]

Is that it for super chats, Mike?

[Mike Mahardy]

Are you gonna unleash the beach?

[Greg Miller]

Because I could read all you said you had. A whole bunch.

[Mike Mahardy]

There's over a thousand of them for sure.

[Andrea Rene]

Okay, okay, maybe don't read that many.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I messaged Roger to ask what the final number is.

[Greg Miller]

Roger.

[Mike Mahardy]

Roger, do something.

[Gary Whitta]

I don't know why, but a few people in chat have asked me if I've seen one battle after another. Yes, I have. It's my favorite movie of the year. And you will very much like my Halloween costume this year.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, I saw it during the weekend. It's excellent.

[Gary Whitta]

So good. Such a good movie.

[Greg Miller]

Here comes Roger, everybody.

[Mike Mahardy]

Here comes Roger.

[Greg Miller]

Round of applause. Roger Piccor, over here.

[Mike Mahardy]

Roger, tell us where.

[Greg Miller]

Where do we end up with super Chats?

[Andy Cortez]

We were getting close to 1000. We were like 980 something.

[Andrea Rene]

Well, I'm proud to announce that we are at 1100.

[Greg Miller]

Incredible.

[Andrea Rene]

And with Gary's contributions, we are well past 1100.

[Greg Miller]

We're at the 3000 mark.

[Gary Whitta]

So you will be.

[Andy Cortez]

You will be.

[Gary Whitta]

You like charging me by the word.

[Andy Cortez]

That'd be great. We'll. We'll send you an invoice. Alex hubcap with a $2 super chat says, one more for the road. Oh, Nick Schloss says, love you all. Congratulations. Matthew Hidalgo. Duro A dot. Boom. We're getting. We're in the spot where we're getting just a lot of $1 contribution.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Because people wanted that number to go up. $20 from Brent McCaleb. Talking about Dune Awakening. Sleeper hit of the year. We don't need to bring it up again.

[Mike Mahardy]

Christy Cream writes Happy 2000. Jesus writes Happy and says, Gary, remember. Remember when you roasted.

[Andy Cortez]

Remember when you roasted me?

[Mike Mahardy]

Because I said Pikmin is a top three franchise. You still stand by that?

[Gary Whitta]

Gary, I got. You know what? That's not what I even got the most shit for. Remember when. Remember when I said nobody gives a shit about killer instinct? I got me and Paris got a lot of shit for.

[Mike Mahardy]

That's got roasted for that one for a while.

[Andrea Rene]

I mean, rightly so.

[Gary Whitta]

I stand by it.

[Andy Cortez]

Gary, which goatie winner do you disagree with? Asked Anthony Adam.

[Gary Whitta]

Which what?

[Andy Cortez]

Goatee winner.

[Gary Whitta]

Dodie. As in Game of the Year.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

I don't know. Tell me some games of the year and I'll see if I disagree.

[Andrea Rene]

Untitled Goose Game.

[Gary Whitta]

Was that a game of the year?

[Andrea Rene]

A dice.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean, again, it's hard to know. Like, I don't know what else was there, but it's. I. Yeah. Absolutely.

[Tim Gettys]

Worthy.

[Gary Whitta]

Worthy winner. What a great game.

[Greg Miller]

I don't know if there's.

[Gary Whitta]

Is there really? I can't think. The last time I thought of a. I thought of a game game and I'm like, oh, that shouldn't have won Game of the year.

[Greg Miller]

It takes two. 20, 23, 100.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, of course. Brilliant. I've actually been ring some. I've been really pleased. Like. Like Balatro 100%. Baldur's Gate 3. Like all the Astro Bot. These are all like, no one's gonna have that win. I mean, these are all brilliant games.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

It's very rare, you know, every now and again like the Oscars or whatever. Something or when and people go really seriously that movie that usually in games the right game wins. It. It. Don't you think?

[Andrea Rene]

I think there's also just a embarrassment of riches.

[Gary Whitta]

These last few years have been packed.

[Andrea Rene]

I mean, like, I'd say the last 15 years even, like it's the. The Field of games in any given year. I mean, obviously some years have, you know, more like aaa, like, obvious like nominees than others. But we've just gotten so many surprise gems, particularly in the last, like five years.

[Gary Whitta]

I remember, I think I remember 20, 23 3. Because that was the year I presented the Golden Joysticks. I remember everyone saying, like, man, what a year. Like, this is brutal for Game of the Year because it's just like you want every year.

[Andrea Rene]

Every year it's gonna be a bloody.

[Andy Cortez]

There's a demo available right now called Ball X Pit. It's called Ball Pit. Great Roguelite. Brick Breaker game.

