Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Con Drift, Leaks, & More News! - Kinda Funny Games Daily 04.07.25

Summary

Kinda Funny Games Daily: Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Con Drift, Leaks, & More News! – April 7, 2025

Hosts: Blessing Adeoye Jr., Gary Whitta, and Barrett Courtney

---

1. Introduction

In this episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily, the hosts delve into a spectrum of gaming news, predominantly focusing on the much-anticipated Nintendo Switch 2. From hardware concerns and leaked prototypes to the surprising success of the Minecraft movie, the trio offers comprehensive insights and spirited discussions.

---

2. Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Con Drift and Analog Stick Issues

News Overview: Nintendo has confirmed that the Switch 2 Joy Cons will not feature Hall Effect analog sticks—a highly anticipated upgrade intended to mitigate the persistent drift issues experienced by original Switch owners. Despite the absence of this technology, Nintendo assures that the new Joy Cons are more durable and offer an improved feel.

Discussion Highlights:

• Blessing Adeoye Jr. ([00:45]): Expresses skepticism about Nintendo’s decision, highlighting past issues with Joy-Con drift.

• Gary Whitta ([02:06]): Enthusiastically anticipates the Switch 2, stating, "It's everything I wanted it to be. It's just a better Nintendo Switch." ([02:06])

• Blessing ([04:19]): Shares personal impressions, noting the Joy Con 2’s satisfaction when attaching but concerns when detaching due to the new magnet system.

• Gary ([05:33]): Discusses the potential long-term impact, "These are stories that we're going to be hearing about, you know, three months, six months, a year from now." ([05:33])

Key Takeaways: While Nintendo opts out of implementing Hall Effect sticks, the larger size of the Switch 2 Joy Cons may allow for engineering improvements to enhance durability and user experience. The hosts remain cautiously optimistic but acknowledge that real-world performance remains to be seen.

---

3. Leaked Prototype Builds of Canceled Nintendo Games

News Overview: Rumors and leaks suggest that prototype builds for several canceled Nintendo titles, including a Ridge Racer game, LEGO Civilization, and an unannounced project from Retro Studios titled Harmony, are circulating online. These leaks likely originated from unauthorized access to a Nintendo Switch development kit.

Discussion Highlights:

• Blessing ([22:48]): Questions the fate of these leaked games, pondering whether they are definitively canceled.

• Gary ([23:02]): Expresses disinterest unless the games are still viable, emphasizing the negative impact of leaks on creators.

• Blessing ([24:01]): Highlights the intriguing concept of Harmony, a 3D platformer involving shape-shifting fairy characters to solve puzzles.

• Gary ([25:14]): Comments on the potential of LEGO Civilization, "that sounds like a fun mashup." ([23:21])

Key Takeaways: The leaks shed light on Nintendo's developmental pipeline, hinting at ambitious projects that may never see fruition. While some games like LEGO Civilization spark interest, the hosts underscore the ethical implications and potential harm caused by unauthorized disclosures.

---

4. Switch 2 Not Featuring a System-Wide Achievement System

News Overview: Nintendo has officially confirmed that the Switch 2 will not include a system-wide achievement system. Instead, individual games will retain their own achievement lists, accessible through a mobile app. Esteemed titles like Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will feature switched editions and corresponding apps like Zelda Notes.

Discussion Highlights:

• Gary ([26:16]): Supports Nintendo’s decision, emphasizing that achievements can often lead to "busy work" rather than enhancing gameplay ([26:16]).

• Blessing ([30:28]): Agrees, citing examples like Spider-Man where achievements are well-integrated and meaningful.

• Gary ([32:31]): Praises Nintendo’s focus on preserving core gameplay integrity, contrasting it with other platforms where achievements sometimes detract from the experience.

Key Takeaways: The absence of a unified achievement system aligns with Nintendo's philosophy of prioritizing gameplay over extrinsic rewards. The hosts appreciate this stance, recognizing that it maintains the purity of the gaming experience without adding unnecessary grind for achievement hunters.

---

5. Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour Priced at $10

News Overview: Nintendo has announced that the Welcome Tour for the Switch 2 will be a digital-only product priced at $9.99. This has sparked backlash among fans, who argue that such introductory content should be bundled with the console rather than sold separately.

Discussion Highlights:

• Gary ([38:05]): Expresses frustration, stating, "They're charging me for this. It's called Welcome Tour." ([38:05])

• Blessing ([40:45]): Acknowledges the validity of complaints but playfully suggests that few might engage with the Welcome Tour even if bundled.

• Gary ([43:15]): Criticizes the naming and marketing strategy, "Welcome Tour. You don’t call it Welcome Tour if it’s not free." ([43:15])

• Receiver ([48:25]): Discusses potential price increases due to tariffs, predicting a possible retail price surge to $550.

Key Takeaways: The decision to price the Welcome Tour separately is viewed unfavorably, with the hosts likening it to charging for an instructional manual. Concerns about potential price hikes due to tariffs further exacerbate frustration, highlighting tensions between consumer expectations and corporate strategies.

---

6. Minecraft Movie Shatters Box Office Expectations

News Overview: The Minecraft movie has achieved unprecedented success, grossing $157 million in its opening weekend. It stands as the largest domestic debut and highest-grossing video game adaptation to date, surpassing previous benchmarks set by titles like Super Mario Brothers.

Discussion Highlights:

• Blessing ([54:22]): Surprised by the massive success, questioning, "It sounds like maybe it is pretty good." ([55:36])

• Gary ([54:25]): Attributes the success to Minecraft's vast and primarily child-focused audience, coupled with effective marketing and the appeal of the franchise.

• Gary ([60:06]): Emphasizes the importance of financial success for spurring future video game movies, "The rising tide lifts all boats." ([60:06])

• Blessing ([61:06]): Discusses the potential longevity of the video game movie market, acknowledging that while many may fail, successful entries like Minecraft pave the way for future adaptations.

Key Takeaways: The blockbuster performance of the Minecraft movie underscores the lucrative potential of video game adaptations, especially those with broad, established fan bases. While the quality of the film remains subjective, its financial triumph boosts confidence in the viability of similar projects.

---

7. PAX East 2025: Kind of Funny Co-Founder Greg Miller as Story Time Speaker

News Overview: Greg Miller, co-founder of Kind of Funny, has been announced as the Story Time keynote speaker for PAX East 2025, scheduled from May 8-11 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

Discussion Highlights:

• Gary ([63:44]): Teases about ongoing show dynamics, "Story Time farewell tour," hinting at internal show dynamics and light-hearted host interactions.

• Blessing ([64:10]): Explains an ongoing storyline within the show involving Greg and Tim competing over "stars in the bank."

Key Takeaways: Greg Miller’s role as a keynote speaker reflects his prominent position within the gaming community and signals upcoming content and narrative arcs within the podcast, engaging listeners with behind-the-scenes camaraderie.

---

8. Bungie’s Marathon Gameplay Live Stream

News Overview: Bungie is set to unveil more details about its upcoming PvP extraction shooter, Marathon, through a live stream on April 12th. Earlier cryptic teasers have piqued fan interest, hinting at a vibrant and unique aesthetic distinct from other shooters.

Discussion Highlights:

• Gary ([65:25]): Praises the game's aesthetic, "I love the palette, the colors." ([65:25])

• Blessing ([65:36]): Expresses eagerness to watch the live stream and anticipates rich discussions post-release.

• Gary ([66:42]): Reflects on industry trends, contrasting Bungie’s approach with broader cinematic practices.

Key Takeaways: Bungie’s Marathon is anticipated to bring fresh visuals and gameplay mechanics to the crowded PvP shooter market. The hosts are optimistic about the game's potential to stand out, appreciating Bungie’s commitment to unique design.

---

9. Okami’s Indie Puzzle Game Blueprints Debuts to High Ratings

News Overview: The indie puzzle game Blueprints has debuted with an impressive 94 rating on Metacritic, garnering praise from major outlets like GameSpot and Gaming Bible. Set to launch on PlayStation Plus Extra and Xbox Game Pass on April 10th, Blueprints is poised for critical acclaim.

Discussion Highlights:

• Gary ([68:11]): Enthusiastically refers to the game as a "bolt draw all over again," highlighting its unexpected emergence.

• Blessing ([68:20]): Notes the game's high Metacritic score and anticipates a comprehensive review in upcoming episodes.

• Gary ([69:05]): Connects Blueprints to previously discussed leaked prototypes, emphasizing its quality and reception.

Key Takeaways: Blueprints’ stellar reception underscores the potential for indie titles to achieve mainstream success through quality gameplay and thoughtful design. The hosts are keen to explore and discuss the game further, anticipating its positive impact on the indie puzzle genre.

---

10. Listener Super Chats and Interactive Segments

Throughout the episode, the hosts engage with listener Super Chats, addressing comments and questions that range from comparing Donkey Kong Bonanza to Deep Rock Galactic to speculating about other potential video game movie adaptations.

Notable Interactions:

• Listener "Demon Hacker" ([69:32]): Predicts that a Stardew Valley movie will be a massive financial success.

• Listener "Street Shadow" ([70:30]): Draws parallels between Donkey Kong Bonanza and Deep Rock Galactic, enhancing the discussion around indie titles.

• Blessing ([67:36]): Playfully handles a potentially controversial comment with humor and restraint.

Key Takeaways: The interactive segment with listeners fosters community engagement, allowing fans to contribute perspectives and insights, thereby enriching the overall discourse of the podcast.

---

11. Conclusion

In this episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily, the hosts navigate through a diverse array of gaming news with enthusiasm and critical analysis. From the ongoing developments and controversies surrounding the Nintendo Switch 2 to the triumphant debut of the Minecraft movie and the promising arrival of indie hits like Blueprints, the conversation encapsulates the dynamic landscape of the gaming industry. Engaging discussions, coupled with listener interactions, make this episode a comprehensive and entertaining deep dive into current gaming phenomena.

---

Note: All timestamps correspond to the provided transcript and are included to attribute notable quotes accurately.

Transcript

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. It's tax season and we're all a bit tired of numbers, but here's one you need to $16.5 billion. That's how much the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud last year. Now here's a good number. 100 million. That's how many data points Lifelock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed. Save up to 40% your first [e-mail] podcast terms apply. It's tourney time and with FanDuel's Dog of the day, you could get a daily profit boost during the college conference.

[Gary Whitta]

Championships to bet on any underdog.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So get ready to celebrate some upsets.

[Gary Whitta]

No one saw that coming except for me, baby.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

21 plus in President select states opt in required minimum plus 100 eyes required bonus issued is non withdrawable profit boost tokens restriction supply including token expiration and max wager amount. See [e-mail] Gambling problem. Call 1-800-G GAMBLER Today's stories include bad news about the Nintendo Switch, two Joy Cons, big Nintendo leaks and headlines, and the Minecraft movie is a raging success. We'll have all this and more because this is Kind of Funny Games Daily. Yo, what's up? Welcome to Kind of Funny Games daily for Monday, April 7, 2025. I'm one of your host, Blessing Adel Jr. Joining me is the force that is Gary Whitta. Hello, Gary, good morning. How's it going?