[Greg Miller]

It's awesome.

[Andy Cortez]

Super, super fun so far. Okay. Was available now also. Mega Bunk can. Can't not make.

[Gary Whitta]

I've heard about that as well. Is that the one that's like Vampire Survivors? Yeah, I saw Shroud playing that.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, it's just straight up 3D vampire survivors.

[Gary Whitta]

What's it called again? Mega.

[Andy Cortez]

Mega Bonk.

[Gary Whitta]

Mega Bonk. All right, I'm gonna check it out.

[Andy Cortez]

One word. Great game.

[Gary Whitta]

What's gonna be so Exposition 33.

[Greg Miller]

Right.

[Gary Whitta]

Like that's, that's nailed on surely.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, on the list.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, it's one of them for sure.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

There's Hades too.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Andrea Rene]

These two, I feel like is the one people are forgetting about. Split Fiction is, you know, earlier in the year. Ghost of Yotai. Right. Like, that's gonna probably be Silk Song.

[Gary Whitta]

That's Trends. I mean, there's a bunch of games.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Bonanza. Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

But It'll be a Expedition 33 for.

[Greg Miller]

A lot of people. Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

I, I think when you like because there's so many Games of the Year awards. Right. But like, once you tally up, like, I think Expedition that people have won the most of them. Other things will win other things, other awards. But I don't know, it just feels like. It's funny because I remember the first time they showed a trailer for it. I was on Go Back and Find the Clip. I was kind of like, what is this? This looks great. This looks banger. Why haven't I heard of this game? This weird French thing. And it ended up being one of the, one of the best games of the Absolutely is incredible game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I played quite a bit of that King Come Deliverance too.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, that's another one. I think that's in the frame as well.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

A video game.

[Greg Miller]

What inspired you to do that?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know, I, I, I listen to the streets, the world.

[Greg Miller]

Or you walk by my desk and saw me playing and I was like, I gotta get ready. And then There's a Reddit thread Bless is playing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was cruising the shops.

[Greg Miller]

I was cruising the W to Bless.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I saw a little indie title called Kingdom Deliverance too. And I was like, you know what? I'll give it a shot.

[Gary Whitta]

Blue print.

[Mike Mahardy]

I was pan the audience.

[Gary Whitta]

Blueprint. I haven't got to it because it's a puzzle game. So it's the sort of thing that I'll watch Leah play. I can't do puzzles.

[Greg Miller]

Blueprint.

[Gary Whitta]

But yeah, that's. That's going to be on the lists.

[Andy Cortez]

Here's a super chat with a massive throwback right here from Jeff the Maverick. Says this one's worth a dollar.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, man, that's good. This will be worth a dollar.

[Mike Mahardy]

Bradley Schofield writes in and says, hey, I'm usually working, but I like to watch and listen. Shout out from Halifax, Canada. Hello up there.

[Andy Cortez]

Mad Rock says with two dollar super chat. Breaking news. Meaning the Hollower. Delayed.

[Greg Miller]

Saw that. Yeah, we'll have that tomorrow on your next episode of Kind of Funny Games.

[Gary Whitta]

What Was it breaking?

[Greg Miller]

4 hours.

[Andy Cortez]

The hollower has been delayed. That's Yacht Club's game. The Shovel Knight directors supposed to come.

[Greg Miller]

Out on a Halloween. They have now said it will come out when it's ready. We are not prepared to give you another date.

[Andy Cortez]

That's. That's a bummer. That's quite a bummer. Who's. Who had that on Fantasy.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, I was already out of the running, but I needed it for a good placement. You know what I mean? I don't want to be the fucking seller with Roger now.

[Gary Whitta]

What's left this year that you. That we can't have a game of the year conversation without seeing, like, what are the.

[Greg Miller]

Maybe outer worlds too. Call of Duty is going to be good.

[Andrea Rene]

Potentially.

[Gary Whitta]

When is Call of Duty ever in the frame for anything?

[Greg Miller]

Oh, you mean. I'm sorry. There's one. I'm going to the critic to check it kind.com.

[Mike Mahardy]

Jurassic World Evolution 3G.

[Andy Cortez]

Come on.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, there you go.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You can rock play.

[Greg Miller]

Aren't they. Oh, no.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, I'm scrolling through. Oh, there's Metroid Prime. Metroid Prime 4.

[Greg Miller]

Are we. What was the. What was the big.

[Gary Whitta]

What was the big. I guess. Don't wait. Donkey Kong Bonanza. That would be upset.