[Gary Whitta]

You know, as well as can be expected.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, yeah, you know, lost about.

[Gary Whitta]

50 grand in the last week.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

50 grand? You lost about 50 grand?

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah. In the market. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Hey, at least we have the Nintendo Switch too.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. It's only so sad.

[Gary Whitta]

How much is that going to cost? Oh, we'll get on to that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Another 50 grand if you're ready to lose it. Gary. Yeah, Gary, we got a lot to talk about. We're going to talk a lot about Nintendo and I just want to get.

[Gary Whitta]

Like your top level love talking about Nintendo because once you get deep into.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It, we're gonna, we're gonna talk about Nintendo. But I missed your impressions from last week. How are you feeling? Post the announcement of the Nintendo Switch to.

[Gary Whitta]

I feel good about it. You know, we, we've, we've waited, waited for it for a long time. Right. They feel like, come on Nintendo, where's the Switch to that? We're finally there. Right. It's going to be out in a couple of months. You've played it, you know, it's real, it exists. We now know almost everything we need to know about. There's still some things out there, but we've got a clear sense of what it is now, right? Yeah. And what the proposition is. And for my, for me, it's everything I wanted it to be. It's just a better Nintendo Switch. Right. It's. Somebody was like, Nintendo's lost the innovation. Like, they're just like. But when you hit on something that is a proven, brilliant, fucking winning formula, why reinvent the wheel? Right. Just give us a better one of those. Right. The biggest issue that we had with it was, well, certainly for me was like the performance issues. Right. It does not compare to the other consoles, which is why we were getting these terrible ports of like, Mortal Kombat. And he's like, why are they even. What. Why is it a mess now we're going to come closer to some kind of parity, I think. You know, it looks much more impressive technically. I like the bigger size, the bigger screen. I like a lot of the things. I like many of the things that they're doing. Obviously, that, you know, people. There are things to nitpick at. For sure. We thought we talked about some of it last time I was on the show. And we'll get into it again today, I'm sure. But for the most part. Can't wait. I can't wait. I. I already have my order in. Right. I can't wait to get one. I'm excited to have it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's the, it's the thing of there's good news and bad news. Right. And like I was just telling you.

[Gary Whitta]

It'S always the way with Nintendo. They give with one hand and they take away with the other.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right. Before I was telling you about how. Yeah. I was at the event last week in New York and for people that were at the event, it was tough to like, look online and see the details coming out as they were coming.

[Gary Whitta]

Out, saying, you're saying all that stuff was happening as you were hands on.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

With the system, as we're hands on with the thing. So, like I'm playing the Nintendo Switch 2. And honestly, at the event, I'm having the time of my life. I'm like, man, this, this slate of games looks great, man. I love playing on the Nintendo Switch 2 handheld. I think it feels better. I like the bigger screen. I was telling you that I think the LCD screen looks great despite.

[Gary Whitta]

Because that was my thing, right? No, no lead.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Right. But. But it's still hearing, is that it's. It's at least comparable. It's in the ballpark. It's not going to feel like you've taken a big step back and you.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Will still get your OLED screen.

[Gary Whitta]

You will, you'll get your upgrade down the road.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Exactly. But.

[Gary Whitta]

So I know you've talked about it a lot, but you haven't talked about it with me. That's the important part. The first time you, like, pick up a new piece of hardware or try it for the first time and you actually have it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

What. What was your immediate kind of first impression of it?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, it feels like a better switch. Right. You know, I think the big thing, me and Tim kind of talked about this and like, Tim helped me kind of confirm why I felt this way of. It feels like a more premium switch. And I think Tim helps settle it in a way of. Oh, it's the joy cons, right? It's that. It's those magnets. The joy cons are so strapped into.

[Gary Whitta]

That thing, that click on thing. So what's that? Is it like, when it clicks on, do you get a little.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, I do get a little like, oh, that's satisfying. I don't. Like, the part that's not satisfying is clicking them off because they kind of just plop off. Right. Like you press a button and then the magnet. Right.

[Gary Whitta]

You don't get that. You don't get the feel of like when something magnetizes, you feel it. When it demagnetizes, you don't.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, exactly. And so like when it plops off, I'm like, okay, cool.

[Gary Whitta]

So much better than those fiddly rails that we used to have. Right. Getting. Yes, I used to have. Really have to like, pull. There were times when it would feel like it would get stuck and you're like, you have to like, pull. Am I going to break this thing? That's. That to me is like, that alone is a big. Because also with this, which you're constantly. Because the. In my house at least you do switch back and forth between the use cases a lot. Right. Like, sometimes it's docked, sometimes you want to take the. Like, we play a lot of, you know, party games with the family in the house and you, you all want your joycon, so you have to snap them off the control off the base unit. And that is sometimes a hassle. But this, that magnetizer, press those buttons.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And like, and the magnets are strong.

[Gary Whitta]

Enough that there's no danger. You could actually like break it, not break it off. You know, I mean like detach it during play.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, you're not. You're not going to detach this thing. Like the worst you can do is like if you are either a child or an idiot if you try to like, yeah, if you really break it.

[Gary Whitta]

Off, you could, you can, can you defeat the magnet I.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You might break. You'll probably break your switch if I'm, if I'm being honest. But like again, that's going to take a lot of strength, right? Okay, so that's good because these magnets are really strong.

[Gary Whitta]

We love them.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We're going to talk a lot more about the joy cons because remember, this is Kind of Funny Games Daily each and every weekday we run you through the nerdy news you need to know about live on YouTube, Twitch and podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the Kind of Funny membership on Patreon, YouTube and now Spotify and Apple Podcasts to get all of our shows ad free. Watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show for a chance to be a part of the show. Some of your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we go. Housekeeping for you. Friday we kick off the Elder Scrolls Online podcast, a Kind of Funny Games Cast Limited series. You can join Greg, Mike, Zenimax Online Studios Director Matt Fyror and the Elder Scrolls Online game director Rich Rich Lambert as they start an unflinching four part show about the highs, lows, successes and failures of the 10 year old. Greg calls it the deepest dive of his career and it all kicks off Friday as your normal games cast as well as the elder scrolls online. YouTube will never get this level of depth from the developers, so don't miss out if you want to know how games really get made and keep going.

[Barrett Courtney]

Barrett Courtney as someone who directed the kind of funny Elder Scrolls Podcast crossover and is not someone who is really into Elder Scrolls Online. These are fascinating episodes so definitely check them out. I was engaged the entire time.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, I've not seen the episodes. I'm very excited to check these out. For me, as somebody who's not even into elder roles online like that, I do love when Greg and Mike get in their interview bag in their journalist bag and so very much looking forward to this. Remember, we're in 11 person business all about live talk shows today after KFCD you're gonna get Gamescast which is our Blueprints review featuring Jason Schreier over the weekend. Let me tell you, I played so much blueprints blueprints Right.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean, we knew it was coming, but with the reactions I'm seeing this morning is like, holy. Paris is saying Game of the Year. Rebecca Valentine was very effusive about it. You're saying this is suddenly like, I'm a contender.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm saving my impressions for a games cast. But what I'll say is that the most upsetting part of this review for me is that I didn't finish the game because I was not smart enough to get there.

[Gary Whitta]

Sadly, that's my problem. I'm not. I can't do puzzles.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm 16 hours in. I played a lot of this video game. Also. Barrett, I think, played this game or played through it. Right. Bear attacks me when he beat this game. And I was very jealous. Yeah. Yes. We're going to talk all about it, but, like, I played so much of this game, I try to beat it. And literally I was like, all right, cool. I just got to. I got to beat it sometimes.

[Gary Whitta]

I love about games. Right. When they first showed this as part of, like, I think they showed it as part of a showcase of other games, and it was just. It was just one of the other games that was in there. It wasn't necessarily one that stood out as, like, oh, that looks special. Right. So I'm sure some people did, but it wasn't like, a game that was generating a lot of buzz out of that showcase. Now people have got their hands on it. It's like, you never know where the next, like, amazing game is coming from, right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes. And I'm very excited to talk about it. Jason Schreier. To spoil a little bit of the review, I ran into Jason Schreier at the Nintendo event and we talked a little bit about blueprints. When I asked him, how many hours of blueprints have you played? He told me he played over 100 hours. And so we're going to have a lot to talk about.

[Gary Whitta]

I'm excited about it. Yeah. And it's coming and it's out this week. Right. Game pass. Yeah. We're going to have to try it.

[Barrett Courtney]

And Gary, you say you're not a puzzle guy. I. I enjoy puzzles, but, like, the puzzles focus genre of video games I don't really gravitate towards. I really clicked with this one. I think the way it kind of onboards you and tells you kind of what to look for in its language of the game is very well done for someone.

[Gary Whitta]

So you didn't. So you didn't encounter any puzzles where, like, you felt frustrated or, you know.

[Barrett Courtney]

This oh, there's definitely frustration. There's definitely like. But I think the way it. Again, we'll save this for the gamescast. But there's always something specifically, Gary. There's always something to pick apart. If you've lost a thread somewhere, you have like other threads to kind of like go off and.

[Gary Whitta]

Okay, so you can't get like a dead end or anything.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No. Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

And the rope, like, nature of it just in and of itself is just really fun.

[Gary Whitta]

I'm excited.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. There's gonna be a lot to say.

[Gary Whitta]

Leah loves. She loves puzzle games. So I think the two of us together will probably enjoy playing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And this is what I'll say. Right. Because blueprints and I should. I should specify the name of this game is Blue Prince color.

[Gary Whitta]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And then Prince as in the king's son.

[Gary Whitta]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Which is also a double entendre for blueprints. We'll get into that during the thing. But this is a game that I'm sure plenty of people listening to the show have no idea what it is or maybe haven't even heard of it. This is one of the rare games cast where it is. All right. We're headlining with an indie game review, which usually do just bad numbers for us in terms of views. This is one to listen to. Like, this is one that's love.

[Gary Whitta]

That's what I love about special occasion about gaming. It's like, you know, like anything can come out of the pun intended. Anything can come out of the blue and just at any time, like I said, who saw this coming? Who's predicting like, oh, this is going to be game. This is going to be a game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

With a fantasy Fair play or fantasy draft.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

After gamescast is going to be the kind of funny podcast, then the stream is more of that Pokemon Nuzlocke. If you're a kind of funny member. Today's Greg Ways from Mike and Chris Anka. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Anatoly Ast Delini Twining, Carl Jacobs and Omega Buster. Today we're brought to you by BetterHelp, but we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's begin with what is and forever will be the Roper Report. It's time for some news. We have eight stories today. And Gary, the first half of the show is going to be all about Nintendo with our First, I think four news stories. Let's start off with story number one. Nintendo confirms Switch 2 joy cons won't feature hall effect sticks. This is Jordan Midler at Video Games chronicle Nintendo Switch 2 joy cons won't feature Hall Effect analog sticks the company has confirmed the long rumored feature, which would mark a significant upgrade on the original Joy Cons, won't be included in the launch models of the console. Hall Effects Sticks, named after us. Physicist Edwin hall, use magnets and electrical electrical conductors to measure the position of the stick, which make them effectively immune from drift, an issue that has affected many original Switch owners. When asked by Nintendo Life about the new Joy Cons and their components, Nintendo confirmed that Hall Effect sticks would be missing. Quote well, the Joy Con 2's controllers have been designed from the ground up, said Nate Bildorf, senior vice president of product development and publishing. They're not Hall Effect sticks, but hey, they feel really good. End quote. I know why I added hey. You didn't say hey. He said, but they feel really good. He added. Quote I like both the Joy Cons and the Pro controller, but that Pro controller, for some reason, the first time I grabbed it, I was like, this feels like a GameCube controller. I was a GameCube guy. Something about it felt so similar or sorry, it felt so familiar. But the stick on that especially. End quote. Nintendo has claimed Switch 2's new Joy Con analog sticks will be more durable than on Switch 1. When asked about the potential stick drift issues now, Gary, how deep are you into the well of Hall Effect sticks and the conversations about them?

[Gary Whitta]

I know a little bit about it. I, I have a Hall Effect stick. I bought an 8 bit Doe hall effect stick recently and part of the reason why I got one is like hall of. I want. It's very buzzy right now. So hot right now.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Hall Effect.

[Gary Whitta]

Everyone's talking about Hall Effect. So yeah, I should try it out and see what the deal is. The, the thing with Hall Effect, as far as I can tell, is it's not that you're going to pick it up immediately go, oh, this is so much more responsive. It's that they're not. They're much less likely to the bed a year from now, right? Which has been a problem with Joy Cons. It's been a problem with PlayStation.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, even the dual sense, right?

[Gary Whitta]

The dual sense has got the drift and, but particularly on the, on the, on the JoyCon side, right? Nintendo had to implement like a, a system, right, for you to have them replaced and fixed and it's, it was a problem. So obviously, you know, we don't know yet what proprietary or whatever solution Nintendo have come up with for the new ones, but they obviously know it's something that they don't want. They don't want this to happen again, right? And so time will tell and you won't know right away if there, if there are issues with these sticks. These are stories that we're going to be hearing about, you know, three months, six months, a year from now, right. Because again, it's not going to be an instant thing. So I, you know, it'd be interesting to know why they didn't choose. He feels like I said, Hall Effect is so buzzy for them to be able to like, oh, and Hall Effect sticks, like a lot of people that don't necessarily know what that is just go like, oh, I've heard of that. Those are good, right? Like it's just, just another selling point. But I can either to exp. I don't know how much. I mean the 8 bit dough controller I got had. Hall Effect sticks wasn't any more expensive than a regular controller. So I don't necessarily think they're more expensive. But Nintendo, you know, Nintendo gonna.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Nintendo decisions. We talk about this all the time.

[Gary Whitta]

We don't ugly. It may well be that the solution they've come up with is better than Hall Effects or as good as on. We. We don't know yet. We're gonna, we're gonna take a minute. All we know right now is that, hey, Hall Effect sticks are having a moment, right, people? It's a buzzy term. Even if you don't understand necessarily what it is, you just know that they're good and people like them and they, they have advantages over other sticks in terms of durability over the long term, which is an issue for Switch. So a lot of people might said durability solution. Nintendo had a durability problem. Why not?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Why not?

[Gary Whitta]

Why not bring those two things together? And they've chosen not to do that, as they often choose not to do many things that would seem to make common sense to the rest of us. We'll find out whether or not it was a good or bad decision in time.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, that's the thing is it's going to be the wait and see. And I definitely understand the frustration at this. Right. It's the thing of cool. When we were talking about Stick Drift, the primary offenders of Stick Drift, right, have been the Joy Con ones.

[Gary Whitta]

The joycons were notorious also on Dualsense, but. But, but much more noticeable on the Joy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Much more noticeable on the. On the Joy Cons. I'll even go as far as to say maybe like a bit more widespread. I would venture to say that if you bought a Switch at launch, I, if I asked people, there would be a higher amount of people that would probably say they had some storm, some form of stick drift over people that didn't. Right. It was an overall issue that people had. So much so that like even in the VGC article, I didn't include, include this for the. The read. But they end off saying two significant lawsuits over Nintendo Switch Joy Con Drift were dismissed in US courts last year. A year earlier, following growing noise around the issue, Nintendo announced that it would repair all Joy Con controllers suffering from Joy Con.

[Gary Whitta]

Sure, that cost him a lot of.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Money and yeah, that had to have cost him a lot of money. It makes me think that you're right, Gary. As far as they must have a solution here that is hopefully as good as the Hall Effects.

[Gary Whitta]

If you think about. I don't know if this is going to be an issue, but if you think about a Dual Sense controller or an Xbox series controller and then compare it to a Joy Con. Joy Con is tiny, right? The actual, the actual unit, the actual controller unit that snaps off is very, very small, right? Yeah. So it stands to reason that they're not able, they're probably not able to like engineer it or put as many parts into that controller that might, you know, mitigate those issues. Simply the fact that the new controller is bigger might mean that there's more room in there for them to engineer it a bit more. Right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Maybe.

[Gary Whitta]

I don't know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Again, I mean, they're thicker, you know, they're. They're longer because the switch is longer. Right? But like, yeah, maybe I don't. And this means, speaking as somebody who's not looked at the internals of what makes a Hall Effects thing work, right. It's not any thicker right now.

[Gary Whitta]

It's something for us to talk about, but we want. But again, no one's going to know. Like, no one's going to know day one, right? Unless. Unless they fucked up these sticks so badly they start drifting on day one, which seems very unlikely. We'll see whether or not we start hearing stories about this down the road.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. To bring in a couple of super chats for you, Gnuk Bo writes in and says, I know the sticks are bigger. Do we know if the radius of the stick base is also larger? I would assume if the base has a larger radius, the dead zone is bigger and Drift would be less drastic. Possibly. Right. Again, I wasn't there with the fucking measuring tape, so I couldn't tell you the base is Larger. But maybe that's the thing.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean, in the hand. You know what it feels like to wiggle a Joy Con thumb stick under your thumb? Does it basically feel the same?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Sorry, say that one more time.

[Gary Whitta]

I said so when you're playing. When you're playing a Switch 2, you already obviously have a lot of experience of using a Joy Con. Like the thumbstick, how it feels under the thumb when you're moving it. Does it basically feel the same?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It feels the same.

[Gary Whitta]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Like, I. Slightly bigger, but even like in the ways that, like the Switch 2 or the Switch 1 joy con analog stick or even like kind of short. Right. Like, it feels like a Joy Con analog stick. Like most of the thing. Like most of the button feel and most of, like, I guess even the holding it. Right. It all feels like Joy Con ones. Except for the fact that like. Yeah, it is like, a little bigger.

[Gary Whitta]

I always. The main issue with the Nintendo Switch Joy Cons, and I think it's less of an issue on the Pro controller, but like, they always. The. The thumbstick always just felt a little loose, you know, and that's. That's a. That's a taste thing. Like, I have a. When I use my. When I. I wish all controllers did this. I wish you could just twist the controller.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

To twist it, like, rotate the thumbstick. Like a volume dial. To dial up and down, dial back.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like tighten it.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah. The resistance. You can do that on a Series X. On an Elite controller, you can maybe. I think maybe you can do it on DualSense Elite or whatever it's called. Pro Dual Sense Edge.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

You pull out. You pull off the stick and there's a little screw underneath and you can tighten it and you can make it as tight as you want it to be. And mine are like, pretty. Yeah, they're pretty resistant because I just like that feel. There's less margin for error when the stick's really, really resistant. I don't know. I mean, that's for another day, but like, again, we'll see. Let's move on to the next thing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, well, I want to bring in a couple more super chats for you, Justin. Seven. Right. Santa says. Never had the Stick Drift issue with my Joy Cons. Then again, I never use those tiny things.

[Gary Whitta]

I didn't either because I'm. I'm all pro. I use a Pro controller almost all the time.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But.

[Gary Whitta]

But Leah plays almost entirely handheld and has like a thousand hours in those. Those Zelda games and probably. And is now like, I don't Know how many hundreds of hours into goddamn hello Kitty Island Adventure has never. I. I don't think she. I don't think she's ever had an issue with stick drift. Oh, we had a couple of Joy Cons that. That just died and they're just no good.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But like, that is in, like, they just stopped turning on.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, but I think they. They were like shitty ones that I got sent like the. Remember the Croods, that movie, the Crudes? Yeah, they sent out. They sent out like promotional joysticks for that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Were they like generic or were they Nintendo joint.

[Gary Whitta]

They. They weren't any good. I know that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We got one more from Dante, the clerk who writes in it says, hall effect sticks use magnetic tech. Could the strong magnets in The Joy Con 2 controllers mess with the hall effect sticks? Possibly. Again, you're like, I think there are so many factors here that are at play that we just don't know because it is conversations that I'm sure Nintendo has. That's.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, that's what they sent me. Crudes.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What is this?

[Gary Whitta]

It was a dock and those two sticks.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's awesome.

[Gary Whitta]

And I was like, whatever. Two extra Joy Cons if we ever need them. You know, what are we doing?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Why is the. Why are the crude sending this stuff out?

[Barrett Courtney]

Sounds like something Roger's really into.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm sure Roger loves the Crudes.

[Gary Whitta]

The Crudes?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You haven't heard of the Crudes. Is it so like, is. Is it part of the Ice Age universe?