[Andrea Rene]

Bonanza. I don't think. I think Metroid is just an inherently smaller overall audience than Donkey Kong.

[Gary Whitta]

Wasn't Bonanza like universally loved? Like, it should be up there, right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, it'll be up there. There's Dispatch. I don't think it'll be that high. But like, looking forward to that game.

[Gary Whitta]

Especially, like, because the platform category is usually kind of wide open these days. Right. Because that's not like a very busy genre. If you release a platform game that's a total banger, you might have it sealed up.

[Andy Cortez]

If Bonanza doesn't make the list. But Super Mario Wonder did make the list I would like fights will start.

[Andrea Rene]

I don't see a world where Bonanza doesn't make that list.

[Andy Cortez]

Agreed. Michael major with a $50 super chat says congrats on 2000. I watch every single one of them. Here's to 2000 more. Thank you, Michael Major.

[Mike Mahardy]

OMG writes in and says thanks for making one hour of my workday the best. Without Kind of Funny, I wouldn't have so many amazing friends. Love you guys.

[Gary Whitta]

Leah Leah texted me to remind me that when we used to do the Jesus Puppet on Xbox360, you know, apparently I don't remember this. I must have been too too stoned. But somebody apparently got quite offended by and pulled a gun and pointed it at the camera like they were going to shoot Jesus. Oh wow. Yeah. Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Wow.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Understandable. An irrational reaction, some would say.

[Andy Cortez]

We have Re regen Moss saying here's my first super chat. Love seeing you guys every we love seeing you.

[Greg Miller]

Thanks for hanging out with us. Thank you, Andy. Give me two more and then let's get out of here.

[Andy Cortez]

We have Cesar Palafox says congrats folks. Glad Andrea is here. Yeah, thank you for your super chat. And then we have one from Matt Bowers who says found KFGD in the summer of 2018 because of Brian and Tahara interview. I've been watching ever since memeing and laughing ever since. Happy 2k dudes. And that is not the last one because I do have have one extra one $5 from Chris Roper who says 2000.

[Greg Miller]

Happy 2000 to all of you. Remember, ladies, gentlemen and NBS, we couldn't do this without your support. It means the world to us that you have been here for 10 years of kind of funny, let alone 2,000 episodes of kind of Funny Games daily. Of course. Blessing Roger, thank you so much for all the work you put into this amazing episode. I hope did it come together the way you wanted? Bless.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh yeah, it came together honestly, better than I could have even imagined.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Only thing IS man, that 2000 segment probably should have condensed a little bit.

[Gary Whitta]

But sorry, that's on me. You know how I go on.

[Andrea Rene]

Oh when he originally sent the notes and I saw that, I was like, oh man, do they think this is going to be like an eight hour show?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

In my mind I was thinking like, oh, Greg will read it like quick hits. But then I forgot who I put on the panel.

[Gary Whitta]

We're known for how quickly we move through material.

[Greg Miller]

Gary, Andrew, thank you for returning to the desk today.

[Gary Whitta]

A pleasure.

[Andrea Rene]

Thank you for having us.

[Greg Miller]

Always a pleasure. Don't worry about that.

[Gary Whitta]

I miss you. I like being next to you here. We should do this more often.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you.

[Andrea Rene]

You're the best.

[Greg Miller]

You're the best.

[Gary Whitta]

Come on now.

[Greg Miller]

Ladies, gentlemen and enbies, this has been Kinda Funny Games Daily. Each and every weekday on a variety of platforms. We run you through the nerdy video game news you know about live on Twitch TV, kindafunnygames, YouTube.com kindafunnygames and podcast services around the globe. If you love that and you've loved it for 2000 episodes or maybe just two, we'd love you to go pick up a Kinda Funny membership. You can grab it on patreon.com kinda funny YouTube.com kindafunnygame Games Apple Spotify, of course you could get all the shows ad free. You could get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller in a series we call Greg Way. And of course you'd get good karma for sporting 11 person business all about live talk shows in an increasingly crazy media landscape. Again, we couldn't do it without you. Thank you for everything you've given us. Thank you for all the support today, all the super chats, all the views. Maybe it's a good time to tell your friends about it. Like subscribe, share. If you don't to want to give us money, leave a review. Remember, if you have Amazon prime, you have Twitch Prime. We'd love you to give away that free subscription they give you each and every month. But don't remind you about and don't let auto renew. However, that's the end of our programming day. That's the end of episode 2000 of Kinda Funny Games Daily. But don't worry, just like every weekday, we'll be here tomorrow with all the nerdy news you need to know about. Until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.

[Andrea Rene]

Come on.