[Gary Whitta]

Why were you even. I'm sorry, I.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Pull it out. I want to hop into the next news story. Story number two. Unreleased Nintendo games allegedly leak online, including Ridge Racer and Retro Studios prototype. This is Jordan Midler at Video Games Chronicle. Prototype builds for several canceled games, including a Nintendo Switch Ridge Racer title, Lego Civilization, and an unannounced game from Retro Studios have allegedly appeared online. Footage of the canceled Ridge Racer game, which is allegedly from a build from 2017, is currently circulating on social media. The game was reportedly developed by Bandai Namco Studios Singapore and was intended for the Nintendo Switch. The game was never announced and has presumably been long since canceled. Further development footage of a game prototype developed by Retro Studios titled Harmony has also appeared online. The footage shows a third person perspective of a fairy character that can transform into different characters to solve puzzles. The build is claimed to be from 2017, however, the game itself was never announced by Retro. The unannounced game had previously been referenced by Reese Kiwi Talks Riley, a content creator who has interviewed several former Retro Studios employees. Earlier this year, Riley mentioned on Reset Era that he'd been told the project was a huge disaster and that the game was canceled after years of going nowhere. It is believed that this footage has been obtained via a Nintendo Switch development kit that was sold online. Dev kits are provided to developers by platform holders and are often heavily modified versions of retail consoles that can run in development builds. These kits can often retain information and playable builds for games long after they are canceled, and thus it is against the terms of service with platform holders that provided the dev kit to sell to sell them on. A build of the unreleased game is now said to be circulating online, with many reporting that it is playable, though in a very basic state with temporary assets and environments. A menu screen for LEGO Civilization, which, as it sounds, appears to be a LEGO take on the classic strategy game, was also found on the dev kit. Those with access to these files claim they have attempted to run the LEGO Civilization title, but have reported that it will instantly crash when attempting to play it. Dev builds of both Splatoon 2 Arms and Rime are also said to have been found on the dev kit. Gary a lot here, but to whittle it down, games have leaked, right? Dev kit builds of games have leaked. These games are Ridge Racer, Lego Civilization and a game from Retro Studios. How do you feel about that?

[Gary Whitta]

And so did you say that these are games that we all know to have been canceled or games that may still actually be coming out?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I. I mean, presumably you would think that they've been canceled because these seem to be old builds, but I don't think there's no confirmation. So we technically, we do not know.

[Gary Whitta]

I'll be honest with you, it doesn't. This doesn't interest me a whole lot, especially if, if the games are still coming out, then maybe, you know, it's an unofficial. I, I mean, I don't like it when things leak. I just, you know, I don't think it's good for the game. I don't think it's good for the creators. It bums them out. You know, we see these kind of. These kind of things all the time. Lego Civilization was the first time I perked up. That sounds cool.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That sounds really interesting.

[Gary Whitta]

What's going on there? That sounds like a fun, A fun mashup.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, that could be like, you know, babies for a civilization in the way that, like, I look at Civilization, I'm like, I don't know anything. I hear people talk about how they played as Gandhi and took over the world, right? I'm like, I don't know what.

[Gary Whitta]

You know, they're intense games that you got to really dig in and learn the systems and they're, you know, they're not for anybody.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And you imagine if you're going to make a LEGO version of civilization that's going to be a very like pared down, mainstream, like approachable version of what that is.

[Gary Whitta]

Plus, you know, it can teach you to teach kids about history, you know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Plays LEGO Gandhi and take over the world. Right.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean Gandhi didn't take over the.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

World, but, but I think in civilization he does.

[Gary Whitta]

Right? Like, I mean, I, I, theoretically, I guess you can. It's like really with the idea of like Gandhi having like armies, like going around the world and like taking over countries and stuff.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Literally. That's when I hear people talk about civilization. It's always a random world figure in like they took over the world somehow.

[Gary Whitta]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like that's cool. Right. I want to try that out, but it looks.

[Gary Whitta]

Video games are all about.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Exactly. But yeah, I'm with you. That like leaks always suck. Something like this, where these again, presumably are all canceled things. I'm interested from a. Oh, what are, what's going on here? Kind of perspective, right. To get a little bit of an inside look as to. Okay, Retro is working on Metroid Prime 4, right. That's about to come out this year. But there was a stretch of time where we did not know what Metro, what Retro was up to, seemingly. This project that was leaked here, is it Harmony, right? It is like this 3D platformer, you're riding on different animals sort of thing. I saw the clips floating around online. I don't want to bring them up on this show because I don't want the Nintendo to come after us. Right. But like, I don't know, it's all interesting stuff, but also like cool. Like we kind of, we kind of take this information and, and move on with it. I think honestly the thing that stands out to me here the most is the LEGO LEGO Civilization thing, which sounds cool. I wonder if you see anything from that in the future.

[Gary Whitta]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Moving on to story number three, Gary. Switch two won't have achievements. Nintendo confirms. This is Jordan Midler at Video Games Chronicle. Switch 2 won't have a system wide achievement system. Nintendo has confirmed. Nintendo fully revealed the Switch 2 last week, including information about the system's UI, the new game chat feature and more. However, one feature that fans were hoping for more information on was the potential inclusion of an achievement system. When asked by Polygon if the new system will Break from Nintendo tradition and introduce system wide rewards for playing games. Nintendo's Vice president of player and product experience, Bill Trennan said, quote, nope. While the system won't have console wide achievements 2 Nintendo Switch 2 Edition games will have their own achievement list, though they will be relegated to a mobile app, Zelda. Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild will both get switched to editions as well as a new app, Zelda Notes, which will be part of the Nintendo app. Gary, a Nintendo achievement system not appearing on Switch 2. How do you feel about, about that? Are you an achievement person?

[Gary Whitta]

No, I, I, well, it's a, it's, there's not, there's not a simple answer to that question, but because I think achievements are a complex issue. But I'm glad that Nintendo, I saw Barrett applauding as well. I'm glad he agrees with me. I, I don't think the system needs them. I'm glad to see Nintendo as usual, saying, like, we don't feel the need to jump onto the same bandwagon as everyone else. Xbox introduced this concept, right? Sony then copied it with Trophies, Steam copied it with their achievements. And many, many games now have their own inbuilt achievement systems. Right? It's funny, it's interesting. I thought a lot about this because I actually sat a couple of years ago Game Developers Conference, I sat, not at dice. I sat on a roundtable of other game developers and people that are into this kind of shit talking about achievements. Are they good, are they bad, are there a net, are they a net positive? It's, I think it's like anything else. It's how you use them. I have played games where I really wanted to get the achievements because they were, they were, they were structured and designed in an interesting way. But a lot of achievements are not well designed. They just, and they just amount to kind of busy work. It's like I don't, anytime you're going like, I don't really want to be doing this, but I want the trophy or I want the achievement, you failed. Right? It should add to the fun, not just like become another grind. Right? And so there are good ways to implement achievements and bad ways to implement achievements. And I think Nintendo's attitude is they've looked at the balance of it and thought, you know what? No. And I, and again, I'm glad the games themselves, I, I wasn't playing games in the 80s and 90s going like, this is fun, but I feel like there's something missing. Like this would be more interesting if they gave me like 10 points for like collecting every backpack in the game or whatever. Like. And so there's only two other games that I've ever platinumed on on PlayStation and I. And again because I found the achievements fun to do. But people like Greg baffle me. You know, they'll literally go out and play games that are amen only because the achievements are good. For what? For some points that don't mean anything.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

To be fair, Greg's healed now. I don't think he's done. I don't think he's done that in years. At least he's not talked about it.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, I think he has.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You think he's doing it on the world.

[Gary Whitta]

Giving him for wasting his time playing some shitty game just because he wanted. Oh, this is an easy plat.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

He has a child.

[Barrett Courtney]

He barely has the time to play games he wants to play. I don't think he's spending time, any free time doing that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think me, me and Janet might have bullied him a little bit too much.

[Gary Whitta]

Don't.

[Barrett Courtney]

It was the right amount. It was the right amount.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It was the thing where. What was the game? Was it?

[Gary Whitta]

Oh well, it was like the notorious one was the Avid. The Last Airbender game on 360 where you literally just like stand in a corner and just rack up achievements.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

There's that. There was the Mayonnaise game. Wasn't it like a Mr. Mayonnaise or my name is Mayo or something.

[Barrett Courtney]

My name is Mail.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

My name is Mail where you just.

[Barrett Courtney]

Like you hit Mayo and that's it.

[Gary Whitta]

But you know, I mean I think Greg Platinum Bluey, which is a game for five year olds.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh no, but he loves Bluey.

[Gary Whitta]

That's j. I love Bluey as well. But the, the game is not a game that like grown ups that you're gonna get a lot of satisfaction from playing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Bear was the game called ZJ's balls. Like the. There was a C.J. the ball, ZJ the ball, Z his ball, ZJ the ball, which was like a Christian like series of games that they just put put out, I think.

[Barrett Courtney]

And there were so many of them. This was his last bout of like.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This was his last bout. And I think this was where me and Janet were like what the are.

[Gary Whitta]

You doing with a flappy bird type of game?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Not even. Oh, actually I forget exactly what the gameplay achievements.

[Gary Whitta]

Like anything can be good or bad. You ever see the movie Shane Alan Ladd Jr says a gun is only as good or as bad as a man who wears it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Wow.

[Gary Whitta]

That's right. He made you think there. See philosophy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's deep.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, it's deep and it supplies here as well. They, they can be implement. They can be implemented in a way that is a lot of fun. But more often than not they just amount to busy work and having the gamer waste their time doing stuff that isn't a lot of fun just because for whatever reason they, they want that gamer score or they want that platinum and it's just not. I don't get any. Some people get I guess an endorphin hit off of hitting the platinum or whatever. I really don't like. The satisfaction should be in itself in the gameplay, in knowing that you, that you finished the game or whatever, you beat the final boss, like getting some arbitrary number of points for doing like again, just run around and find every hidden thing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This is where I stand is that not every game needs achievements. I think some games could use them in the way that we're talking about when they're designed around a game like Spider man for example. Spider man is so good about its achievements.

[Gary Whitta]

The back said that's one of the only two games I've ever Platinum and you're finding all the backpacks. Yeah, I actually enjoyed doing that because it was well designed. There were a couple that drive me crazy. Oh, sorry. Three games I've done. And I'll tell you this, even as much as I liked doing the achievements, there was at least one in each one where I'm like this achievement. But. But then you're like, so the sunk cost is like I've got 99 out of 100 achievements. Like you can't at that point you're like, even I'm going, I've got to get the last one. But I'm not enjoying doing it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, right.

[Gary Whitta]

How is that good for games?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But, and that's my thing with Nintendo is that I think Nintendo games, quite a few of them I think could benefit from. I think a Mario game is probably like good.

[Gary Whitta]

You're going down a rabbit hole now. No, no, no.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think Mario games typically I think are good contenders for it. But at the same time Nintendo is so much about play and so much about like your own experience. Here's the thing that you don't need achievements to come through and be like, okay, now I have this additional thing to chase.

[Gary Whitta]

Here's the thing. So Microsoft and I, I'm going to assume Sony as well because there are no exceptions mandate now that your game must have achievements and must have trophies. Right. And beyond that I don't know what the rules are in terms of how they must be. Like, I don't know if they, if either of those companies have rules about you. You can't have achievement, it's just this. Or you can't make players do that or whatever. Like because we want to keep them as fun as possible. My sense is that Nintendo, which again, I have a love hate relationship with Nintendo, they give away, they give with one hand to take away with the other and I love them. One minute I'm pulling my hair out, the next. One thing that I do think Nintendo cares about and is very good at is preserving the integrity of like the core gameplay experience. Right. That's why they're so fucking good. Right. And I don't think they would allow, even if they were to implement achievements, I think they would have many more guardrails and rules in terms of developer guidelines to say you can't just have like collect 100 stupid fucking things that are randomly hidden around the world. Like they've got to be things that are built into the court. Like for example, Koroks, right, In the Zelda games.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

That is something you like, collect every core you can see, get an achievement for that. Nintendo doesn't do that. They reward you in a better way. Right? You collect those Korok seeds and you can trade them in to get an extra heart. So it's actually something that rewards you in a tangible way in the core gameplay experience. Not just here's 10 extra points that don't mean anything, here's a fucking NFT virtual trophy gives a fuck about that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And I 1000% agree with you. But again, this comes back to the thing where I think some games could use achievement systems, achievement systems more than others. Zelda Tears the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild are getting them through the Nintendo app. And I think that's cool because I can see that.

[Gary Whitta]

I said that's kind of side loaded into the experience, right? That's not actually anything.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's a bit sideloaded. And also, but I, but also that's, that's a decision that they made for some reason. They looked at Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom specifically and went, oh, we can add some kind of achievement achievement thing here. My one, it's not even a problem. But I guess my one thing to elevate it would be the thing that I do like about PlayStation and Xbox achievement systems is that there's more of a social thing around them where I can go to my friend's profile and see all the achievements they've gotten, I can see on like whatever feed that I'm looking at that, oh, my friend just earned this achievement. My friend just earned this trophy. I'll love that for Breath of the Wild and tears the kingdom here.

[Barrett Courtney]

You know what the answer Nintendo has for that blast? What's that Game chat. And just, you know, hit up to a chat with your friend and then they can stream to you.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This is the reason why I say is like Nintendo is pushing social features really hard with Nintendo Switch to they introduce game chat. They have a fucking camera that you can buy and that I'm sure people aren't going to use in nefarious ways.

[Gary Whitta]

Listen, I used to play uno on the Xbox 360. I've seen it all, you know, many fucking dicks I've seen over the years.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The amount of people that are going to pull their wiener out playing.

[Gary Whitta]

That's before you get into Uno, there's.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

A different kind of jamboree going on, Gary. Yeah, but here's the thing, right? Is that Nintendo was pushing the social features really hard.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And I don't think that stuff is going to be as, I guess elevated by the audience as it could be without something like an achieve like a passive achievement system. I think you need passive like social features. You need a feed, you need something to where I am looking at my friends list and going, oh, I have a reason to add you. Even though I'm not going to play this game with you, I just want to add you so I can see what you're playing or I can see what you're doing or I can see this thing that you shared, whether it be a screenshot or a video or whatever. If you're going fully on with social features, I think you need a social feed as well. And I think that includes achievements for certain games. Not all games, but for certain games.

[Gary Whitta]

I heard some of what you just said. Yeah, but not all of it. Because in truth a big part of my mental bandwidth for the last 30 seconds was thinking how is. Because again I. I played uno on the Xbox 360 with the vision camera and there's a.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You're gonna see so many wieners on.

[Gary Whitta]

That's the thing. So could again, Nintendo, right. Very careful about this stuff. Could they use AI or some kind of other technology to like detect a penis and like pixelate it out or block that camera or something?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Imagine being on that Nintendo team.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, I mean they might, they might have to have. They might have to have like an army of people Whose job it is is just to look for penises. Block that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, it's like, nope, you're not going to.

[Gary Whitta]

As soon as you see someone going like this, they're like, there's a.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

There's a mini game in Mario Party Jamboree that I got to play at the event that it's basically like. It's your camera, right? It's pointing at you and Bowser's like, all right, move as much as you can. Like the more movement and noise you're making, the higher the meter goes, right. Could you imagine like you look to the screen and there's somebody just helicoptering and it's like, oh, that's how you win.

[Gary Whitta]

Helicopter.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Fucking hell.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's what's going to happen. Like, we're lucky that it's not bundling in this camera with every single fucking.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean there's a lot. There is a lot of movement involved, I guess.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Sorry, what are you going to say like.

[Barrett Courtney]

Because like the big question for that has been parental controls. Especially with like Nintendo being the family console. Right. It seems like there's a lot that you can play around with as a parent for your. Your child's accounts. I think specifically when it comes to game chat. Thank God.

[Gary Whitta]

I have a feeling they're not going to allow cameras just for anybody. I feel like you've got to be on the friends list or you've got to approve or whatever it might be.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I see what you're saying, you know. Yeah, they're not. Honestly. You're probably right.

[Gary Whitta]

It's not going to be randomize me from my friends who absolutely will get their out on stream.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What friends do you have?

[Gary Whitta]

Just people that want to fuck with me.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know, that's fair. Greg Miller's of the world out there. God. Let's move on to story number four. Another Nintendo news story. Welcome Tour cost $10. This is Wesley Yinpool at IGN. IGN can now confirm that that Nintendo Switch 2 welcome Tour cost 9.99 and is a digital only product that's significantly cheaper than other Switch 2 games. But IGN has already reported to the complaints from some Nintendo fans that welcome Tour costs money at many saying it should be a Switch to pack in as dualsense tech demo game Astros playroom was for PS5. IGN interviewed Nintendo of America's Vice President of product and player experience, Bill Trennan at a recent Switch 2 preview event in New York and asked him if Nintendo discussed making welcome Tour a pack in game and why the company made the decision to price it as a separate digital product. We need to point out here that our interview with Trenin was conducted on April 3rd prior to Nintendo's announcement about delaying the Switch 2 pre orders in the US due to the potential impact of tariffs and subsequent concern that Nintendo may raise the price of the console and its games further as a result. Trident said there's more to welcome Tour than it appears based on the showing during the Nintendo Direct and even during recent hands on opportunities the media had access to based on what's actually in the game, Nintendo decided 999 is quote, is not an exorbitant price. End quote.

[Barrett Courtney]

Okay, I really quick just to jump in here. It's, you know, a lot of opinions about the Switch console price last week. A lot of people not wanting to take in the grand world context for why the Switch originally, at least in the US was going to be for. What was it? 450, 450 to 500. If you wanted Mario Kart as well. And saying no, it's all in a vacuum. It's all hubris that I think we can kind of go back and forth and debate on this being this having to be paid for at all is Nintendo hubris. A thousand percent.

[Gary Whitta]

This is, this is, I mean off. Seriously, this again, this talk about Nintendo taken away. This is so stupid. Okay, I'll concede a couple of things. $10 is not an exorbitant amount of money, right? It's. But this is the, this is basically the fucking instruction manual for the, for the system. Like I literally just saw a sentence. Here's how you detach the joy, consistency. I'm paying $10 for that. For like basic functionality Astro. And they said, oh, there's more to it. How much was there in Astro's playroom? A ton of. I bet there was more in Astro's playroom. There is in this thing. Sony gave you that for free. And if $10 a lot. $10 is not a lot of money. Why does Nintendo need it? I guarantee I need $10 more than Nintendo does. Why are they charging me for this? It's called welcome Tour. Have you ever heard the two. Have you ever heard the words welcome to her used in a context that you've got to pay for? Ridiculous. Is absolutely absurd. I think that if Nintendo like whatever, whatever they're going to make from selling this, they're losing more in goodwill because this is so stupid. This is literally insulting. I'm insulted by this. And you and, and you and anyone who is should be because it's so clearly in the category of something that should be given away for free with the system, Astro's playroom did way more than this. It was actually like there was, there was real game play in there and a celebration of Sony history and all this great stuff and they gave it to you for free. And Sony's one of the more avaricious companies out there. What the is this? No, I think, I think if Nintendo. The problem is I think there is a chance, it's a trivial chance that they will come down off of this and say, you know what, fine, it's free in the store because they can, they can flip that switch anytime they want. Digital only, right? They can just make it free in the store or at least for like a limited time for the first 90 days. Early adopters get it for free, then it's $10 or whatever. But no out of the gate. $10 for a fucking interactive instruction manual and user guide for the system. Absolutely disgraceful. Fuck you Nintendo for this. I'm, I, I love the Nintendo Switch. I love Nintendo. I'm gonna buy a Switch too. But Nintendo for this because this is bullshit.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, I mean I agree with everything you guys are saying. My only devil's advocate thing is that like how many of us are gonna play this thing anyway, right? Like this is one of those ones where I think again this is actually to your point more so that you probably would have had way more people actually like booting this up and checking it out if you just packed it in for $10, you know, like nobody's playing this dude. Like nobody's checking this thing out. And like I think even if you packed it in, like I don't think there's a high percentage of people this.

[Gary Whitta]

Isn'T going to fucking buy. And I'm angry at myself. I'm still going to pay the 10 bucks you're playing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You're not. Gary, Gary, Gary, you can die.

[Barrett Courtney]

You cannot just go in a diatribe, tell Nintendo to off and then still.

[Gary Whitta]

Nintendo for making me do this. Cuz they know I'm not the only one. They're going to sell a lot. They're going to sell a lot of these to people that go, you know what you Nintendo. But ah, I'm going to buy.

[Barrett Courtney]

I don't even know how many.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You're proving them right.

[Gary Whitta]

I'm not going to pay it cuz I'm going to get a code from someone.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No you're not.

[Gary Whitta]

I will, I will.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You're not. Cuz they. Nintendo's very stingy with codes. They're.

[Gary Whitta]

They are.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But who are you going to get a code from? Because it's not going to be us.

[Gary Whitta]

I'm going to tell you who my fucking. My dealer.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay. Oh, you have a dealer guy? You got a Nintendo?

[Gary Whitta]

My Nintendo. Guys.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

All right. I was gonna say because I don't even think I'm getting a code for it. Like, we'll see.

[Gary Whitta]

You know. You know, I'm open to being bullied into not buying it. I'll get. I'll get a code. I'm gonna. I'll go back. Right. You were right. Unlike certain people who say stupid things and then everyone says that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard and say, well, you're doing it anyway. I will parrot knows. I will happily back down off of. Off of this. Really time. So you know what? I will not pay $10 for this. Because that's right. You got. You got about. You gotta. You gotta walk the talk.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

I'm just saying I want to play it. It looks there's a lot of cool.

[Barrett Courtney]

Stuff like this demo right here showing off, like trying to teach people what.

[Gary Whitta]

4K is, but just by making it longer. Like what the is that? It's weird. I'll get a code.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Here's the thing also. And again, this isn't. I don't want to shoot Nintendo bail here, but it's more so my perception. My perception of how they view it. The trending quote of him saying there's more to welcome toward than it appears based on the showing from the direct and press hands on. Like I'm somebody who liked Wii play a lot on the Nintendo Wii and I forget. I think you get that with the controller. I think that wasn't even like a paid thing. I think that's like if you maybe either it was. Maybe it was the other way around where if you buy it, you get controller. I digress. There could be a lot of depth here and a lot of minigames and shit to like really like drive it home. Even still on a strategy level, the.

[Gary Whitta]

Optics, the fact that it's called welcome to her just. Just immediately goes okay, well that's free, right? Oh no.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh no. What? Yeah, listen, I'm right there with you.

[Barrett Courtney]

And if there's more to the game that you feel like in your corporate capitalist mind should be worth money, then you need to show off what y'all like. What brought y'all to that, even just a little bit. If you're saying there's more if someone.

[Gary Whitta]

Has to say already if there's someone saying there's more to this than we've shown. Then you're marketing people up.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I agree with that. Yeah, you should have shown more. If there really is that much more to this, you should.

[Gary Whitta]

Maybe they will. They've got two months. Maybe they will.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And also you don't spend the two.

[Gary Whitta]

Months of flipping the Switch to make it free.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You also don't title it welcome Tour.

[Gary Whitta]

No, you don't.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You title it something else.

[Gary Whitta]

This is why Nintendo drives me crazy. Because they get so much stuff, right, but when they get something, when they get stuff wrong, they really get it wrong.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You think, do you think there's somebody at Nintendo that was like, all right, it's a game that you're, you're inside the Switch 2. We'll call it inside. And then they started looking up like copyright and they're like, fuck, there's already inside. All right, we'll call it. What do you think? Because again, this is not how you market this thing. If there truly is more to it than what we're saying. I like the, the mario brothers, like 4k thing I think is really cool. And I saw, I rewatched the Switch 2 Direct yesterday and like there's mini games and stuff that I'm like, all right, cool. Like this all reminds me of Wii Play. But Wii Play also came with a controller. So let me buy this with a controller or something. I don't know.

[Gary Whitta]

It's, it's, look, it's dumb.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Call it Switch World. Says cmg.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, Nintendo Land. Remember that?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I do remember Nintendo Land. Listen, Nintendo Land, I'd pay the money for. That's a good, that's a good video game right there.

[Gary Whitta]

It's, it's, it's dumb. What the fuck are you doing? Nintendo?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Here's the thing, Gary, all right, we might not get a lot of value out of World tour or not World tour, sorry, welcome tour here. But if you want to get some value, let me tell you about patreon.com kindafunny slick and YouTube.com kind of funny games where you can go and get the show ad free. Speaking of ads, let us tell you about our sponsors.

[Unknown]

This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. We all know that therapy can feel like a lofty investment. But we also know that there's nothing better to invest in than yourself. The state of your mind is just as important as, as for physical health. Let's talk numbers. Traditional in person therapy can cost anywhere from 100 to 250 per session, which adds up fast. But with BetterHelp online therapy, you can save on average up to 50% per session. Therapy should feel accessible, not like a luxury. With BetterHelp, you pay a flat fee for weekly sessions, saving you big on cost and on time. Some of my best friends use BetterHelp and love how helpful it can be for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself. And it isn't just for those who've experienced major trauma. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give better help a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Your well being is worth it. Visit betterhelp.com kinda funny to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp. H E-L-P.com kindafunn betterhelp.com kinda funny.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And we're back. Gary.

[Gary Whitta]

I've got a better name.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

You know he said there's got to be a better name than welcome Tour.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Remember one, two. Switch.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yep.

[Gary Whitta]

They should just call this one you Switch.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Jesus Christ.

[Gary Whitta]

You pay me Nintendo Story.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Actually, before you even get into story number five, we got some super chats. Let's. Let's get into these Melodic Quest writes in and says, remember when we got Wii Sports as a pack in? Yeah, I, I wanna, I'm very fuzzy on my history, but I feel like Reggie Fils Aime was the one that was like making a lot of moves to pack these things in so long before him.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean when you got Super Mario Brothers when you bought an nes.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But I think when you're talking about like the last like decade and a half of Nintendo, I think maybe there's not somebody there that is like being like, no, like we cannot charge for this. Like we need we sports.

[Gary Whitta]

Being packed in with the Wii was a massive reason why it exploded the way that it did.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Granted, I don't think welcome to where is going to be the reason why the Switch 2 is going to explode. Right.

[Gary Whitta]

Even, even if it was packed in for free, it wouldn't be. But that's not. That's beside the point.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Welcome to our should like you should literally open up your Switch box and there be like the little like paper guy, the manual for your Switch to it. And they're just a code for welcome Tour.

[Gary Whitta]

Like that's what it should be preloaded on the system.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Unbelievable. I'm going to get more and more angry the more I think about it. Oh I do, I do want to give A shout out to two people in the chat.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yep.

[Gary Whitta]

One person earlier on, I remember the names, said Nintendo sucks. I want to thank you for that comment. You've given me a lot to think about. I'm going to spend the rest of the day unpacking that. And then someone else said about welcome to her, call it gay because that's what it is. I'm not going to do that because I'm not a fucking asshole.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, I was going to say I don't like that at all.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, don't do that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Don't be like that.

[Gary Whitta]

Fuck you even more than Nintendo.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. So by first name, right, stand and says Nintendo quote to take this thing out of the price increase to 700. We're going to give you a welcome tour for free. End quote. Could you imagine? Give me, give me a Donkey Kong Bonanza for free. Pack that in there if you're gonna charge 700 for this thing. El Capitan 22 writes in and says Nintendo themselves said in a report from the Verge that the original price for Switch 2 had nothing to do with tariffs, which I don't think we talked about that yet.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, that was, that was the price. That was the pre tariff price. It's. There's a, there's a decent chance it's going to go up by a significant amount. I mean and then the asthma golds and quarterings and all those, when the rubber hits the road and they realize this is real and shit's gonna get demonstrably, noticeably, significantly more expensive if they don't back off of this stupid then then they're gonna see.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Then. Then they'll have a cold dose of reality. So let me tell you something.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Tell me something.

[Gary Whitta]

I have an uncle who works at Nintendo.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Ever since I was a kid I've had an uncle that works at Nintendo.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

How old is he? Sorry, I couldn't resist. I couldn't resist. Go on.

[Gary Whitta]

My uncle who works at Nintendo is a, is, is a code name for someone.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know, a guy who knows a guy.

[Gary Whitta]

I don't know anything, but I know people who know things.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Anyway, they say it's not what you know, it's who you know. And I know a lot of people and one of the people that I know, my uncle who works at Nintendo mentioned they know a lot about this and I was talking to them recently and I said, what do you, what do you think about this tariff thing in terms of how it might affect the pricing? He said, well, if the, my uncle doesn't think that the Tariffs are going to stick around. He thinks it's so catastrophically bad and it's so galactically stupid and so detrimental and damaging to the, to the global economy and the world trading order that's been around for almost 100 years. The if it's allowed to stick around, you're going to, you're going to end up with a fucking global economic collapse. Right? So it has to be stopped. Whether it's Congress or the courts, it has to start. It cannot stick around. These tariffs will not be around in six months. This is what my friend is saying, probably in a few weeks one way or another because it just cannot be allowed to happen. Right? It's going to destroy the fucking world. So the question is when is that going to happen? And Nintendo is right in the barrel for this because they have a major product that relies on a global supply chain and the prices are all baked into parts coming in from different parts of the world in the next couple of months. Right. And Nintendo's. Because they don't know what to do right now, it's like, well, are we gonna have to. They, if the tariffs stick around, they are going to have to put the price.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Honestly, I am sorry to interrupt you but I am kind of shocked that they are sticking with the release date of this thing.

[Gary Whitta]

So. But you know, but right now I guarantee you it's a five alarm fire. Nintendo as they tried to figure out how to navigate this. Yeah, these tariffs might be gone in a week, they might be gone in a month. They're going to be gone. But the problem is that Nintendo doesn't have that kind of time. So Nintendo has about two weeks to figure out what to lock in the retail pricing for this thing. If they're going to change it, they have about two weeks to do it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Gary Whitta]

Because they have, you know, they have retailers they, you know, have to price up to put up stickers and you know, all this like they can't just decide like at the last minute, oh it's an extra 100 bucks. Like, oh, launch days come around. It's launch day minus one. The tariffs are still here. We need to jack up the price. They don't have that luxury has the decision has been made a lot earlier than that. Right. Nintendo's unit price, what it costs them to make a Nintendo Switch to if you factor in the tariffs goes up about $190 to $100. That and they can't eat that cost otherwise. Otherwise they're selling these systems basically cost or outlines which they obviously can't do.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

So if the, if in the next two weeks these tariffs have not been resolved, you're gonna be paying $550 for a Nintendo Switch to just something to think.

[Barrett Courtney]

And 600 if you want Mario Kart.

[Gary Whitta]

And 600 if you want Mario Kart World.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

There you have it.

[Barrett Courtney]

Emotionally prepared.

[Gary Whitta]

Plus all the fucking right wing, like, I mean these people are literally saying, like, who, why do you, why do you even need money? It's just all made up. Like, that's how fucking desperate they are at this point to like justify this absolutely idiotic bullshit. The stupidest shit I've ever seen. But I mean, I guarantee when they, when they're, when their consoles start becoming significantly more expensive and Nintendo knows that if it goes up by 100 bucks, they're going to sell less of them because at some point you price people out. They got 455. I'll just, I'll do. But 550. No, come on. And people are going to know, right? Because everyone watches. Most people watch the news. Anyone's going on those, oh, Nintendo just avariciously stuck an extra hundred dollars on this. They're going to know that this is because of the tariffs. And so who do you blame? You don't blame Nintendo. Nintendo is just protecting its profit margin. I'm telling you, you know who to blame. Of course you do. You don't need to say it. Of course you know who to blame.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Story number five. Some good news for some people out there. A Minecraft movie shatters box office expectations with record breaking $157 million in the opening weekend. This is Rebecca Rubin at Variety. A Minecraft movie leveled up at the box office, collecting a blockbuster $157 million in its opening weekend. It's not only the biggest domestic debut of the year, but the best in history for a video game adaptation. Heading into the weekend, Warner Brothers and Legendaries, PG fantasy comedy starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa was projected to take in 70 million to $80 million, with some bullish analysts suggesting a final number closer to $90 million. Thanks to pent up demand for a family film, broad appeal and goodwill toward the 2011 video game. However, Minecraft squashed expectations in the US and abroad. @ the inter international box office, the tent pole added $144 million for a global start of $301 million. The film cost $150 million to produce before global marketing expenses. Prior to this weekend, Disney and Marvel's Captain America Brave New world, which got $88 million, held the benchmark for the year's biggest opening. While Univers Foundation's 2023 smash, the Super Mario Brothers movie brought in $146 million, boasted the largest start for a video game adaptation. Gary, the Minecraft movie, it's a unexpectedly crazy fucking success here. What is your take on this?

[Gary Whitta]

I don't think it's that. I mean I wasn't, it wasn't, wasn't like I was around beforehand.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Going, oh, this is gonna, this is gonna be bigger than, than you think. It was a huge number, but I don't think it's necessarily that expensive. I don't think it's necessarily that surprising. I didn't, I didn't look at the number this week and I go, hell. I was like, yeah. I mean, why not? Minecraft is by many metrics, the biggest game in the world. And its audience is primarily children. And children, when they want, if they want to go to the movies, they're going to the movies. And you're taking them. Trust me, I know. I've got two kids, right. So pester power is a big deal, but it takes them at Splashmore. But it sounds flash more but it says my splash more. It's the same thing with the Minecraft movie. Eventually you gotta take them. Right. And the thing I think about kids movies is for kids under a certain age, you don't just sell one movie ticket, you sell three or four because the parents have got to go to.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Gary Whitta]

And so you, you go there as a thing. So it isn't, isn't terribly surprising to me. The biggest video game in the world based that's primarily aimed at kids. Yes. I'm not totally surprised. Obviously now we're going to see a lot more Minecraft. There's going to be a Minecraft who's got greenlit at some point on Saturday night. Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like, oh, for sure. Good for Jared, by the way, two through five.

[Gary Whitta]

Jerry Hess, who directed two of my favorite movies, Napoleon Dynamite and particularly I love Nacho Libre. I love Nacho Libre.

[Barrett Courtney]

It's that director.

[Gary Whitta]

Yes.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, good for them. Yeah. That's awesome. Right?

[Gary Whitta]

You made Napoleon Dynamite.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

He made 400,000 dynamite.

[Gary Whitta]

Napoleon Dynamite made for $400,000 and now he's got 150 million dollar movie.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Good for.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, good for him.

[Gary Whitta]

Good for him. Obviously very good for the careers of Jack Black and Jason Memo. You could, you could have put me in that movie and it would have made $150 million. People don't give. Kids don't give a about that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean they don't care about Jack Black. Jack Black though. Jack Black has been making moves.

[Gary Whitta]

I, I mean, I'm sure it was additive, but it's not the reason why the movie. Oh, of course, movie stars generally aren't the reason. It's why Robert Downey Jr. When he plays Iron man, everyone goes, everyone goes nuts. When he, when he plays like a lawyer or whatever, nobody gives a. Because they, they care more about the character than they do. Obviously when the actor and the character come together. Right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

And it's a good combination as it was in the case of Iron Man. Brilliant choice to play that catch. And he did it brilliantly. Then you get it. But it's not like again, Harrison Ford, when he plays Indiana, well, he's not. Not so natural or Han Solo, whatever. People show up when he plays just some dude. People are like, who cares? Right? Because it's not necessarily the start. We haven't had a star driven system in Hollywood for a long time. It's ip.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Amen. Zendaya's getting there, right?

[Gary Whitta]

So, yeah, fair enough.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

She's getting there.

[Gary Whitta]

No, she's great, I think. And movie stars still can still move the needle. They certainly still mean a lot when you're trying to get movies set up. Believe me, I know. It's all, you know, who, who are we gonna. I'm literally about to go out with a, with a movie project sooner. Like the first thing is like, who are we gonna. You can't just send out a script anymore. You have to package it. You have to add an actor who's additive, who moves the needle, who does the spreadsheet say yes to, right? All that, you did all that bullshit. You know what, what do they do? Foreign, big, international appeal. It's all a spreadsheet. But a couple of things I thought were interesting, the side stories out of the Minecraft movie. One I thought was the police having to be called to kick unruly kids out of a bunch of theaters. Kids apparently, apparently going fucking wild in this movie.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Good for them.

[Gary Whitta]

These are. Kids go to a movie, right? They're going. Just because they, they love Minecraft, right? And then I've seen the footage, the camera phone footage they're throwing at the screen and climbing over the seats and going feral. It's like every showing of this movie is like a Rocky Horror.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Do you think they're not socialized well enough because of the pandemic? Like maybe not socialized well enough. Like they don't know how to behave in theaters.

[Gary Whitta]

There was a. Again, I had A kid who had to be. Had to be do remote schooling during the pandemic. And like, there's no question that it's had a lasting effect on kids, you know, socially, environmentally, in terms of their confidence, insecurity issues, all kinds. I mean, that we're going to be unpacking that scientifically for very long. Studies for decades.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

But also. Sorry, I'm also thinking about like, remember Szechuan sauce?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Barrett Courtney]

Before the pandemic.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, that was.

[Barrett Courtney]

Yeah, yeah. People are just crazy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But I do think stupid. Yeah, no, you're right. I think like there's something to be said about the audience that's watching Rick and Morty and like, that's not a diss. I watch Rick and Morty and love Rick and Morty, but I think there's something to be said about that audience versus the child, like the children. Audience that's watching Minecraft.

[Gary Whitta]

I mean, Rick and Morty, basically, the audience basically killed it. Right. They made it uncool to be a Rick and Morty fan.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

You don't even associate with those people.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, it's the same way that like video games, for example. Right. Like, I look at that, the behavior of gamers online and every now and.

[Gary Whitta]

Then I'm like more excusable because you talk about kids under 10 years and.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That'S my thing is like we're talking about just kids in general and like how kids behave in general. So you put, put a bunch of kids that are the 20, 20, like let's say it's 10 year olds. Right. You spent from the age of five to eight just inside, not going to school, not doing like just being inside. And then you put them all in a room together watching Minecraft. Of course they're throwing their milkshakes at the theater.

[Gary Whitta]

It's. I mean, I don't know if you've seen any of the cell phone footage, but man, it's fucking wild.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

I almost want to go like it's.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

A fucking theme park.

[Gary Whitta]

It's like just to just. You don't have to watch the movie but to watch the fucking zoo in front of it. The human zoo of all these kids losing their, like the police.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's a comment there with popcorn. Not even watching the screen.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh my God.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Just looking around me like, yo, it's wild in here. Yeah. Minecraft. Wow. This is gonna be. Yeah, you're gonna feel the ramifications of this for a long time.

[Gary Whitta]

Well, and also it's good for those of us who believe in that video games can make good movies.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right.

[Gary Whitta]

I don't know if. I don't know if the Minecraft movie is good or not. I haven't seen it. But the fact that it made a lot of money is much more important than whether or not it was any good. Yes, if it had been a great movie but made no money, it would have been very bad for people like me that are trying to do the next, you know, who are currently working on like the next video game movie that we want to see in theaters or whatever. But it made a ton of money and so it just helps the next one like this plus Super Mario Brothers, last of us being very successful, you know, they've all helped. You know, rising tide lifts all boats, right? And so this, this makes it a little bit easier for the next one.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I want to issue an apology to one Tim Gettys, who's right very often, where I think I had a back and forth on the show with him. Tim was talking about how video game movies are essentially like the next mcu, right? They're the next Marvel, next superhero movie. And like, I kind of looked at that a bit skeptically just because I think there is something to be said about there being a universe that is controlled by Marvel and all that and how that works together. But I mean, the numbers keep speaking for these video game things, right? I keep looking at all these adaptations getting greenlit. And of course, so many of these adaptations are going to fail because they greenlit. It feels like they greenlight a movie a week, a video game movie a week is what it feels like. Like a lot of these aren't going to do well. But I think, like, I think I am discounting the amount of them that are going to actually do amazing. The fact that Minecraft is out here even lapping Mario, Mario Movie, right? Like year after year, when we're in the stage right now of year after year, we're seeing records still being broken in that sense. Like, I think for the time being, for right now, we got a pretty good future ahead of us as far as what the market for video game moves are going to be. That's going to tap out at some point. It's going to blow up. I think there's too many things being.

[Gary Whitta]

And I think Minecraft is a really tricky one because again, the, the primary audience for it. And I know there are older, you know, young adults and people of all ages that play Minecraft, I get that. But the primary audience, let's not kid ourselves, is children. Yeah, right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

For Minecraft has There already been a Five Nights movie. Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

Yes.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, okay.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, there's another one.

[Barrett Courtney]

Matthew Lillard and the guy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes, you're right.

[Gary Whitta]

That did quite well as well.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'm trying to think of what's left for the kids.

[Gary Whitta]

It didn't. In this case, it didn't really matter if the movie was any good or not. Kids are. Let me tell again, I have only. Kids are not discerning. You know, they're not Cynthia. They just.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

They just want to.

[Gary Whitta]

They just want to see the. That they want to see. They want to see Minecraft brought to life on a big screen. And whether it's like cinematically any good is irrelevant. Like they're gonna show up. It seems like maybe it is pretty good. I like Jared Hess. And you look at Go. Yeah, that's kind of what you'd. No, that's Minecraft. It's a Minecraft movie.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The Fortnite movie. Yeah, that's gonna be the one.

[Gary Whitta]

That'll be huge.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's going to be like the Avengers endgame movies right there. Yeah. At least for the kids.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, the. For the Fortnight. And again, my uncle who works at Epic, don't get me started into like what's going on there. But that the Fortnight movie just got. Not that it was going to be a big. A hard sell anyway. Just got a lot easier to make.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, yeah, right.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, the Fortnite Minecraft are essentially in the same category.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like in the same. Like in the equivalent conversation of the Minecraft movie. Two just got greenlit over the weekend. The Fortnite movie definitely, if it hasn't already been greenlit, definitely is Greenland. Now we're gonna see that from the.

[Gary Whitta]

Studio point of view, it's a question whether or not Epic would actually want to do it because they really hold the keys.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Honestly. It brings me back to. I mean, this is a big conversation. We gotta move on. Right. But like, yeah, like, you have to. Right? As Epic, they never made a GTA movie, which still blows my mind.

[Gary Whitta]

We got stories around that and that's all that matters.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, but like, you don't. I mean, for companies like this. Right. Like especially right now for Fortnite, back in the day for gta. I get it. Because video game movies fail a lot nowadays. You want to make a Fortnite, that's just money. Like, just say yes to. I feel like as a company you're just gonna say yes to money. Right?

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So we'll see.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah. Well, Roblox, can the Kool Aid movie actually be Far behind.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Sorry. Say again. I missed it.

[Gary Whitta]

Sorry.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Story number six, PAX East 2025 welcomes kind of Funny co founder Greg Miller as this year's Story Time speaker. This comes from a press release that entered my email this morning. Co show organizers Reed Pop and Penny Arcade today reveal that Greg Miller, co founder of Kind of Funny, will be the Story Time keynote speaker for PAX East 2025 kicking off the event at the Boston Convention and Exhibition center, taking place from Thursday, May 8 through Sunday, May 11, 2025.

[Gary Whitta]

That devalues the fact that I've done it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I know I will. That's. That was gonna be the first.

[Gary Whitta]

I used to be quite proud of that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It reads on. Greg Miller boasts nearly two decades in the video game industry, rising to prominence as IGN's PlayStation team editor and hosting shows like PODC Beyond. It then goes on. But congratulations, Greg Miller. I'm sure we bringing the Tim Whatever farewell tour.

[Gary Whitta]

What is this farewell tour business about? What is that, Gary?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's a long story. It's a long story.

[Gary Whitta]

Give me the. Give me the.

[Barrett Courtney]

This is an excuse for Greg to torture Tim.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's a game showdown thing. Basically. Greg won stars in the bank at the beginning of the year. He can cash in his briefcase to steal one of Tim stars. And he keeps saying three. I never confirmed three, but everybody wants it to be three. But I said one. But yeah, he's torturing Tim over it.

[Gary Whitta]

Got it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The farewell to Tim stars. But people think now that it's a farewell to Tim. Keep getting questions. People keep tweeting at me like is Tim leaving? And I'm like, no, the whole thing. Story number seven. Bungie is finally ready to show off. Marathon gameplay confirms a live stream date. This is Vicky Blake at ign. Bungie is finally ready to show us more of its upcoming PvP extraction shooter marathon with an all new gameplay live stream slated for this Saturday, April 12th. Last week the developer dropped a mysterious tweet that included a bizarre 15 second video that immediately set fans sleuthing as part of an extensive alternative alternative alternative reality game. Players realized that within the ASCII art was a snippet of footage from the initial trailer. And if they look closely, they noticed it's the runner sprinting down a hall from the trailer right now. Bear has brought up the video of the trailer they released yesterday for the save the date for the actual livestream. I'm looking forward to this.

[Gary Whitta]

I really like the look of. I love the aesthetic of this game. It doesn't look like anything else that's out there, you know, maybe like Mirrors Edge or something, but this is like more colorful as this really cool kind of futuristic vibe to it. So many games these days kind of look. Look the same. They have these muddy color palettes or it's this very generic version of the future, you know, futuristic aesthetic. This, to me, looks really fresh. I love. I love the palette, the colors.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Dude, Bungie knows art style.

[Gary Whitta]

They do. And this look, this looks terrific to me. It looks really. The fact that it's a PvP shooter means I'm probably not going to be able to play it to a great extent because I suck at them. I wish they were like a PvE PvE aspect or whatever, but this looks really good. This is. This is a high on my watch list based on just looking like a man. That looks great.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. I'm sad that they're doing this, doing this on Saturday because I would have loved to, like, come into work and talk about this or react to it or whatever. But I'm sure we're gonna have a lot to say next Monday after the trailer comes out. Also, did I miss the studio? Did you make a reference to the studio?

[Gary Whitta]

Is that what I mean? Yeah, you missed it at the time. Yeah. Have you?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I've seen it.

[Gary Whitta]

Because the whole thing is like, they want to make the Kool Aid movie, right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, yes. I've been referencing that a lot actually lately, because we had this conversation all the other day. I forget about what. But essentially the same idea of like, I think we're having a conversation about Astrobot because they're talking about making an Astrobot movie as well, where. Yeah, like, it. Y'all got. Y'all gotta go watch the studio.

[Gary Whitta]

It's an interesting. It's been an interesting watch for me as someone who has worked in that business for 20 years at, you know, at that level, like big IP franchise type movies. And there's a lot of stuff that. Some of this. Some of it kind of infuriates me, but there's a lot of stuff they get right. And just the general idea of, like, what it's actually like to be in those rooms when, you know, you're. You're looking at something that has no fucking creative reason to exist at all. It's like, purely because they can make money.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Gary Whitta]

It's so fucking depressing. And that part of it, they do. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And Seth Rogen is like, so good at depicting it.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Like, you can tell this is made by somebody who's frustrated at the. At the way things work, but also like has a lot of insight and has a lot of. A lot of stuff to say. Yeah, agreed. That's me. A big show. A lot of people, A lot of people are going to check out the studio. But Gary, if I wanted something smaller, say the tiniest news I needed to know about, where would I go?

[Gary Whitta]

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

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Know about story number eight. It is we news. Okami 13 underscore.

[Gary Whitta]

By the way, this is. This section is an extra $10.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh yeah, you gotta pay. Yeah, you gotta pay the money on this one. Okami on Twitter tweeted out Indie puzzle game blueprints debuts to a 94 on Metacritic. I'm sure this is updated by now to probably like 92 or something, but a lot of reviews for it has come out. We're recording our review after this. But I'm saying a lot of nines and tens. GameSpot gave it a nine. Noisy Pixel gave it a ten. Gaming Bible gave it a ten.

[Gary Whitta]

What game is this?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Blueprints.

[Gary Whitta]

The one from the top. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And of course it is coming to PS plus extra day one as well as Xbox Game Pass on April 10th. Yeah, there's a 92.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah. I mean again, out of nowhere. I love it. Like bam. It's a blot draw all over again.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Who saw it coming from VGC Prototype builds for several cancel games. Oh wait, actually no, we already. We covered this one in the main news from Deadline actually Quiet place Day ones helmer Michael Sarnoski.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh yeah, Death Stranding, right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. Is directing the Death Stranding movie. That's interesting. And then finally from Noble, Ubisoft is reportedly working on a turn based tactics game in the Rainbow six universe. According to insider gaming sources, the game is likely one or two years away from release. And quote, just watch some XCOM gameplay if you want to get an idea. End quote. So cool. An XCOM Rainbow six game is what they're working on.

[Gary Whitta]

That sounds like a. Makes sense, right?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Together, I think so that is it for Wii News. Before we get out of here, let me take one more look at the super chats. Street Shadow writes in and says, gary, there are PvE elements from what I have heard.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh good.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Lots of secrets and things to discover in the map. So the game is likely more PvP plus PvE combined. I believe we call that PvPE.

[Gary Whitta]

That's correct. Yes.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes. Demon Hacker writes in and says that Stardew Valley movie is going to make billions.

[Gary Whitta]

What is. Sorry.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Stardew Valley movie.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, I could see that one as well. Yeah. Different audience, but yeah, huge audience.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah. I don't know if this is like, again, what's.

[Gary Whitta]

What's real. What. I don't think Stardew Valley is necessarily a game that like a lot of kids play the one again. Mario. What. What combines or what. What connects the ones that have made the mega money recently. Super Mario Brothers Minecraft. And again, let's just assume Fortnite.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Sonic.

[Gary Whitta]

Sonic, yeah. Kids.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yep. Yeah. That's 1000% it. There's a conversation to be had and this might be a gamescast topic or something of like ranking the franchises that are. That like, need to get movies made. Right. Like what video game franchises would make are going to make the most money. More Super Chats for you. Average John writes in and says, here's my Nintendo. Welcome to our tax. Just wanted to say. Just wanted to say this because I don't think I've seen anyone draw the comparison. Donkey Kong Bonanza's destruction slash mining reminds me a lot of Deep Rock Galactic. There you go.

[Gary Whitta]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Justin Seven writes in and says, please tell me you've all seen the Tiktoks of the Minecraft movie. People are going crazy in theaters. Of course, we talked about that earlier. I don't know what this means. Alex Frazier writes in. This is a risky one because I don't know what this means. I'm going to say it and hopefully don't get canceled. Alex Frazier just writes in and says fdt. Fdt. Fdt.

[Gary Whitta]

No idea what that stands for.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No idea.

[Gary Whitta]

That possibly stand for.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I just activated a soldier. I think those. I don't know.

[Gary Whitta]

Think about someone's initial td.

[Barrett Courtney]

The flower delivery company.

[Gary Whitta]

That's F. That's ftd.

[Barrett Courtney]

Oh, what.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What the Donald Trump.

[Gary Whitta]

Oh, I didn't say that. You said it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And I'll say it again. I don't give a sort by first name. Right. Sitting and said, oh, we already. We already covered this. I think we covered most of the super chats here. Yeah, I think we're good on super chats. Gary, we're gonna hop in.

[Gary Whitta]

Is Super Chat prices gonna go up with the tariffs?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Listen, I don't think. Well, we don't. That's the thing is we don't really have a set price.

[Gary Whitta]

Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But like, if y'all just want to tariff yourself and just give us.

[Gary Whitta]

Yeah, just, just, just use the same formula that they use. Just put some. Pull some Greek letters out of your. And. And come up With a made up number and then, and then charge that to a bunch of penguins.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Chad. I'm just saying, Maga. I, I've been. Well, I don't know, but listen, all right, Price of eggs, it's going up and I like eggs a lot. And so if you wanna, you want to just give a few more dollars. Gary. It's become a problem. Roger's dying in the background. It's become a problem where I'm looking at these eggs and I'm like, why is it $20? Why am I paying $20 for these eggs? I just want to eat. And I know part of it is a shortage. I know there's like a whole thing, but the birds are dying. I don't know. But like you're wrong. Let's see here.

[Gary Whitta]

Did you see, by the way, I got to say just one thing. Did you see what they did with the tariffs where they came up with this formula that looked like, you know, this very complicated equation with like, you know, Greek, you know, alphanumeric characters, like height, like algebraic, you know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Really?

[Gary Whitta]

I heard this is the extremely complex formula through which we came up with the tariff. So this is all solid good math here. And economists looked at it and said, well, all you've done is take this and divide it by that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yes, okay. But then I heard about this.

[Gary Whitta]

Complicated now because look at this letter and this. And they figured out that the extra letters they added to this very simple stupid formula basically just canceled each other out. There it is. So one of. So one of those multiplies the equation by 4 and the other one divides it by 4. So they basically cancel each other out. They literally just put extra Greek letters in there to make it look more complicated than it is. But you can take those green letters out, Greek letters out, and mathematically it's the same formula. How fucking stupid do they think these think we are?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I mean, very. We voted for them.

[Gary Whitta]

Believable me.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That is it for kind of funny dot com. You're wrong. Gary, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Kind of Funny Games.

[Gary Whitta]

I'm always happy to be here.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's been a very fun, especially with you. I used the Rollie. I didn't vote for him. Chad, let me make that very clear. Nobody in this room, I don't think voted for him. Right, Roger? I won't ask Roger. He gave me a shrug. What do you mean shrug? Jesus. Of course. This has been kinda Funny Games Daily, each and every weekday we run you through the nerdy news. They need to know about live on YouTube, Twitch and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the kind of funny membership on Patreon or YouTube to get all of our shows ad free. Watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show. Enjoy the games cast next and the stream after. But until next time Game Daily podcasting was a revolution until big tech and big money started rewriting the rules. What's a Podcast? The Revolution Redefined is an urgent new docu series featuring exclusive insights from industry experts like AJ Feliciano, General Manager of the Roost.

[Gary Whitta]

I still want to kill the word podcast.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Plus pioneers like Ira Glass, Adam Carolla, Leo laporte, Guy Raz, and more. More if you care about the future of podcasting, listen now to what's a Podcast? Wherever you get your podcasts.